Steve Souders
Writer, Creator of YSlow, Co-chair of Velocity, Co-founder of the Firebug Working Group.
The Work Questionnaire.
What made you go the way you chose to go?
It’s the way my mind works – I’ve always loved optimizing things. In 8th grade, I was captivated by our study of the efficiency experts of the Industrial Revolution. I’m the modern day equivalent – an efficiency expert for the Web.
What’s the greatest difficulty you had to overcome to do what you’re doing now?
It’s not enough to get developers interested in web performance – all parts of the organization need to be on board. Figuring out how to pitch web performance to sales & marketing took a lot of work.
What’s the greatest difficulty you face on a daily basis to keep on doing what you’re doing?
Balancing evangelism and hands-on development.
When did you find yourself thinking, “Well, this is it. I’m really doing what I want now”?
When I started focusing on web performance, I was really working on my own. I had no place to sit at work while they figured out where I belonged in the organizational structure. During that time, I was re-modeling the upstairs at home. It was a wide open space with no walls – just plywood floors, windows, and power outlets. I set up a bunch of PCs in that space and built a test framework to measure page load times. So I’m sitting in this barren attic space. It’s summer. I’m wearing shorts and no shirt, sweating all day. I’m gathering tons of data from different websites on different browsers across dialup and DSL. And I’m just grinning ear-to-ear realizing there’s a ton of virgin territory ahead full of optimization techniques waiting to be discovered.
How did you set your activity up? What was the process that led you to do what you’re doing?
The most important change was embracing openness – what Tim O’Reilly means by creating more value than you capture. Thanks to Google and Yahoo!, I’ve been able to write books, speak at conferences, teach, and release code. Sharing this information has led to countless contributions and corrections that have improved the state of knowledge.
How do you imagine the future?
For web performance, I mostly imagine a future with more automation. It’s too hard to remember all the optimizations and deploy them manually. For me personally, I mostly imagine a future with a house near big water where it’s always warm.
What would you consider to be the main quality in order to survive in your field?
Curiosity.
And what is the indispensable flaw that someone should have in order to get into your business?
Obsessive compulsive.
Filed In: Web Building
September 12, 2011 at 5:00 pm