Re: Consultancy company
As for working at home, i believe the optimal week is mon,tue in the office, wednesday at home, thu,fri in the office. YMMV however - if you were building a company their are other concerns beyond productivity, the establishment of a team/company spirit and bonding for instance. also the discussion of strategy on non-IT matters in the company, building a company as has been discussed requires buy in to issues beyond perl hacking. anyway thats just by 2 cents -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund
* Paul Makepeace ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > Building reliability is probably your best aim: does it have a UPS? does it > have a RAID 1/0 config? Dual PSUs? Tape drive & backup policy? Those things > are way more important than a faster chip or RAM. > your right of course, however all of those things are more expensive and in some cases involve disgarding existing equipment and at the end of the day its a hobby machine that currently is lucky to have an average CPU usage of 0.1% per hour -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Consultancy company was [Job] BOFH wanted was: Re: Red Hat worm discovered
* Alex Page ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 09:27:18AM +, Dave Hodgkinson wrote: > > > It should be mandatory for all public servants to be adept at Sim > > City. > > IIRC, Sim City is one of Ken Livingstone's favorites. > yip, and all devoted Sim City fan's sooner or later get bored and decided to see how they can screw up their City. Oh I know i'll make trafalgar square a pedestrian only zone -- Greg McCarroll http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
Re: Consultancy company
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Piers Cawley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: [snip] > And table football's no fun if you're playing with > yourself. Maybe if you kept your hands on the table football...? -- rob partington % [EMAIL PROTECTED] % http://lynx.browser.org/
Re: Consultancy company
On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 12:24:24AM +, Piers Cawley wrote: >The vision I have is of a team (or teams) working in *our* premises, >with customers working with us. (side-rant) The customers _must_ be kept isolated from the developers. This is the single most important thing the customer-interface people (whatever you call them) can do. Inviting the customers into your office will drop productivity by 30-50% because your developers can't talk honestly about what's going on. R
Re: Consultancy company
Roger Burton West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 12:24:24AM +, Piers Cawley wrote: > > >The vision I have is of a team (or teams) working in *our* premises, > >with customers working with us. > > (side-rant) > The customers _must_ be kept isolated from the developers. This is > the single most important thing the customer-interface people > (whatever you call them) can do. Inviting the customers into your office > will drop productivity by 30-50% because your developers can't talk > honestly about what's going on. That's exactly wrong. And the XP book explains why far better than I ever could. -- Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star http://www.deep-purple.com Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire -
Re: Consultancy company was [Job] BOFH wanted was: Re: Red Hat worm discovered
> IIRC, Sim City is one of Ken Livingstone's favorites. There can't be the option to revoke all bird feed sellers permits.
Re: Consultancy company
On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 09:12:25AM +, Dave Hodgkinson wrote: >Roger Burton West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> The customers _must_ be kept isolated from the developers. >That's exactly wrong. >And the XP book explains why far better than I ever could. It may be possible to make it work. I've seen it foul up horribly. If I'm writing a piece of code, I am not helped by having some fool who is trying to come to grips with the concept of "what is a web browser" breathing his tooth decay into my face and asking me whether I've tested the last bit of code I wrote (before, you understand, he's deigned to see if it works himself). R
Re: Big Macs v The Naked Chef -- pitfalls of scaling consultancies
"Paul Makepeace" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Y'all might find this excellent piece interesting, > > http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$287 It's down to greed. I worked with a guy who easily filled his 200-odd day working year with 1k+ a day gigs (motivational speaker). But he soon realised he'd maxed out. So his blinding flash of the obvious was: "How do I make money while I sleep" Two years ago, the answer was: "build a web site". Wonder how he's doing now? -- Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star http://www.deep-purple.com Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire -
Re: Consultancy company
Roger Burton West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 12:24:24AM +, Piers Cawley wrote: > > >The vision I have is of a team (or teams) working in *our* premises, > >with customers working with us. > > (side-rant) > The customers _must_ be kept isolated from the developers. This is > the single most important thing the customer-interface people > (whatever you call them) can do. Inviting the customers into your office > will drop productivity by 30-50% because your developers can't talk > honestly about what's going on. One customer. On site. Full time. Absolute honesty. Get them on your side. The are the people who are *paying* for this, they deserve nothing but your honesty. Tell 'em about any problems and tell 'em early. Tell 'em about successes and tell 'em early. Get the customer rep onside and you have an advocated. Treat the customers like a mushrooms and you don't get repeat business. -- Piers
Re: Consultancy company
On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 10:28:13AM +, Piers Cawley wrote: >One customer. On site. Full time. Absolute honesty. Nice idea if you have customers who can take the truth, and who know when to shut up and let people get on with things. I'd like to see it working, but I haven't yet. R
Re: Consultancy company
> > Agreed - why work in London - what about telecommuters ? > I'm *really* unsure about telecommuting. For me, telecommunting is fine for maybe 50% of my week, but unless I'm working on a very singular project (i.e. running in deep hack mode), then I need to have the human company gained from being in an office environment. Having said that, I do very little "real" work at work, instead spending my time reading/writing email, chatting to people, playing table tennis, having meetings, and doing other brain dead tasks. But I suppose that's the point. Allowing myself to kick back a little at work gives me the balance to work flat out at home. The annoying thing, is that there are some packer types at CRE who see it the other way. When I am in the office, they think I am "working hard", but when they don't see me, they assume I'm doing nothing. I am in the exceptionally fortunate position of working a 10 minute drive away from home. I typically work the morning at home doing "real work" then go into the office for human contact, email, chit-chat, brainstorming, etc., in the afternoon. Then back in time to pick up ickle Ben from nursery at 6.00, bath him, put him to bed, etc., then relax in the evening reading, hacking, watching some TV, or having fantastic sex with my beautiful wife. When you've been spoilt like that, it's very hard to consider giving that up to spend valuable hours of your day sitting or standing on a train. And I'd rather have trees, fields, peace and quiet around me than be working in a big, dirty and crowded city. There's more to life than work. But I must admit that I have a peculiarly low tolerance for city life. Must be my fragile consitution... :-) > And I like central London because (whatever else is wrong with it) > it's relatively easy for everyone to get to by train no matter where > they live. Trekking out to (for example) Guildford wouldn't be good > for me. Agreed that Guildford wouldn't be everyone's ideal location, but I was thinking more of the "in town" vs "out of town" location. You can get a much larger, much nicer office building somewhere in the green belt than in central London, for the same kind of money (not that I've looked, though). OK, that tends to assume that more people travel to work by car rather than train, or live in the surrounding area. So come to sunny Guildford and have fantastic sex with my beautiful wife! (No, I *am* joking, really) A
Extreme Programming (was: Re: Consultancy company)
On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 12:24:24AM +, Piers Cawley wrote: > Now, I freely admit that I have partaken of the Extreme Programming > Kool-Aid, and dammit I want to do it. I want to try it too. I'm not convinced by all of it - pair programming for example - but so much of the other stuff seems damned sensible that I want to give it a go. Including pair programming. I'm trying to keep an open mind on that fucking stupid idea. -- David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/ Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced
Re: Consultancy company
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, you wrote: > One customer. On site. Full time. Absolute honesty. Get them on your > side. The are the people who are *paying* for this, they deserve > nothing but your honesty. Tell 'em about any problems and tell 'em > early. Tell 'em about successes and tell 'em early. Get the customer > rep onside and you have an advocated. Treat the customers like a > mushrooms and you don't get repeat business. sounds great ... when do we start. Seriously XP sounds like it should work .. I read the books I was convinced. The only thing that occasioanlly worries me about it is that my current client is still working his way up to being a mushroom. Apart from that the client has a total staff of 5. I cant see them sparing 20% of their workforce in order to sit and keep the developers comapny. Worse still I have not yet had a decision on anything in less than 24hrs. I think that would haold true even if they were on site too. So I am really keen to do an XP managed project ... if it really does work then that sfantastic, best result I could ever have. I suspect that it fails, just in different ways to other project managment systems. obvious ones: The client doesn;t send Big Chief to sit with the designers, instead they send Useless Minion. UM is positive and helpful and gives quick decisions ona whole variety of topics. And a week later turns up with changes handed down by Big Chief overiding those decisions. worse still the decisions handed down make no sense because he hasn;t been with the team and doesn;t undrstand whats going on. Client has no concept about what software development is like and within a week or two cancels the entire thing 'some of those guys spent a whole week working and half the time couldnt even get it to run, by the end of the week all they'd done was write some strange "library" code and even that doesn;t seem to do anything' but hey .. next person organising a XP based project that needs a junior perl hacker .. gimme a shout .. -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Big Macs v The Naked Chef -- pitfalls of scaling consultancies
Paul Makepeace sent the following bits through the ether: > Y'all might find this excellent piece interesting, > > http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$287 Pretty darn interesting. Fogcreek sounds like a pretty cool place to work. I'd suggest that if we were thinking of doing something similar we'd need to build a product, or concentrate on a product or something like that. Do a MySQL or an AxKit, and get a couple of companies interested right from the start or there's no point. Hmmm. Leon -- Leon Brocard.http://www.astray.com/ yapc::Europehttp://yapc.org/Europe/ ... All new improved Brocard, now with Template Toolkit!
Re: Consultancy company
On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: > > As for working at home, i believe the optimal week is mon,tue in > the office, wednesday at home, thu,fri in the office. YMMV > > however - if you were building a company their are other concerns > beyond productivity, the establishment of a team/company spirit > and bonding for instance. also the discussion of strategy on > non-IT matters in the company, building a company as has been > discussed requires buy in to issues beyond perl hacking. I don't see why you can't have a mix - it would be good to have a core group of people who always (nearl) work in the office so that if you usually work from home but need some face 2 face there will be people there (or in a pub nearby). things like IRC and email provide good communication about what is going on and can be used to acounce when and where people are. If you know what proportion of home/office people you have you can design the office accordingly. For instance I quite simply do not aarive at work before 10 am due to th physical impossibility of moving from a to b in west london between 7 and 9 am. Other important factors are eating your own dogfood - ie not only use our own software but analys the needs of your own organisation and keep your house in order - it gets you into a better habit and methodology - things like document management, documentation, online admin, internet and stuff most of which can be reused for clients, and keeping the work interesting productivity is highest if the work is interesting - always make sure you have enough people and time to develop more than you firefight - this means your develop better software as you have more resources and aren't sick of the project and you have to firefight less and less avoiding the vicious circles that many companies fall into of firefighting all the time and losing morale and inetrst and producing shit code which needs more firefighting. A. -- http://termisoc.org/~betty"> Betty @ termisoc.org "As a youngster Fred fought sea battles on the village pond using a complex system of signals he devised that was later adopted by the Royal Navy. " (this email has nothing to do with any organisation except me)
Re: Extreme Programming (was: Re: Consultancy company)
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, you wrote: > On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 12:24:24AM +, Piers Cawley wrote: > > > Now, I freely admit that I have partaken of the Extreme Programming > > Kool-Aid, and dammit I want to do it. > > I want to try it too. I'm not convinced by all of it - pair programming > for example - but so much of the other stuff seems damned sensible that > I want to give it a go. Including pair programming. I'm trying to keep > an open mind on that fucking stupid idea. Pair programming was one of the bits I was keen on. It sounds like it should work. We all know how to independent prgrammers spend all their time tripping each other up and asking if they can mod some other bit of a library .. net result less than one programmers worth of output .. even if pair programming only yields 1.1 X output its a bonus. I also reckon it would be a fantastic mentoring and mutual improvement system. -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Extreme Programming (was: Re: Consultancy company)
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, David Cantrell wrote: > On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 12:24:24AM +, Piers Cawley wrote: > > > Now, I freely admit that I have partaken of the Extreme Programming > > Kool-Aid, and dammit I want to do it. > > I want to try it too. I'm not convinced by all of it - pair programming > for example - but so much of the other stuff seems damned sensible that > I want to give it a go. Including pair programming. I'm trying to keep > an open mind on that fucking stupid idea. I did a little pair programming at emap - I probably wasn't doing it right tho'. even so we did get thru the hard bits quicker and could split up to do the easy stuff. I think it made a difference but then I was mostly being a backseat coder so either we did okay or stuart was very tolerant indeed. A. -- http://termisoc.org/~betty"> Betty @ termisoc.org "As a youngster Fred fought sea battles on the village pond using a complex system of signals he devised that was later adopted by the Royal Navy. " (this email has nothing to do with any organisation except me)
Re: Consultancy company
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, you wrote: > I don't see why you can't have a mix - it would be good to have a core > group of people who always (nearl) work in the office so that if you > usually work from home but need some face 2 face there will be people > there (or in a pub nearby). things like IRC and email provide good > communication about what is going on and can be used to acounce when and > where people are. thats true enough .. although it doesn't fit in with the XP model that well .. but there is always MOTWTDI .. the basic problem is that 'office' workers see 'home' workers as a bunch of idle slackers who only pretend to work from home and really spend the day gardening, and 'home' workers see 'office' workers as bunch of people who;d rather spend the day arseing about and chatting than actually doing something .. Break down those totally incorrect stereotypes and you're on the way to a flexible poicy that allows you to retain the very best staff in conditions they enjoy. Shurely one of the driving decisions behind setting up a mutual business is not just financial success but also good working conditions and more freedom. I gladly trade lower income for better working conditions any day (to a point anyway). My basic break even is at about 30K a year .. once I get to that poijt I start taking holidays. Money is great, but chilling out by the pool is better and skiing is better still [speaking of which its Chamonix again in 2 weeks] just my $1 / (2500^0.5) -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Extreme Programming (was: Re: Consultancy company)
-Original Message- From: Aaron Trevena <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >I did a little pair programming at emap - I probably wasn't doing it right >tho'. even so we did get thru the hard bits quicker and could split up to >do the easy stuff. I think it made a difference but then I was mostly >being a backseat coder so either we did okay or stuart was very tolerant >indeed. How did you establish who would make good pairings? Was it done by trying to place two equals or was it done more on a mentoring level of a very experienced coder and a less experienced one? (I've not read that much on XP) Has anyone who's used XP had a client that was willing to make an employee available pretty much full time or was it more they come in for a chunk of the afternoon three times a week? I have an issue with the fact that clients will be willing to pay a member of staff to spend all day in the consultants office in case they need to be asked questions. I'm not saying its a bad thing to have someone on hand, I can see its uses but from the clients point of view why not just have contact by phone/email. That was the liaison has access to everyone in his base office so he can resolve issues faster with more authority than if he were in your offices. Also you have a paper trail of requests, questions and responses. Is the Monday night meeting still on for those of us who can't make the lunch time one? Dean -- Profanity is the one language all programmers understand. --- Anon
Re: Consultancy company
Piers Cawley wrote: > > Greg Cope <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > David Cantrell wrote: > > > > > > > That should read there's too many distractions at home for me (or > > you as the case may be). > > > > I am about 150% more productive at home - 25 % because I save the > > journey, and the other 25% due to not having to go to meetings / > > going for long lunches / the chat that turns into a tangenical > > discussion on XZY / some Luser or PBH asking a stupid question that > > they could have worked out themselves if I was not there / > any other activity that takes me away from the task in hand>. > > The vision I have is of a team (or teams) working in *our* premises, > with customers working with us. We avoid pointless meetings. The > customer is there because they know what we're supposed to be doing > for them, and they know what's important. When you're only working a > 35 hour week (40 tops...) then you should have enough free time > outside work that there's less inclination to piss off for a long > lunch. And the whole point about setting this up is to get rid of the > PHB. > > > Sorry the above turned into a rant, I just get a bit pissed off with > > closed minds that assume that having people in an office = > > productivity. > > *Ahem*. Were I to be the sort of person who takes things personally, > I'd take that personally. Or something. > > Seriously, I tried working from home when the trains were up the > spout, and for a couple or three days it was great. However, one or > two points. > > 1. As a sole developer, working from home is/can be good, especially >when your head is down and you're turning out the code for a >particular bit. But working from home means you're away from the >customer, and the customer is the only person who can make business >decisions about what your code is supposed to be doing. I've never said that I do not meet customers on a face to face basis arround once a week. Working as I do means that the customer and I focus on the specs, and iterative developement - as they need to be clear that I know what I am supposed to do. > > 2. You are away from the team. Again, sole developer, this is not a >problem. Consultancy where we're supposed to be doing the synergy >thing, not quite so good. Time you spend away is time in which you >aren't plugged into what's happening and (and this is *really* >important), time spent away is time in which you aren't doing the >mentor thing. I strongly believe that, in a joint consultancy deal, >it is *really* important that gurus help to enlighten students, >otherwise how do we get our partners up to speed so we can go out >and get more fun work and make more fun money? Agreed that if you need to teach - guru and student need to be in the same place. > > 3. Every time I need to ask you something and you're not there and I >have to phone you, there's a chance I'll think 'ah fuck it' and not >bother. And there's a chance that that will be a *really* bad idea. But if you are confortable phoneing (|emailing|irc) me then you would - as that is how we would need to comunicate. I've wasted so much time being in an office being asked and asking lame questions just because I am next to someone. I have much less distractions at home. > > I'm not saying that offices (especially client offices) don't suck. > But they don't have to. If we're going to do this, lets do it right. > > Now, I freely admit that I have partaken of the Extreme Programming > Kool-Aid, and dammit I want to do it. But dammit again, it makes > *sense*. Also bear in mind that when I made the decision (having tried > it) that I'd rather commute in and be near the customer rather than > work from home (in my *very* comfortable home office...) that meant > adding another 4 hours (count 'em) of travelling time to my day. If > I work from home I work too long. If work too long my code starts to > suck. If my code starts to suck I get embarrassed and my reputation > starts to slip. I want to work with copilots. I want to be able to > *have* that tangential conversation that'll turn out to be useful in > six months time. And table football's no fun if you're playing with > yourself. > > > Yes there are advantages to working in an office - i.e the team can > > be greater than the sum of its parts. > > This is *so* important. > > > But working from elsewhere also allows idividuals to be productive - > > often alot more. > > How are you measuring productivity? > An assumption on real hours worked - i.e when I was in London I was ever working more than about 6 hours a day (on a long day) due to lost time ... At home I regualarly hit 6 hours on a day that is 4 hours shorter. I have not measured this as their is no use benchmark qw(:gregs_time); > > Why not combine the two - i.e have a day a week where everyone meets to > > brainstorm / ask questions / do what needs to be done to take advantage > > of
Re: Consultancy company
Robin Szemeti wrote: > > On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, you wrote: > > > I don't see why you can't have a mix - it would be good to have a core > > group of people who always (nearl) work in the office so that if you > > usually work from home but need some face 2 face there will be people > > there (or in a pub nearby). things like IRC and email provide good > > communication about what is going on and can be used to acounce when and > > where people are. > > thats true enough .. although it doesn't fit in with the XP model that > well .. but there is always MOTWTDI .. the basic problem is that > 'office' workers see 'home' workers as a bunch of idle slackers who only > pretend to work from home and really spend the day gardening, and 'home' > workers see 'office' workers as bunch of people who;d rather spend the day > arseing about and chatting than actually doing something .. > lol That about hits the nail on the head ;-) > Break down those totally incorrect stereotypes and you're on the way to a > flexible poicy that allows you to retain the very best staff in > conditions they enjoy. Shurely one of the driving decisions behind > setting up a mutual business is not just financial success but also good > working conditions and more freedom. I gladly trade lower income for > better working conditions any day (to a point anyway). My basic break > even is at about 30K a year .. once I get to that poijt I start taking > holidays. Money is great, but chilling out by the pool is better and > skiing is better still [speaking of which its Chamonix again in 2 weeks] > Agreed. Also happy empolyees usually results in financial success due to greater productivity. Greg > just my $1 / (2500^0.5) > > -- > Robin Szemeti > > The box said "requires windows 95 or better" > So I installed Linux!
Re: Consultancy company
Roger Burton West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 10:28:13AM +, Piers Cawley wrote: > > >One customer. On site. Full time. Absolute honesty. > > Nice idea if you have customers who can take the truth, and who know > when to shut up and let people get on with things. I'd like to see > it working, but I haven't yet. Which is why you're not selling to people, you're interviewing them for suitability of working with you. -- Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star http://www.deep-purple.com Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire -
Re: Consultancy company
Robin Szemeti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Client has no concept about what software development is like and within > a week or two cancels the entire thing 'some of those guys spent a whole > week working and half the time couldnt even get it to run, by the end of > the week all they'd done was write some strange "library" code and even > that doesn;t seem to do anything' Doesn't happen with XP. "Least necessary". You have the scheme of the library in your head, agreed by the team, but you're coding visibly from the outset. -- Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star http://www.deep-purple.com Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire -
Re: Extreme Programming (was: Re: Consultancy company)
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Dean S Wilson wrote: > How did you establish who would make good pairings? Was it done by > trying to place two equals or was it done more on a mentoring level of > a very experienced coder and a less experienced one? (I've not read > that much on XP) We both were fairly experienced but from different backgrounds and I just happened to be waiting for stuff to come thru on the project I was working on and leo reckoned we should work on some stuff together, I think it helped. From that I'd guess that pair programming can definately work. A. -- http://termisoc.org/~betty"> Betty @ termisoc.org "As a youngster Fred fought sea battles on the village pond using a complex system of signals he devised that was later adopted by the Royal Navy. " (this email has nothing to do with any organisation except me)
Re: Big Macs v The Naked Chef -- pitfalls of scaling consultancies
Leon Brocard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Pretty darn interesting. Fogcreek sounds like a pretty cool place to > work. I'd suggest that if we were thinking of doing something similar > we'd need to build a product, or concentrate on a product or something > like that. Do a MySQL or an AxKit, and get a couple of companies > interested right from the start or there's no point. Hmmm. Talk to Gunther. This is what Extropia tried to do. -- Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star http://www.deep-purple.com Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire -
Re: Extreme Programming (was: Re: Consultancy company)
"Dean S Wilson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > -Original Message- > From: Aaron Trevena <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > >I did a little pair programming at emap - I probably wasn't doing it > right > >tho'. even so we did get thru the hard bits quicker and could split > up to > >do the easy stuff. I think it made a difference but then I was mostly > >being a backseat coder so either we did okay or stuart was very > tolerant > >indeed. > > > How did you establish who would make good pairings? Was it done by > trying to place two equals or was it done more on a mentoring level of > a very experienced coder and a less experienced one? (I've not read > that much on XP) The latter. You mix skills. And the second isn't idle. He's coding up the test cases. > Is the Monday night meeting still on for those of us who can't make > the lunch time one? Oh, yes. Leon, are you acting as scribe? -- Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star http://www.deep-purple.com Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire -
Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund
On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 11:42:52PM +, Greg McCarroll wrote: > * Paul Makepeace ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > Building reliability is probably your best aim: does it have a UPS? does it > > have a RAID 1/0 config? Dual PSUs? Tape drive & backup policy? Those things > > are way more important than a faster chip or RAM. > your right of course, however all of those things are more expensive > and in some cases involve disgarding existing equipment > and at the end of the day its a hobby machine that currently is lucky > to have an average CPU usage of 0.1% per hour But when we start using it for the web site and the mailing list and that jobs thing I think jo is working on we're all gonna get really annoyed if it breaks... Michael
Re: Extreme Programming (was: Re: Consultancy company)
Dave Hodgkinson sent the following bits through the ether: > Leon, are you acting as scribe? Yes. Don't expect a masterpiece though. Leon -- Leon Brocard.http://www.astray.com/ yapc::Europehttp://yapc.org/Europe/ ... All new improved Brocard, now with Template Toolkit!
Re: Big Macs v The Naked Chef -- pitfalls of scaling consultancies
Dave Hodgkinson sent the following bits through the ether: > Talk to Gunther. This is what Extropia tried to do. Hey, Gunther was talking about this kind of thing at Apachecon, I just failed to remember until now... Which reminds me, everyone should read the book: http://www.extropia.com/ExtropiaObjects/ Leon -- Leon Brocard.http://www.astray.com/ yapc::Europehttp://yapc.org/Europe/ ... All new improved Brocard, now with Template Toolkit!
Re: Big Macs v The Naked Chef -- pitfalls of scaling consultancies
Leon Brocard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Dave Hodgkinson sent the following bits through the ether: > > > Talk to Gunther. This is what Extropia tried to do. > > Hey, Gunther was talking about this kind of thing at Apachecon, He had some very good opinions on this. I wish I hadn't been so pissed. -- Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star http://www.deep-purple.com Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire -
Re: Hardware Upgrade Fund
> > [1] My first name is actually Christopher, but handily my parents changed
>
> [Oddly enough, same here. I'm Chris Paul ... It's an absolute pain in the
> arse. Note to parents: don't do this.]
I know a Andrew Christopher Jackson that's known as Chris. So it's not
just Christopher that's shunned...
> 128MB RAM and a K6 is quite enough to run a decently hammered mod_perl site.
> You only need more memory if you end up using a large database or doing
> something rash like install Oracle. Assuming you're not on an OC-12 backbone
> and you're not doing finite element analysis of an F15 jet per form
> submission, your IO bottleneck will be the net.
I would think that more RAM is a good idea. This is because:
1. It's cheap right now
2. We're a varied range of people so will probably want to load a whole
host of modules in mod-perl. This will probably make our httpd
rather fat and take up a lot of memory - much more if it was a simple
production machine.
> Building reliability is probably your best aim: does it have a UPS? does it
> have a RAID 1/0 config? Dual PSUs? Tape drive & backup policy? Those things
> are way more important than a faster chip or RAM.
Along these lines I'd buy another hard drive. Having lots of hard drive
space is good for backups - most time data is lost not due to hardware
failure but the directory stucture it's in being trashed through
human/coding error. Simply back up to another area.
Also if we keep the original drive we can simply backup to that
nightly. Quicker and easier than tapes - and as we've said any long term
data should really be backed up by individual users anyway, so we need not
worry about things like state51 burning down (well, as far as the server
data is concerned)
For the record, my box, heavly used used by myself, Leon, Simon, Shevek,
and Magnus for 2shortplanks.com / astray.com / huckvale.net / anarres.org
is:
model name : AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor
stepping: 12
cpu MHz : 501.143806
total:used:free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 264376320 208822272 4048 47583232 25063424 128712704
Swap: 542826496 32563200 510263296
(Leon, thanks for the memory)
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda6821340164 816634860 3890812 100% /
/dev/hda115522 3540 11181 24% /boot
(actually, that's a lie - df very broke - it's only 18GB - but you get the
idea)
Later
Mark
(off to see the offspring)
--
print "\n",map{my$a="\n"if(length$_>6);' 'x(36-length($_)/2)."$_\n$a"} (
Name => 'Mark Fowler',Title => 'Technology Developer' ,
Firm => 'Profero Ltd',Web => 'http://www.profero.com/' ,
Email => '[EMAIL PROTECTED]', Phone => '+44 (0) 20 7700 9960' )
Re: Big Macs v The Naked Chef -- pitfalls of scaling consultancies
On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 12:52:58PM +, Leon Brocard wrote: > Paul Makepeace sent the following bits through the ether: > > > Y'all might find this excellent piece interesting, > > > > http://joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$287 > > Pretty darn interesting. Fogcreek sounds like a pretty cool place to > work. I'd suggest that if we were thinking of doing something similar > we'd need to build a product, or concentrate on a product or something > like that. Do a MySQL or an AxKit, and get a couple of companies > interested right from the start or there's no point. Hmmm. Another link is http://www.arsdigita.com/careers/ They seem to be a very good model for a consultancy business -- they've been successfully and profitably building ecommerce sites for several years -- they grow by "budding" new (semi-autonomous) organisations -- interesting structure: almost no chiefs, with several well defined types of workers and well defined development paths. -- interesting recruitment method: go on a 2week training course (boot camp) to learn how to use their OSS ArsDigita Community System for free, but they "reserve the right to offer you a job at the end of it". If you are offered a job and refuse, you get (I think) us$1000 and of course you can still go away and use their software to build your own sites. The only disadvantages I see from a London.pm PoV is their chosen platform: AOLServer,TCL,Oracle,HPUX :-} On of the AD founders Phil Greenspun has a v.entertaining book "Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing." Online at: http://www.arsdigita.com/books/panda/ Also available on glossy photo paper, which gives some background to the creation of ArsDigita. You should probably not read it if you are irritated by criticism of one-or-more-of NT, Informix/Illustra, PCs, academics, German women (that may be his travel writing), MS, ... actually even his chosen environment doesn't get off free. HtH -- Chris Benson
Re: Consultancy company
On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 11:00:05AM +, Andy Wardley wrote: > For me, telecommunting is fine for maybe 50% of my week, but unless I'm > working on a very singular project (i.e. running in deep hack mode), then > I need to have the human company gained from being in an office environment. Same here. I don't think there's any point in arguing which is "best", life is about balance and adapting to whatever is appropriate at the time (beware methodolgies ;-). One key realisation I had last year was that the *idea* I *could* work at home was often the most valuable thing, being able to not wake up and think "f*ck, I have to be in for an 8:30am meeting" but that I had the option of working at home. For me, it is soul-destroying being shackled to a time/place and seeing that stretch into the infinite future void. For some people it isn't, it actually comforts them. Vive la difference. On dealing with clients/sustomers: cheesy perhaps, but think of them as friends -- I *love* dealing with peole I work with/for and enjoy the human contact, and go to the pub with almost everyone I've worked with. Having said that, I tend not to pick projects with 'mushrooms' or people who will be asking me too much about what a browser is. Fortunately the market can sustain this pickiness. > But I suppose that's the point. Allowing myself to kick back a little at > work gives me the balance to work flat out at home. Ditto on the live close to work idea: the only time I would live far from work is if I had a direct, uninterrupted train journey I could read on. I live 5 mins from the office, and that's a bicycle ride through one of the most idyllic parts of the US ;-) (OK, so no beautiful wife yet) Crucially, people are different so work within the acceptance of that fact and learn what works best for everyone and oneself. Then it'll be *really* fun. Paul
Re: Big Macs v The Naked Chef -- pitfalls of scaling consultancies
On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 08:01:51PM +, Chris Benson wrote: > Another link is > > http://www.arsdigita.com/careers/ > > They seem to be a very good model for a consultancy business Personally I wouldn't like to work anywhere that thinks like this: http://www.arsdigita.com/asj/managing-software-engineers/ Even if that article is slightly tongue-in-cheek, it disturbs me :-) .robin.
Re: Consultancy company
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, you wrote: > Same here. I don't think there's any point in arguing which is "best", > life is about balance and adapting to whatever is appropriate at the > time (beware methodolgies ;-). now that makes a whole bucket of sense to me. You get my vote ... -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: TPC5
From: "Nathan Torkington" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > (update on the OScon in Europe thing--London in August seems to be > a bad idea, so we're looking elsewhere and elsewhen ...) London in September would be really good - the weather is generally very pleasant (not too hot, not too cold, not too wet) and accomodation and travel is cheaper for those coming from out of town... Even October would be okay - so long as it doesn't clash with the Liberal Democrat Party Conference (okay, only joking! :-) Andrew.
Re: TPC5
From: "Andrew Bowman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Even October would be okay - so long as it doesn't clash with the Liberal > Democrat Party Conference (okay, only joking! :-) Where you'll be consulting for a munitions firm? :-) Paul
Re: TPC5
Andrew Bowman writes: > London in September would be really good - the weather is generally very > pleasant (not too hot, not too cold, not too wet) and accomodation and > travel is cheaper for those coming from out of town... > > Even October would be okay - so long as it doesn't clash with the Liberal > Democrat Party Conference (okay, only joking! :-) Timing in London is hard, because there aren't very many hotels capable of supporting such an event. It's quite amazing to us, in fact, how difficult it has been to find a place to hold it in London. So perhaps London won't be the home after all ... Nat
Re: TPC5
From: "Paul Makepeace" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Where you'll be consulting for a munitions firm? :-) Nah, I don't know enough about encryption ;-) But then again, ignorance doesn't seem to be an obstacle to most lobbyists or salesmen! Reminds me of ye olde joke: Q. What's the difference between a used car salesman and a software salesman? A. A used car salesman knows he's lying! Andrew.
Re: TPC5
From: "Nathan Torkington" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Timing in London is hard, because there aren't very many hotels > capable of supporting such an event. It's quite amazing to us, in > fact, how difficult it has been to find a place to hold it in London. What sort of numbers are we talking about then? If you're prepared to consider locations a little out of central London there are lots of large hotels around Heathrow that have sizeable conference type facilities (also handy for the airport!). There are also a number of large and large-ish venues in London offering a variety of halls and facilities, e.g. Earls Court, Olympia, Wembley Conference Centre[1], The Business Design Centre in Islington, The Royal Horticultural Halls, Queen Elizabeth Conference Hall, Church House (or whatever it's called) etc. etc. HTH, Andrew. [1] Possibly closed just now for redevelopment.
Re: Big Macs v The Naked Chef -- pitfalls of scaling consultancies
From: "Robin Houston" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > http://www.arsdigita.com/asj/managing-software-engineers/ I particularly liked: "Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office. For this to be a common choice, your office had better be nicer than the average programmer's home. There are two ways to achieve this result. One is to hire programmers who live in extremely shabby apartments. The other is to create a nice office. " This is so extraordinarily obvious (about aesthetic rather than the living bit -- that's extreme) and hadn't yet occurred to me -- I look back at the places I worked that sucked and they all were shabby & unkempt or tidy but amazingly dull. Hmm. PS I *really* recommend going to a plant shop and putting even just a few plants around the home & office. Maybe just me, but it makes the environment so much more pleasant. The whole "Turning good programmers into good managers" section was good with its decoupling scheduling responsibility and review responsibility. Neat idea. > Even if that article is slightly tongue-in-cheek, it disturbs me :-) Really? Why? Scary -- it mostly seemed pretty sensible to me! Eek. The bit I disagreed with was more hours always equal more productivity. There is definitely an upper limit I have. I can certainly sprint (and am best probably at bursts) but above a certain point (200hr over a month or so) my code quality and concentration declines. I'm sure this is broadly true of everyone for different upper limits. Discover what works best and do that, while trying to also continuously progress. Having a life is important - I honestly think the brain works better if it has to deal with something completely different for a while. Search for user comments on the neurological effects of overstimulation. Paul
Re: ArsDigita working practices (was: Big Macs v The Naked Chef -- )
On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 09:04:24PM +, Robin Houston wrote: > On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 08:01:51PM +, Chris Benson wrote: > > > Another link is > > > > http://www.arsdigita.com/careers/ > > > > They seem to be a very good model for a consultancy business > > Personally I wouldn't like to work anywhere that thinks like this: > http://www.arsdigita.com/asj/managing-software-engineers/ > > Even if that article is slightly tongue-in-cheek, it disturbs me :-) I suspect it is *not* tongue-in-cheek -- he wants only the best and does expect 70-80 hour weeks ... during a project. In some discussion I saw about this he justified it two ways that I remember: (1) not everyone worked on projects all the time and (2) if people did work full time on projects they'd be getting about ~us$500k / year. (Having spent the entire 80's doing 70-80 hour weeks for less than gbp10k I'd liked to have had the chance!). There are also good bits there which have been mentioned in other threads: The average home cannot accomodate a pinball machine. An office can. The average home can have video games, which are very popular with young programmers, but not people with whom to play. The average home cannot have a grand piano but almost any office can. Attractive A worthwhile goal is to have at least one thing that is extremely attractive about the physical enivronment for any particular prospective software engineer. Here's a possible list: * dog-friendly policy * grand piano * climbing wall * indoor garden * aquarium * koi pond * exercise room with fancy machines * pinball machine I don't think I'd like to work for them though ... I'm getting old'n'soft :-( and I find the attitude that comes over in Phil Greenspun's writing rather (very!) arrogant. And of course they use TCL. But the organisational structure and strategy/vision *is* interesting. Who might come to PO on Monday night (with chqbook for the machine) to see what people are thinking of doing. -- Chris Benson
Re: Big Macs v The Naked Chef -- pitfalls of scaling consultancies
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, you wrote: > On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 08:01:51PM +, Chris Benson wrote: > > > Another link is > > > > http://www.arsdigita.com/careers/ > > > > They seem to be a very good model for a consultancy business > > Personally I wouldn't like to work anywhere that thinks like this: > http://www.arsdigita.com/asj/managing-software-engineers/ > > Even if that article is slightly tongue-in-cheek, it disturbs me :-) > I could detect no tongue in cheekness about it ... he truly believes that if he;s not pushing you to 70~80 hours a week then you aint working hard enough .. according to his own calculations his company burdens programmers with around 25 hours a week of management crap .. I know where i;d start looking for effiencies. this article was more up to date: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/25/geeks.html much more up to speed with the culture. -- Robin Szemeti The box said "requires windows 95 or better" So I installed Linux!
Re: Holy War
On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 10:23:38AM -0600, Elaine -HFB- Ashton wrote: > OpenBSD is the best choice for a firewall box. It's fast, small, secure > and runs ona myriad of platforms. But crucially it has a version of hangman that uses libc et al as its dictionary. For a non C hax0r to get even one word right is quite a buzz ;-) > This is my opinion and I'm not terribly interested in a holy war. Haven't read the SMTP RFCs then? (Simple Male Tirade Protocol) Paul
Re: TPC5
On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 11:28:06PM -, Andrew Bowman wrote: > From: "Nathan Torkington" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Timing in London is hard, because there aren't very many hotels > > capable of supporting such an event. It's quite amazing to us, in > > fact, how difficult it has been to find a place to hold it in London. > > What sort of numbers are we talking about then? > > If you're prepared to consider locations a little out of central London > there are lots of large hotels around Heathrow that have sizeable conference > type facilities (also handy for the airport!). FWIW, I know my mother has booked some largish meetings outside of London. Of course, I don't remember offhand how large, or, for that matter, what kind of numbers you're looking at. dha -- David H. Adler - <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.panix.com/~dha/ Any sufficiently advanced technology is compatible with magic. - The Doctor, Seeing I
Re: TPC5
> Timing in London is hard, because there aren't very many hotels > capable of supporting such an event. It's quite amazing to us, in > fact, how difficult it has been to find a place to hold it in London. One of the hotels in London I have had dealings with has conference facilities and over 2000 rooms. I could look up their details should you wish.
