Episode 240

Download / Listen: Herding Code 240: Phil Haack on Working from Home

Jon, Kevin, and Rob talk to Phil Haack about working from home.

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Note: We're new at this. Should we publish an SRT file? WEBVTT?

Jon: [00:00:00] Welcome to Herding Code. This episode is being recorded March 24 2020. This is Jon Galloway.

Kevin: [00:00:16] This is Kevin Dente.

Rob: [00:00:17] This is Rob Conery.

Jon: [00:00:19] Hey, and today we're talking to Phil Haack working from home. So before we jump into that, Scott Allen, when one of our hosts passed away in January, and I, I'm sure most of our listeners have probably already seen that. But, you know, I don't even know what to say. K Scott was an amazing friend, and, we were just so lucky to have him on the show for so many years.

Some, some people recommended one of their favorite episodes was episode 63. Rob, I think you brought that one up. That was Victory in Software Development.

Rob: [00:00:52] Oh man that was amazing.

Jon: [00:00:54] And he was telling the story of the battle of Antietam and, man, I could listen to that show over and over.

You know, yeah.

Rob: [00:01:02] One thing I was trying to explain to my wife. Cause she, when I told her the news, she, she was like, Oh, right. You knew him. And I started to explain, what, what case Scott was, to me and to everyone. I mean, I've never known anyone with such an insane gift for telling a story.

And, and just being affable, and kind. Anyway, I started to tell her about just him and she's like, oh right. We, we met him and went hiking with him in Oslo, and I totally forgot, but it was so cool because it just, all of a sudden, the memory of, of hiking with him, this last June, NDC, Oslo, was just kind of the spur of the moment that he was running downstairs.

He and Richard Campbell were going on a hike and they're like, Hey, come with us. And I said, Oh, sure. And that was the last time I ever saw him. And. I can't say enough what a great person. he was, and I, I really, I think we're all the better for knowing him for sure as an industry, but also as people.

Jon: [00:02:02] Yeah, I just, looking on Twitter, you know, I always of him as one of my best friends, and he always took time, you know, like when we're at, at a conference or whatever, he'd say like, Hey, Jon, let's, you know, let's go grab a bite and we're just whatever, and we'd just go hang out. And, It was

Phil: [00:02:18] Yeah

Jon: [00:02:19] seeing how he was very intentional about doing that with so many people, you know, like just everyone kind of sharing their stories about, you know, including people that were like, I him a question at a conference and it was kind of a random question and he spent a lot of time just talking it through with me and you know, like it just, yeah, just so thoughtful and kind.

Phil: [00:02:40] Okay Yeah. I really loved talking to him at conferences. I'd only see him in places like London or, or, you know. Oslo or wherever at conferences. Jon, you might remember that, you mean Atwood and, Barnett wrote a book with, Scott Allen a long time ago

Jon: [00:02:58] Yeah. Yep.

Phil: [00:02:59] The ASP.NET 2.0 anthology And I don't mean the MVC I mean like

Jon: [00:03:06] 2.0

Yup

Phil: [00:03:11] Yeah, that's right.

Jon: [00:03:14] Oh man. Yeah. I actually co-wrote several, cause I picked up that, the MVC book, the five heads book, Rob, that you worked on. And then I, you know, K Scott stayed on for several additions of that and I co-wrote with him. So,

Phil: [00:03:26] Okay

Jon: [00:03:27] and you know, it was always like I was, I for some reason signed myself up as lead author and I was always chasing down other coauthors and K Scott is like, I always knew that his was just going to be like.

You know, on time and perfect. And it's nothing to worry about.

Phil: [00:03:43] Yup.

Jon: [00:03:44] Yeah. Oh, man. Well, so,

Phil: [00:03:49] On that note.

Jon: [00:03:50] yeah. Yeah. Well, so these are, these are times. We're all, we're all bunkered down from, from this coronavirus and, You know, people have been talking about working from home. you know, Microsoft has sent everybody home.

A lot of other large companies have. and then after that, a lot, a lot of States have gone into and different countries to have gone into some sort of lockdown as well. so we've got, all of us have worked remotely, for a good chunk of our careers. And so

Phil: [00:04:22] Okay

Jon: [00:04:23] it's been interesting seeing people trying to adapt to it in different, different companies and stuff.

So Phil, you wrote a series of blog posts about how to work from home. so for people that don't know you, which is probably nobody, but for people that don't know, what's kind of your background on, how did you transition into working from home.

Phil: [00:04:41] Oh, that's a great question. So probably the first time I did a work from home significantly with a long time ago when I started a company with a friend, and Jon, you might remember this, called VelocIT that we hired, Jon was our first employee. And we all work together using the state of the art of collaboration software back then, groove, by Ray Ozzie.

Jon: [00:05:05] that's right.

Phil: [00:05:07] yeah. And, and then we would use a, I forget what the video conference software, but like, we actually, you know, cobbled

together..

Jon: [00:05:15] amount

Phil: [00:05:16] Yeah, that's right. It's Skype was around. Then we use Skype and I think we use subversion for the version control. And, you know, we made it work. We did a pretty good job as a remote distributed company, but we were only like, you know, three, four employees, you know, at the time.

And then I remember we hired a, Steve Harmon came on and, and, so Simone, but anyways, and then, you know, I went after that, I joined. Microsoft, and that was, you know, right back into being in the office all the time. AI did have this one, coworker who was remote, Scott Hanselman, who, you know, we would try to set up a computer in my office so that he could just dial in at any time and be like a talking head there.

Rob: [00:06:01] Okay

Phil: [00:06:02] But it was really interesting to, you know, like when I think about those times and how difficult. it must've been for him to be a remote employee in a company that just really didn't get it. And you could tell they didn't get it because their products didn't reflect, what it meant to be remote work.

so I left Microsoft after about four years and I joined GitHub and the GitHub was, you know, just night and day, right? This is a company that really. Started off as sort of a remote distributed company. It had it in its DNA and its tools really reflected that as well. In fact, they were really geared towards, you know, teams of open source developers who were all strewn about all over the world, didn't know each other.

And I worked there for just shy of seven years. I was started off as a developer. And then, this is at a time when GitHub, didn't even have managers. And then later when they introduced managers, I...