NYCPHP Meetup

[Jason Scott]

Well, I can safely say that not a day goes by without an ad hoc design debate springing up, and believe me when I tell you that the folks who are not here for it - well, they miss it. And when we do get home based employees on the phone, we deal with barking dogs, doorbells, screaming children, and lots of chewing. :-) Personally, I like dogs and children, so it makes me smile - but when we have multimillion dollar clients on the phone dealing with a broken app? Not so good.

I am not against working from home, but I believe it works better as the exception, and not the rule, which is the complete opposite of what I'm hearing so far.

Development servers are in house, VPN functionality and speed are no match for the connectivity you get inside the office, most people don't have as well equipped computing infrastructure at home as we do here, they don't have multiline phones and two way speakers, their home pc's crash and it takes them hours if not days to come back to life (whereas in the office we would simply swap in a new pc with a fresh image), and on and on and on...

On the upside, getting used to home based developers is one small step towards getting used to offshoring, which is what we all want at the end of the day anyways, right? ;-) 

Anyone out there who is wondering why offshoring is booming, please read this thread from the beginning.

<audible sigh>


-----Original Message-----
From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org [mailto:talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org] On Behalf Of Tim Lieberman
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 4:32 PM
To: NYPHP Talk
Subject: Re: [nycphp-talk] Why IT Sucks

Jason Scott wrote:
> As a single developer there isn't much of a reason.
>
> For a development team - needing to coordinate activities and debate designs on whiteboards - on site presence is required. Unless I were to spend lots of money on collaboration and video environments to facilitate a home-based workplace. 
>   
I certainly agree that there are times to get together around a 
table/whiteboard.  But unless you've got some kind of intensive "agile" 
thing going on (and working), 20% of the time in the office should be 
more than enough, most of the time, anyway.

I collaborate regularly with several other developers and it's really 
quite amazing what you can do with email, skype , and/or a conference 
bridge on the PBX.
> Personally, I'd rather allocate the money I would need to spend on such a setup back into developer salaries, call me crazy. Not to mention that some of the more socially capable developers actually enjoy getting out of the house :-)
>   
I do enjoy my office days, like I said, I'm trying to get down there at 
least twice a week for a full day of work. 

As for the money, I don't get it.  The overhead on an internet 
connection is less than having to give your dev an office.  I've got a 
little cube when I'm on-site, and it's not too bad, but there are only 
three others in the room.  But once the talking or fixing little things 
is over and it's time to get back to building something non-trivial, I 
wouldn't be able to do my job without an office with a door that 
closes.  Or I can just stay home, where I have just that.
> And just to keep the "how behind the times are you" comments at bay, every time I've visited Google in Mountainview, Cisco in San Jose, Citrix in Ft Lauderdale, or Microsoft in Redmond, the offices were packed with staff. Cavemen, huh?
>   
Most programmers are working for business in industries other than 
software.  If you're doing large-scale application development over a 
range of products involving massive numbers of people, I can see why 
you'd want most everyone on-site.  If you're dealing with less than a 
dozen developers, like 90% of everyone (Yes, I'm pulling that number out 
of the air), telecommuting should be a perfectly manageable and often 
advantageous option.

-Tim



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