Up at 7am. Check the outfit, the professional outfit, on the floor to make sure it still fits my mood. Adjust as necessary. Shower and put on the outfit. Consider wearing shoes, but don’t. My shoes are lonely. Upstairs. Coffee (black) and a glance at the view. Santa Cruz Mountains. No fog today. Walk into… more
As a leader who primarily values team health, I place great value on the weekly 1:1 because it’s where I assess health. It’s my highest bandwidth meeting, and historically the slight to significant lag omnipresent in video conferencing impeded that bandwidth. It stilted the conversation. The micro-second of lag was an omnipresent reminder of the… more
While I believe we have to continue to figure out how to integrate remote folks into teams, this video hilariously captures so many of the little micro-annoyances of remote workers.
Been spending a good chunk of the break so far tidying up the archives. Some articles need sub-headings, others need a revised URL, and a few simply had to be deleted. It’s been cathartic.
As I reread articles, I can watch as parts of my leadership religion has changed. I now firmly believe that an engineering lead needs to keep coding. I also see remote workers as an inevitability.
In my bones, I know that teams that stare each other in the face are more productive. Decision cycle-time is shorter because communications are more fluid. There is also inevitably more context gathered when you sit there and see Phil uncomfortably and poorly explain his design. This is discomfort that you’d likely not see in an email.
Is totally remote the future? Nope. But it’s certainly gaining steam.
There’s a tremendous feeling of freedom when you abandon the shackles of a specific location.
Remote is a fact of life in software engineering. We don’t have enough engineers + demand is incredibly high = engineers can dictate terms about where they want to live.
The author really wants remote to work and, in my opinion, is going to make remote work and that’s a fine thing, but how do we quantify the productive gain or loss in a remote situation? Yes, there are fewer interruptions and you can work at your own pace, but how does casual socialization improve your work? In that moment when you’re stumped in the office, how do you quantify the value created by walking to the kitchen to get a cup a coffee where you find Frank who is lingering and happens to randomly have the precise answer to your problem?
There are many notable projects that are completely distributed – it does work – but at what cost? Other than Yahoo, who has evaluated remote workers and decided this isn’t going to work?
“Can I work remote?” I cringe. It’s Ian and Ian is a senior engineer. He’s a rock. He gets it done. I never have to ask him twice and, after six years, Ian has every right to ask to work remote. But I’m still freaked because my first thought when anyone asks to work remote… more
Right this second, there are five books sitting on my desk. I’m not talking about the invisible books stacked up next to my monitor, I’m talking about the books I want you to see the second you walk in my office. They change over time, but right now they are: The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary… more
Tony passes me the hallway at lunch, basketball in hand, and the conversation goes like this: Me: “Hey Tony, how was basketball?” Tony: “It’s good. I was playing with Phil and he mentioned his team was working on Gimbleflibbits.” Me: “Gimbleflibbits? That sounds a whole lot like our effort on Trimbleflibbits. Did you mention we… more
Anyone who’s worked with me has stumbled on my policy on remote employees. The short answer is, “No”. The longer answer is, “The team is moving far too fast for you to miss the various hallway conversations which randomly point us in different directions.” Software is art. It’s team art. When the team collectively decides… more
