May 12, 2008
Development, Strategy
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In my previous post I said (right down at the bottom) that the only thing I missed about home working was the social side of going to work. I’ve been thinking about this and I think it has more to do with removal of stimuli (yeah, bear with me).
Working from home is great, I get loads done and a lot of this work (despite being mostly programming work) requires communication. We mostly use chat (or email if anyone’s away from their machine) but there is a sterility in the chat conversations, most of them are one on one aimed at finding something out, and I think this along with familiarity, which may turn to cabin-fever, of spending more time than ever at home (yeah I do go out and I do have my ‘work room’ so I don’t feel like i should constantly be working) is leading to a state where there is no more stimulation.
How to overcome this…
- Meet up with work colleagues, try for once a week (it depends on how remote you are!)
- Have informal group chats on the go as well as the get to the point one to ones
- Don’t forget that the person hasn’t turned into a robot just because you talk to them by computer!
- Use Skype/ googleTalk etc to actually talk, even if it may take longer
- Get out! go see people, I do an art class, photography workshops and go down the pub, everyone needs people! It’s all things I did before I started Home Working but without them I think I’d go mad! make sure you leave the house every day even if it’s just to walk round the block.
- Keep learning, and keep sharing what you you learn.
It’s been nice having the chance to do some home working and I think there are loads of situation where it’s advantages are huge. One idea I had to encourage the social side of work yet keep the ‘home’ ease was to have local centres, you could have a community hall, or a purpose built one, but having a local hub where you can get a coffee, some technical help, access to some of the kit you may not have at home and… people. The hub could be a business centre with all the facilities like meeting rooms or it could just be a glorified network coffee shop or internet cafe. I know that there are some remote trading floors where the traders work from their towns trading floor instead of going in to the City, they still get the social, and the tips! but don’t have to commute (as far), so why not expand this for anyone who doesn’t need to be in the office.
Anyway I’m starting a new job in a few weeks, office based, but with developers working from two locations so the remote working skills and discipline will be handy.
May 6, 2008
Development, Strategy
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As I’ve said in previous posts we’ve been retooling so we can work remotely and more efficiently as a team.
So here’ a bit of feedback on how it’s all been going.
There have obviously been a few teething problems but in general its been great. We were lucky in that our team was all working centrally to start with so we have a good team bond and know each other well.
We’re using Google Apps for business and have transferred our e-mail over to them (after a bit of an MX record phaf) and now that is working nicely, once you get used to the way Google groups your e-mail (no problem to me as I’ve been on gmail for a while but some of the others did think they’d lost email). The Google Docs suite seems to be upgraded frequently and with Google Gears for offline sync is just totally awesome. We do still pull documents down and format them in Word to send out to clients but in Google apps we can all get stuck in and get the content right.
The problems we did have were that our source control was on a local server which we couldn’t make accessible to the whole world, and we didn’t realise that our RDP to our remote server and remote SQL access were locked to our old office IP address… good security not so good for remote working) all easily overcome though.
We’re using Clocking IT for time management and tracking projects which is also going really well, as long as everyone ensures the log their time and keeps their projects up to-date, and with a Google gadget in our Google Apps start page we can see what’s on at all times, great integration.
We have all now moved out of the office and productivity is still high, chat (with logging into gmail) is great just like in the office, but now I don’t have to commute!
What I do miss is the social side, whilst we do have offline chats, it’s not the same as going to make a brew and putting the world to rights, the range of music that people brought in to share (although I suppose we could still do that) and the people at our building who we didn’t actually work with… hmm yeah and sharing a building with a chiropractor was always handy!
April 24, 2008
Development
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Well guys, edition two of the podcast was much better.
I take it all back, now you’re in the flow i’ll be listening in.
April 23, 2008
Development, Random
No Comments
I visited Infosec Europe again this year, mainly just to see Bruce Schneier really. The show seems to be much more marketing than I remember in past years, perhaps I was just in the wrong places.
Anyway Bruce’s presentation was fantastic. It was basically looking at the psychology of feeling secure over being secure and the impact this can have. I really like this idea because it fits with my theory of ability and gives me a much more eloquent model to describe it, my model of knowledge/ability is basically people who tell you they are an expert in something generally know so little they don’t even realise the enormity, I’ve had ‘Flash Gurus’ who don’t even know what ActionScript is ‘Expert MS Office’ user who don’t know what a macro is and can’t write an Excel formula.) Anyway.
As I understand it Bruces’ theory of security is based on a model of:
- Reality – what the potential threat/situation is
- Model – the way the understands Reality, based on knowledge (books, experience, news, peers)
- Feeling – how the user feels emotionally about the situation
Bruce suggested that we are poor at making security decisions because our models and feelings as humans have evolved over millennia to help us in a fight or flight situation. Not in a pragmatic sort the facts out and adjust our models kind of way. The problem is that our context for these decisions is wrong.
To me it shows why the experience gained by doing a job is so important, your model is adjusted by constant feedback of what has and hasn’t worked. Why do you know that… because I’ve done it. This experience is often overlooked and people assume that someone with a higher qualification in a subject will be better at a job in that area – not necessarily true.
Anyway to find out more about what Bruce said read his article the Psychology of security.
April 17, 2008
Development
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As a developer who reads Coding Horror, I’ve been keen to find out what Jeff has been up to with stackoverflow.com. So I was surprised and pleased to find out that it’s (at least in part) a collaboration with Joel (on Software). So when the the announcement came that their first podcast was up on stackoverflow, I went straight over to listen…. The site sounds great, for developers by developers, an awesome resource (if you do have problems with erm… the site they refer to… scroll down to the bottom, the answers are usually there even if they are wrong) anyway… the podcast!
An opportunity to listen to people who I really respect as bloggers and as developers. I love both their Blogs but really the podcast was dull, to me it was Joel talking a lot, talking over Jeff and then leaving big pauses where he wanted Jeff to say ‘right’ or ‘wow’ a few times and they don’t talk about Stackoverflow until about a third of the way through.
I liked the Vista discussion halfway through. That did seem like a proper discussion, if the whole of the cast was like that, that would be better. (I agree with Joel though, what is the advantage of upgrading to Vista… no new features and you’ve moved everything… learning overhead for no return).
A square 45 degree angle?
So stackoverflow .com sounds like it will be good, their podcast… average, I’ll listen again to see if it gets better, and I hope it does, and with the ability to call in i’m pretty sure it will.
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