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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. Links: How To Work From HomeHow to Lead From HomeGeographically Distributed Teams When Remote Work Goes WrongHerding Code Podcast on Twitter: "We're going to be talking to @haacked today about working from home. Questions or comments for him?" / TwitterAmazon.com : TRX ALL-IN-ONE Suspension Training: Bodyweight Resistance System | Full Body Workouts for Home, Travel, and Outdoors | Build Muscle, Burn Fat, Improve Cardio | Free Workouts Included : Home Gyms : Sports & OutdoorsWork in the Time of Corona – Alice GoldfussBe This Manager Now - Nicole Sanchez - MediumHerding Code 63: Victory in Software Development with K Scott Allen – Herding Code Transcript: 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 became a manager and then I became a director. So I've had the, you know, I guess good fortune to kind of experience what it's like to be in a remote and distributed company from a individual contributor, perspective, from a management perspective and from a director perspective. Jon: [00:07:14] Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned the, you know, Microsoft, and initially when I started at Microsoft as well, you could really tell so many things required VPN in and any, you know, you want to, would say like, Hey, you know. You want to join our, dog, you know, you want to beta our thing, you know, here's where to sign up. And it would be an to an internal SharePoint and you wouldn't have to join a security group. And you know, everything was file shares and it was just not, and it's been interesting watching, you know, a transition of that over time. It definitely, it's, it's still not perfect, but it's changed a bit. And I feel like some of that is due to the open source. You know, the needs of open source, kind of pushing things. Kevin: [00:07:58] . It was good. They had always seemed like Okay Hanselman made Phil: [00:08:00] Yeah Kevin: [00:08:01] through sort of force of will. Like he was able to like it and have, you know, impose that onto the company through his own, just sheer, you know, energy. is that, is that accurate and how has that changed over time? Jon: [00:08:15] . It definitely, from my point of view, it definitely always took some effort to kind of like, there'd be a meeting and then you'd say like, Hey, can you add a team's invite? And you bug people enough? And they're like, finally, like, sure, I'll get you off my back, you know? But, or like, . Rob: [00:08:31] I remember talking to Scott about this back in 2006 because that's when, that's when I started. So I remember right, Scott Scott started there. I was contracting for awhile. Then Phil started and then I think I got full time like right after, right after Phil got in there and yeah, cause Phil and I went to a dude, we got to kneel together. Phil: [00:08:51] I think, I don't remember if we went to near together, but I do remember that you started not, not long after because you were working on, helper methods for ASP.NET MVC. Rob: [00:08:59] That's right. But I do I remember I remember Scott talking to me about, about the importance of you know, making sure that, you know, here's all the checklists and things you have to do. Make sure they know you're there. in the hallways when you're Phil: [00:09:14] it was, I Yeah Rob: [00:09:15] it being a really big deal. And, And every time I'd go back to, cause I would go back every other month for about a week. time I to Redmond, I'd have the conversation with somebody, either my manager or something like, so Rob, uh, you thinking about maybe moving to Redmond and I, you know, I just kind of laugh it off and say, you know, we're not, of good where we're living. Cause at the time we were living in Hawaii and, So this, this, finally, the conversation stopped one day because I was at a cafe. I think it was building 53. I can't remember, but I was sitting there and my boss, came and sat kind of at this Phil: [00:09:51] okay Rob: [00:09:51] with me. Phil: [00:09:52] Okay Rob: [00:09:52] then next thing I know, here comes Brad Abrams, who is like a, I think he was a Phil: [00:09:56] Okay Rob: [00:09:56] at that time. And then Scott goo came and sat right next to me and he's sitting there looking at me. He's like, so, Whoa. So Rob, like, Oh boy. Here we go, here we Phil: [00:10:07] That's a great impression. Yeah. Rob: [00:10:08] feel, you know these, you know these meetings, right? Like Phil: [00:10:11] Hey, Rob. Rob: [00:10:11] at you like. There you go. So, yeah, you know, I was thinking, we could really use you on campus here. What do you think about, you know, maybe in the future, your future here with the company? I'm like, Oh, the full press, you know? Jon: [00:10:23] Whoa Rob: [00:10:23] just kind of looked at him and I said, you do know where I live, right? And kind of looked around the table. I'm like, you guys, come on. Seriously, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not moving here. I'm sorry. Phil: [00:10:35] Hard to balance those. Rob: [00:10:37] Yeah. Anyway, Phil: [00:10:37] Yeah Rob: [00:10:38] laughed. It was pretty funny. But yeah, it's, it was kind of a big deal back then because if you weren't in the you pretty much weren't there. And like Scott would is you have to demand that they put you on speaker or make sure you're there and you have to speak up during the meeting and say, I'm here, I'm still here. You know? Phil: [00:10:55] Yeah. I think the rise of it, there's two kind of big factors that I see both one's cultural and one's technical on the technical side. if you know who Ben Thompson is, he writes this newsletter called stratechery.com or strategery at an, I pronounce it, but, he had a really great post and is really focused on the way information is disseminated in the midst of the Corona pandemic and like, how. we're getting good information from social networks compared to what, you know, the news is given out. But, by analogy, he went into this whole digression about a zero trust information as an analogy to zero trust networking and zero trust networking. You know, like back in the old day that Microsoft, you had this sort of castle and the moat, right? The castle was protected by the great firewall of Microsoft. And then once you're in through a VPN, you had access to everything. and that's a castle and moat model, right? You build a big S, Oh, excuse me, a big old castle. Big old motor rounding Jon: [00:11:53] We prefer the, the Queen's English a big arse. Phil: [00:11:56] and arse. Yeah. So big arse castle and my, yeah. And then, you know, especially we're talking about castles, but a, what we've moved to is, you know, sort of zero trust networking, right. Where you secure. everything like, the, every user has sort of the username and password for each service. And you might use a single sign on to make that easier, but you know, you're validating credentials at every point in the thing. And so, that made it so that like, you don't need a VPN and working. Style, such as working on GitHub is a really good example of that, right? So like, you know, we can all work on out, we don't need a VPN in. And I think that kind of points to the cultural change, which is, as Microsoft started to embrace open source more. and they started to have people actually work on open source. And thus they're working with people who are outside their firewall. And you can't tell these folks, Hey, you know, you need to, we need to find a way to give you guests access to our VPN so that we can collaborate in a software. No. Microsoft was like, okay, well we're going to go to where all the developers are. I mean, it took them a while to reach that conclusion, but they eventually got to the point where like, okay, we'll just go to get up and work on GitHub, because that's where all the open source developers live and breathe every single day. And I think that's a big cultural change because then, you know, a group of you being in Redmond. isn't necessarily this big as big an advantage. but there is a whole other cultural element of, that I think, you know, Hanselman had to really fight against, which is. You know, if you have a meeting, and I write about this in my blog series, if you have a meeting in person, you're, you're, you're excluding the people who aren't there. Right. And, if one of you is remote, you know, I recommend for teams to protect, to behave like everyone's remote. And everyone calls in to the zoom chat. which is actually a better experience. Like if you've ever been in a meeting where a group of you…
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