Dana Blankenhorn posted on ZD Net (http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=780) about open source's impact on programming in America and about Ludd vs. open source. This seems pretty clear to me; I’m a huge believer in open systems, capitalism and a balanced and fair playing field. If open source puts programmers in foreign countries on an even [competitive], then great! The world is becoming flat (see earlier post “The World is Flat”) and that is a really good thing. It brings us closer together, ties the various countries and makes us interdependent. It also significantly raises the standard of living of people in countries that have previously had few ways to do so. What we get out of all this in the end is the best programmers in the world creating the software for all of us to use. We end up with higher quality software at a much lower cost and the efficiencies of every company (that has the intelligence and foresight to use it) more efficient. The only people who might suffer are the feeders at the bottom of the programming pool here in America. They will be squeezed out by higher quality work elsewhere. You could argue that the lower cost of labor, even professional labor like this, overseas means companies will use lower quality work there rather than the higher paid engineers here; but I don’t really believe that. What company or person do you know of that would say they would accept lower quality (in software) to get a better price. We have an incredible pool here in America of highly creative, talented and capable software engineers. The difficulties and additional costs of sending work overseas makes it difficult to match the productivity of a creative team of highly talented software engineers here in the US. But, we also have a fair bit of “noise” here in the US - people who are software engineers not because of talent, capability, or love, but because of the money. Those are the ones that will lose out here because that kind of [lack of] talent can indeed be found overseas for a lot less money; and good riddance to them; they should go find a field that the love or where they have a natural talent. I have done and do a lot of out sourcing to India and other countries and they have a great pool of very intelligent and well-trained people there (as long as you pick the right companies to work with). But, I still keep the creative, fast moving software development here in the US. This tactic of using each country for the things the people excel at is what will accelerate companies and make them more efficient – and is exactly the way a capitalistic country should operate.

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I read an interesting post, The Happiness Project: This Wednesday: a quiz--is your workspace driving you crazy?, about what makes a comfortable workspace. (She got the list from a book called A Pattern Language: Towns, Building Construction.) With just one or two exceptions, my office meets most of the criteria on her list. However, our engineers all sit in an open environment to help foster collaboration. I think most of these are not true for them. In particular, these are not true of anyone sitting in an open, shared or cubicle environment, quoted from The Happiness Project: This Wednesday: a quiz--is your workspace driving you crazy?:

• there’s a wall behind you (so no one can sneak up behind you).
• there’s a wall to one side (too much openness makes you feel exposed).
• your workspace is 50-75% enclosed by walls or windows (so you have a feeling of openness).
• you are aware of at least 2 other people, but not more than 8 people, around you (less than 2, you feel isolated and ignored; more than 8, you feel like a cog in a machine).
• no one is sitting directly opposite you and facing you.
• you can see at least 2 other people, but not more than 4.

I sat in a cubicle for 10 years at HP. (Everyone has a cubicle at HP - or everyone used to.) I was worried about it when I took the job, but when I got there I discovered that I didn't mind it at all. When I was writing code and everyone in the cubicles around me was writing code, it worked great. It was relatively quiet and there was always somebody near by to bounce an idea off of. Later, when I moved into management, I found the cubicle environment more distracting for many of the reasons above. I could hear lots of other people's conversations (in particular, I will always remember the woman next to me who would start voice mails and stop and redo them at least three times each!) on topics not related to mine and I was easily interrupted all the time. There was no standard way to signal "I'm on an a call right now that's going to take a while, come back in 30 minutes." - not like a closed office door signals that you don't want to be interrupted. (I also evaluated my home office. If you count the dogs and the baby, I'm doing pretty good here too.)

I read Brad Feld's blog periodically and he has a series going about how to run and participate in a board of directors. His most recent post was on how often board meetings should happen. Of course that varies based on the where the company is at in it's evolution. But, at an early stage he suggests monthly in-person meetings. From experience I can tell you that monthly meetings seem like a lot of work and I know there is a lot of time put into preparing for them every month (sometimes it feels like roughly a week every month we are preparing for them since we really start concentrated thinking and effort about a week before the meeting). But, I also know that monthly meetings keep us on our toes. Sometimes we get to a week prior to the meeting and wonder how much we could possible have to talk about since it has only been three weeks since the last meeting; then we start talking and thinking about it and almost always have loads to say and can show how much progress we have made. So, even though it seems like a pain sometimes, having those monthly board meetings is a good thing. First we get very quick feedback and input on our direction and what we are thinking. But also, it forces us to concentrate on progress and it shows us just how much progress we are making. It use to be we had weekly status meetings in the software engineering world; those have moved to daily stand-ups in the agile development world. The same is true at the management level; we use to have quarterly board meetings, but in the more agile world we have to live in, monthly meetings are more appropriate. Of course as a company grows and matures, those meetings should get less frequent and can sometimes be done remotely.

My new office mate doesn't talk much but he's learning lots! He's up for any new experience as long as he gets fed every two hours.