Hi!
How many times a developer approached you to ask something he/she could have easily find by himself have he/she bothered to spend 10 minutes to do a google search?
And let's be fair, how many times you feel compelled to do the same? I have to confess that even being a firm believer of "search before asking" principle, sometimes I do find myself doing the opposite: asking before looking for information.
And this lead us to this post subject: Working from home gave me more incentive to do "the right thing™" :), i.e, to look for solutions prior to asking the guy next to me - after all there's no such thing as the "guy next to me" :)
At db4o we do exchange lots of information/knowledge but since we are not at the same room (and in most cases we are at different timezones also) it's more practical to do a quick search and try to fix/solve issues by myself. Only after spending some time in my own research I think about asking the gurus.
This attitude (searching before asking) leads to a better understanding of the subject and other developers will not be interrupted to explain. Of course (IMHO) there are times (and subjects) that requires someone with more knowledge to guide other developers.
Anyway, I do believe that the process of explaining some subject may help you to get more insight about it and I do appreciate helping other teammates to improve their knowledge (Nowadays I'm learning more than helping :).
What do you think?
Adriano
Oct 11, 2008
Benefits of working from home - Part VIII - Working Time
One really great advantage (IMHO) of "traditional work style" is that usually you have very clear separation between work time/free time. Basically your working day finishes as soon as you get out of the office (ok, I known, in development, many times the solutions come to our heads at home :).
Working from home is a very different experience and you can find yourself working a lot more than you'd expect/are willing to :(. The problem (again, IMHO) is that it's hard to separate the matters; you see, the work is there, you are there, and the rest you can guess.
Of course other factors like your productivity, how your manager and you decide on what to do and how long it is expected to last, etc. also plays an important role and can turn your working experience more pleasant or more like a nightmare.
In my specific case, I participate in deciding which tasks I'll be working on every week so I am the only one to be blamed when my working days extends a little bit.
And theres an aggravating factor: I am kinda addicted to computers/programming and sometimes I get so excited to see the outcome of my code that I can't just stop :)
So if you are going to work from home, pay attention to these pretty common pitfalls to avoid getting trapped into them.
See you.
Adriano
Working from home is a very different experience and you can find yourself working a lot more than you'd expect/are willing to :(. The problem (again, IMHO) is that it's hard to separate the matters; you see, the work is there, you are there, and the rest you can guess.
Of course other factors like your productivity, how your manager and you decide on what to do and how long it is expected to last, etc. also plays an important role and can turn your working experience more pleasant or more like a nightmare.
In my specific case, I participate in deciding which tasks I'll be working on every week so I am the only one to be blamed when my working days extends a little bit.
And theres an aggravating factor: I am kinda addicted to computers/programming and sometimes I get so excited to see the outcome of my code that I can't just stop :)
So if you are going to work from home, pay attention to these pretty common pitfalls to avoid getting trapped into them.
See you.
Adriano
Oct 7, 2008
Benefits of working from home - Part III - Time efficiency
In my last post I was talking about not being required to commute to work and I pointed some related benefits.
Today, I'm going to talk about some more benefits (directly related to the previous one), so let's go.
As I explained in the previous post I used to spend 2 hours in traffic; well, since I started working from my home this was not an issue any more and not wasting my time on traffic jams made it possible to do other things (like sleep more, post more frequently, etc. :) and spend less money with gas, but (IMHO), more important than all, it made it possible to spend more time with my family.
Prior to joining db4o, I used to wake up at 7:00, take a short breakfast and drive to my work so I rarely joined my wife/daughter at breakfast. At lunch time I was not with them again (since it would take me 1 hour to go to home and another one to get back).
Now, even though I usually wake up at the same time, instead of having a (lonely) fast breakfast and going to my work I just go down to my office and start working (usually I put may email/web reading up to date) then 1 hour latter my daughter wakes up and we (I, my wife and my daughter) can have breakfast together. Them, at lunch time, we can have lunch together again :)
Pretty nice!
At the end of the day when my daughter returns from school I'm finishing my working day and we can spend a little more time together.
Well, as an interesting tv ad says:
Adriano
Today, I'm going to talk about some more benefits (directly related to the previous one), so let's go.
As I explained in the previous post I used to spend 2 hours in traffic; well, since I started working from my home this was not an issue any more and not wasting my time on traffic jams made it possible to do other things (like sleep more, post more frequently, etc. :) and spend less money with gas, but (IMHO), more important than all, it made it possible to spend more time with my family.
Prior to joining db4o, I used to wake up at 7:00, take a short breakfast and drive to my work so I rarely joined my wife/daughter at breakfast. At lunch time I was not with them again (since it would take me 1 hour to go to home and another one to get back).
Now, even though I usually wake up at the same time, instead of having a (lonely) fast breakfast and going to my work I just go down to my office and start working (usually I put may email/web reading up to date) then 1 hour latter my daughter wakes up and we (I, my wife and my daughter) can have breakfast together. Them, at lunch time, we can have lunch together again :)
Pretty nice!
At the end of the day when my daughter returns from school I'm finishing my working day and we can spend a little more time together.
Well, as an interesting tv ad says:
Have a good breakfast: U$ 20,00; getting out to have a good meal: U$ 50,00; to be with your beloved ones at these moments: has no price! :)See you!
Adriano
Oct 5, 2008
Back to Vista x64
Hi,
Some time ago (sometime around 10/2006) I installed Windows Vista (a release candidate at that time) on my home machine in order to "try" it (to be sincere I've installed various Vista beta/release candidates).
Performance was not impressive but since I'm a software developer (and I didn't used the machine to work anyway) I decided that it worths to be able to experiment with new API / functionality so I kept it.
Some time after that it was released so I got a copy and installed in the same machine.
On 10/2007 I joined db4o and started to work from my home which means that my machine now plays an important role in my development productivity and I decided that I'd rather go with Windows XP (x86 or 32 bits) again (due to the performance impacts I got with Vista x64).
Well, one year passed and I got a new machine (a pretty fast one, lets say) and so I decided to give Vista x64 a try again.
In the first days I do got some BSODs (which made me feel frustrated) but after spending some time searching I found some suggestions regarding memory configurations; after applying such changes (I just set the times after memory manufacturer specifications and increased memory voltage by 0,1 volts) it became stable (no BSOD since them).
I can say that I'm satisfied up to now; no hardware or software conflicts, performance is pretty good (much faster than my previous machine running Windows XP - I know, XP would run even faster on this machine).
See you.
Adriano
Some time ago (sometime around 10/2006) I installed Windows Vista (a release candidate at that time) on my home machine in order to "try" it (to be sincere I've installed various Vista beta/release candidates).
Performance was not impressive but since I'm a software developer (and I didn't used the machine to work anyway) I decided that it worths to be able to experiment with new API / functionality so I kept it.
Some time after that it was released so I got a copy and installed in the same machine.
On 10/2007 I joined db4o and started to work from my home which means that my machine now plays an important role in my development productivity and I decided that I'd rather go with Windows XP (x86 or 32 bits) again (due to the performance impacts I got with Vista x64).
Well, one year passed and I got a new machine (a pretty fast one, lets say) and so I decided to give Vista x64 a try again.
In the first days I do got some BSODs (which made me feel frustrated) but after spending some time searching I found some suggestions regarding memory configurations; after applying such changes (I just set the times after memory manufacturer specifications and increased memory voltage by 0,1 volts) it became stable (no BSOD since them).
I can say that I'm satisfied up to now; no hardware or software conflicts, performance is pretty good (much faster than my previous machine running Windows XP - I know, XP would run even faster on this machine).
See you.
Adriano
Oct 3, 2008
Benefits of working from home - Part II : No need to commute
In the previous post I just said I'd think aloud about advantages/drawbacks of working from home.
Let's take the half-full approach and present the advantages first starting with not needing to commute.
Well, before joining db4o I used to live in São Paulo - Brazil, so this point is pretty easy one ;)
Anyone that knows just a little bit about São Paulo knows that it has a very bad traffic! Usually, in the days that the traffic was not that bad, it used to took me no less than 1 hour from my house to my work place (and I was fortunate enough to not live that far from my job). So 2 hours of my life was spent in a car every day.
Also, not being required to commute (and so avoiding traffic jams) made my expenses with car maintenance drop a little bit and getting involved in a car crash less likely.
As a bonus of not commuting I don't have to find a place to park in a, usually, crowed place :)
So, IMHO this is a huge advantage.
The next post will be closely related to this one but I'll talk about my working time.
PS: Do you work from home? What are your opinion about the subject?
See you!
Adriano
Let's take the half-full approach and present the advantages first starting with not needing to commute.
Well, before joining db4o I used to live in São Paulo - Brazil, so this point is pretty easy one ;)
Anyone that knows just a little bit about São Paulo knows that it has a very bad traffic! Usually, in the days that the traffic was not that bad, it used to took me no less than 1 hour from my house to my work place (and I was fortunate enough to not live that far from my job). So 2 hours of my life was spent in a car every day.
Also, not being required to commute (and so avoiding traffic jams) made my expenses with car maintenance drop a little bit and getting involved in a car crash less likely.
As a bonus of not commuting I don't have to find a place to park in a, usually, crowed place :)
So, IMHO this is a huge advantage.
The next post will be closely related to this one but I'll talk about my working time.
PS: Do you work from home? What are your opinion about the subject?
See you!
Adriano
Oct 1, 2008
Benefits of working from home - Part I - The dream job
As I posted here, some time ago (to be more precise, exactly one year ago) I joined db4o and started to work from my home; that was not an easy decision/move but (thanks God and some really good friends also) I took it.
Since one year has passed, I think it is a good time to review this journey and rethink whenever its paying off or not.
In the next posts I'll discuss (shortly) some advantages and some shortcomings (from my point of view, of course :) regarding working from home. The order in which these topics are presented has no particular meaning.
Keep in mind that my opinion is largely influenced by the place I live in, the environment I am inserted into and the kind of work I am involved with, so, what I see as an disadvantage you may well see as an advantage :). Don't worry, we are not supposed to agree on everything.
Another important point is that some teleworkers (as people that work from home are called) usually do work "part time" in a real office; that's not my case; I am working 100% of the time from my home and the nearest fellow is at least 100 Km (and the others are 1000 Km) away.
To start with, here are a couple of interesting articles to read.
Hope you find this information useful/fun :)
See you.
Adriano
[edit: added link to following posts]
Since one year has passed, I think it is a good time to review this journey and rethink whenever its paying off or not.
In the next posts I'll discuss (shortly) some advantages and some shortcomings (from my point of view, of course :) regarding working from home. The order in which these topics are presented has no particular meaning.
Keep in mind that my opinion is largely influenced by the place I live in, the environment I am inserted into and the kind of work I am involved with, so, what I see as an disadvantage you may well see as an advantage :). Don't worry, we are not supposed to agree on everything.
Another important point is that some teleworkers (as people that work from home are called) usually do work "part time" in a real office; that's not my case; I am working 100% of the time from my home and the nearest fellow is at least 100 Km (and the others are 1000 Km) away.
To start with, here are a couple of interesting articles to read.
Hope you find this information useful/fun :)
See you.
Adriano
[edit: added link to following posts]
Sep 10, 2008
Here we come again :) - Part III - The end
Well, after some time researching and comparing prices I've ordered my new toy with the following configuration :
I do hope that this machine can keep up with my needs ;)
Also, I ordered a really big (at least for my standards) monitor ....
Now I need to wait more or less one week to put my hands on this and starting
installing (probably Windows Vista x64 and some Linux x64 distro also).
OMG, I am to anxious!
Adriano
| Component | Detail |
| Motherboard | GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R |
| Processor | INTEL Core 2 Quad Q3300 2.66GHz 12MB 1.333MHz |
| Memoty | 8 Gb - OCZ DDR2 800 |
| Cooler | Cooler Master Vortex |
| Power | 550W - Corsair |
| Keyboard | Microsoft Wireless Desktop 2000 |
| Video Card | Geforce XFX 9600GSO 384MB |
| HD | 750GB Samsung |
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