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Is Remote Work better than In-Office for Developers?

In the past year-and-a-half, going remote has been the primary goal and focus for many companies and individuals. The beginning of the remote work overhaul was rocky to say the least but now that all this time has passed and workplaces have figured out how to work with it and not make it an utter mess- Is it worth keeping? Is it better than being in-office? Should remote work be a standard for dev teams, and in-office be secondary?

Well, that depends on a couple of factors. With some feedback from the Dev Interrupted Discord community, let’s dive into the advantages and disadvantages of remote work.

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Developer First Culture and Collectives at Stack Overflow

If you’ve ever written code you’ve probably heard of Stack Overflow.

Most of us have learned from them or shared knowledge on their site. They’ve also got one of the most inclusive and positive engineering cultures out there.

On this week's episode of Dev Interrupted I bring on Ben Matthews, Director of Engineering at Stack Overflow, to give us the inside scoop on Stack's operations, teams and company culture. Ben also discusses their newest product launch - Collectives - and why he thinks they will be a game changer for dev teams.  

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3 Ways to Find Work-Life Balance in Your New Normal

You want to find the right work-life balance — but balance too often implies separating work and life into equal halves, which is nearly impossible to do in an age where they so easily bleed into one another. Who hasn’t booked a vacation from the office, or conversely, responded to a work email on vacation?

The recent shift to remote work has made it even more difficult to keep your personal and professional selves separate. You can no longer rely on a commute or the confines of office walls to divide your lives into parts. If this is really the new normal, your wellness relies on throwing away the notion of life and work as separate halves.

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How to Leave the Office When Your Office Is Your Home

Remember that movie Groundhog Day? Where Bill Murray experiences the same day over and over and over and heartwarming hilarity ensues? Working from home can feel like a lot like that (minus the heartwarming hilarity). The hours meld together because there’s no natural divider to separate work time from personal time.

Maybe that’s ok with you. There are plenty of people who prefer to blend their work and personal lives. The type who walk away from their laptop before five o’clock, then are perfectly happy to answer emails from their phone while they make dinner. These folks are known as “work-life integrators”. But many others, myself included, need to feel like they’ve left work for the day before they can relax. We’re known as “work-life segmentors.”

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How to Be a Better Programmer: Take Care of Yourself!

If you want to be a better programmer, stop this. Now.
Photo credit by Flickr/osseous

A decade ago, a book called Death March was listed as a bestseller. The book described how insane hours of programming led to health issues:

“Death March is a type of project in which the employees need to overwork for unsustainable number of hours. The project starts feeling like an actual death march as the superiors force their employees to keep on working against their better judgment. The projects had so many parameters that the only way to succeed was by coding more than 16 hours a day, seven days a week—with no break until the project is finished.”

Some years later, another story went viral from a spouse of a programmer who worked at Rockstar games. She said the company expected the developers to work 12 hours a day, six days a week, damaging the programmers’ health.

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Can Software Developers Really Have Work Life Balance?

Even though this developer is working at home in the evening, who's to say he isn't happy with his work life balance? I mean, he looks pretty happy.

I have a rich annual tradition that I only just became aware of this year.

Every year, around this time, Apple has some kind of conference or announcement or something. It's the time of year when, for a day or two, an iThing getting smaller or losing a USB port makes everyone absolutely lose it and flood my news feed with opinions for a few days.

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What Is Developer Culture?

A developer culture prioritizes the people that make it all happen.
"I can tell how much this story means to you. It makes me wish I could've experienced that with a Development Team."

This is what another Scrum Master told me after we took turns during a recent training to share a success story about a Development Team. I've heard this many times before.

What does this say about Development Teams out there? Why is there such a strong emphasis on the people needed for the process and so little on the people doing the work?

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[Discussion] Commuting to Work

Commuting to work has been the worst for a long, long time.

The opening scene from the 1993 Michael Douglas film Falling Down (above) could very well have been shot yesterday. No, I'm not talking about the 90s buzz cut or the short sleeve collared shirt, but I am talking about its spot on depiction of the hell that is gridlock.

Traffic is at a standstill, the weather is sweltering, and Michael Douglas just can't even -- to the point where he actually abandons his vehicle under an overpass to alleviate the stress of it all. And let's be honest, we've all dreamt about doing the exact same thing at one time or another.

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Tim Ferriss and the Four-Hour Workweek: How to Escape the 9-5 Routine

Tim Ferris came out with his famous (read: controversial) book, The four-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich in 2007. The book has sold more than 1.3 million copies and has been translated into 35 languages. Not only this, but the book has also been a New York Times bestseller for more than four years.

The core idea behind the book is to work less and make more money. Pretty much like the saying "work smarter, not harder."