On Fri, 19 Dec 2014 16:10:52 -0700 Nicholas Stewart <[email protected]> wrote:
> I apologize if I shouldn't send this email because it's not related to > Linux. No apologies necessary. It seems peripherally relevant. Before I answer questions, I'll give you some background. I've worked remotely for probably a decade or more, to some degree or another. I ran my own consulting business for a while and most of the work was done from our homes until we set up an office. Even after that, we would still work from home from time to time. My last job, from 2010-2012, was for a company based in Pittsburgh. When I was hired, roughly 50-60% of their development staff was remote, spread throughout the US. During the two years I worked for them, they migrated even the local developers in Pittsburgh into working remotely. The offices and cubicles those developers used were converted into workspace for legal and marketing people. Since 2012, I've worked at Bluehost. Bluehost doesn't generally support developers working remotely, but given my extensive experience with it and my requirement for some flexibility when I was hired, they've tried to work with me. Right now, I work from home two days a week and go into the office in Orem three days a week. > I know many of you have IT and software jobs and I'm wondering if you > periodically work from home. If you do, how do you to stay in > communication with members of your team and department? IRC and/or Jabber is a necessity. E-mail is nice, especially when not everyone is available at a specific time to discuss something. At my last job, I would have weekly status meetings with my team lead. He would call me on the phone and we would have a predefined agenda of topics to go through during our weekly call. If I had specific code-related issues, we would do some screen sharing during our call. On my team at Bluehost, we include remote employees, whether it's me one on of my days at home or someone who has special circumstances and needs to work remotely, via Google Hangout. We have a daily team standup, as is recommended for Agile-scrum methodology. We will use one person's laptop with a webcam so remote participants can participate in the meeting. Personally, I'd prefer the daily standup meetings were done in an IRC channel electronically. I find the act of actually going somewhere, away from my computer, and standing there while each of us talks, uncomfortably, about what we did yesterday, what we're doing today, and what's keeping us from getting our work done, mostly a big waste of time, but... c'est la vie. > Are you expected to be available on IRC or some other chat platform? Yes, as mentioned before, IRC or Jabber is crucial. > Do you phone in for standup or some scrum-like meeting? Google Hangout. > Do you spend a lot of time on Skype? Nope. Hate Skype. :) I hope that helps. -- Doran L. Barton <[email protected]> - Linux, Perl, Web, good fun, and more! "Our nylons cost more than common, but you'll find they are best in the long run." -- Seen in a Tokyo shop /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
