The One-Minute Commute Zack T. Grossbart Share Attribute Remix Share Alike License All of the content in this site is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license (referred to as CCSA) license unless other- wise noted. This license means four things: Share You can share this content with anyone for free. Make copies, reproduce it, translate it. You can even sell it. Remix You can also change the content. This includes reworking it, editing it, and mixing it into new content. Whatever you want. I encourage you to use this content for any project it helps with. Attribute When you use this content you have to give me credit. If you mix this content into something else you still need to attribute it. Basically, you can use it, but you can’t claim you wrote it. Share Alike However you release this content, it still needs to be released under the CCSA license. Unlike GPL, this does not require you to release everything under this license. For example, if you reproduce a page from this book in your book you can still keep the rest of your book under whatever license you want. For Mary Who read every page of this book at least a dozen times. About The Author Zack has been working with and coaching remote teams at organiza- tions like JP Morgan, 3M, Nortel, Hewlett Packard, and the United States Navy since 2001. He has served as a consultant to numerous Fortune 500 companies and is a consulting engineer for the Novell Compliance Management Platform. Zack began loading DOS from a floppy disk when he was five years old. He began working professionally with computers when he was 15 and started his first software company when he was 16. He has also been an IT administrator and a member of an advertising firm. Zack lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about a mile from Harvard University. The One Minute Commute is Zack’s first book and hopefully not his last. About The Blog Get more information about The One Minute Commute, find telework- ing cheat sheets, and keep up with the latest from Zack at: http://www.zackgrossbart.com If you like this book you’re karmically compelled to leave a comment on Zack’s blog. Photo credit: David Shopper ¶ Pilcrow Press Cambridge, Massachusetts Copyright © Zack Grossbart, 2010 All rights reserved Icons by The Creative Commons Foundation on page 5 Used in accordance with the Creative Commons 3.0 license Cover image and photograph by David Shopper on page 4 Copyright © David Shopper, 2009, 2010 Reprinted with permission Grossbart, Zack. The One Minute Commute This book is printed on paper-free paper Praise for The One Minute Commute CodeSourcery has always —from day one— been a high- tech company in which every single Sourcerer worked from home. In The One Minute Commute Zack Grossbart has captured the essence of how we function effectively. We’ll be recommending this book to all future employ- ees; The One Minute Commute is the how-to guide we never got a chance to write. –Mark Mitchell, CEO of CodeSourcery After learning the hard way, through a decade of home working, it is great to see much of the associated wis- dom piled into Zack’s single, pithy tome. With this on the shelf, when you next hit a sticky patch, the affirma- tion of sanity it can provide should be invaluable. You could even read it in advance to make life easier. -Michael Meeks, OpenOffice, and GNOME Distinguished Engineer, Novell, Inc. Table of Contents Preface 1 Introduction 7 Section 1: Landing A Remote Job 2 Market Yourself Into a Remote Job 23 Working remotely means you can work for any company anywhere in the world, but how will they find you? Learn how to promote yourself so your next job finds you. 3 Land The Remote Job You Love 31 Once you’ve found that special company you need to con- vince them to hire you. We’ll look at working with recruiters, your resume, and how to interview for a remote job. 4 Transitioning to a Remote Job 38 You can keep your current job and start working remotely. Work with your team, your company, and your family to plan a smooth transition to succeed working remotely. Section 2: Team Organization 5 Team Profile: CodeSourcery 45 Learn how a 30 person company with no offices keeps the team together, promotes cooperation, and excels with an open team. 6 Staying Close When You’re Far Away 52 Successful teams are base on trust. Make it easy for your team to get to know you across the hall or across an ocean. Then elevate your position to stay visible in front of your company and your customers. 7 Team Profile: Subversion 60 Take an in-depth look at the team behind the wildy suc- cessful Subversion version control server and how they transitioned into an open team. 8 Open Teams 65 Open teams are good for everyone and great for remote engineers. We’ll look a little more at the Subversion team and and how you can transform your closed team into an open one. Section 3: Communication 9 Communicating in Real-Time 82 Now that we understand the theory let’s put it into practice. Real tips on communicating real-time from Mozilla and The Viewpoints Research Institute. 10 Written Communication 95 Writing well is the most important skill for a remote engi- neer. See how to write, what to write, and where to write it. 11 Remote Presentations 109 Working remotely doesn’t mean turning invisible. Show off your great work with a great presenation from wherever you are. 12 Team Profile: 37signals 120 See how 37signals uses their unique products to organize their own team and why they discourage employees from going to the office. 13 Understanding and Resolving Problems 125 Working remotely can cause some standard problems. Find and solve probmlems quickly before little ones turn into big ones. Section 4: Balance 14 Balancing Work Life and Home Life 137 When You Live In The Office Going home from the office is tough when you work in your jammies. See howreal people plan their home office, stay focused, and take a break. 15 Conclusion 148 Appendices A Perfect Remote Communication 151 Communication technology is changing all the time. How do you judge the new ones and what is the perfect remote communication technology? B People Featured In The One 154 Minute Commute Want to know more about the experts in this book? Find out and show them some link love. Preface: Doyle’s Room Doyle Brunson played poker for the first time in 1951. After an injury in his junior year of high school ended his dreams of playing profes- sional basketball, he played poker to pay his bills. He became a rounder, someone who made his living travelling and playing in different amateur poker games. When Doyle got tired of looking down the barrel of a shotgun after beating someone who didn’t want to lose, he moved to Las Vegas and worked to establish poker as a popular casino game. He became widely known as one of the strongest players in the world after he won $230,000 in the first ever $10,000 No Limit Texas Hold’em Poker Championship in 1976. Doyle’s skills in poker come from his ability to read a person’s tells: the small changes in a person’s expressions, how they smoke a cigarette, the way they hunch their shoulders, and hundreds of other subtle signals that tell him what cards his opponents are holding. He will stop and stare at his opponent, sizing them up, to figure out how to bet. When other players started talking to Doyle about online poker in the early 1990’s he dismissed them. Poker is all about reading other people and Doyle was certain online poker would never be real poker. He stayed in the casinos for years while other poker professionals established Internet poker rooms and online poker grew into a multi-billion dollar industry. In 2004 Doyle changed his mind and became a telecommuter. He started Doyle’s Room, an online service supporting all popular poker variants. He plays there often. So what changed between the early 1990’s and 2004? Did the online poker companies offer him too much money to ignore? Doyle admits that the money was part of it, but that isn’t the whole story. What changed was Doyle. He started playing online and learned to read a new set of tells. He focused on how his opponents bet or how long they waited before playing. Doyle found an enormous amount of information while playing online and has been just as successful in virtual poker as he was in the real world. Doyle said it best: “Online or in the real world, poker is poker. It’s all poker.” Doyle overcame many of the hurdles you’ll face working remotely and became a poker playing telecommuter. It cost him a lot of time and money to overcome those hurdles and there were many lessons he learned the hard way. The lessons Doyle learned about how to interact with people in the virtual world are what this book is about. Now he knows all the tricks, sees the signs, understands what people are thinking, and reads the room even when he isn’t in it. Being a successful team member means understanding what is going on for the rest of your team. Doing that remotely requires you to find alternative ways of communicating.