Episode #51: Lonocloud

Episode #51: Lonocloud

Sep 26, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode, Aaron Brooks, Chris Houser, and Alan Dipert, of Lonocloud, share their distributed team’s hiring strategy, topic-oriented versus individual-oriented meetings, and yours/mine protocol while pairing.

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Show Notes:

Lonocloud
Aaron Brooks (twitter github blog)
Chris Houser (twitter github blog)
Alan Dipert (twitter github blog)

00:47 – Introduction & background

  • Aaron Brooks: Engineer #2 at Lonocloud
  • Chris Howser: Working remotely for 2 jobs; at Lonocloud for 1 year,
  • Alan Dipert: Programmer at Lonocloud, no prior distributed team experience

02:27 – Location

  • Every time zone in the US is represented
  • Development team is fully distributed
  • 10-15 range

03:41 – History of distributed team

  • Hired remotely to be able to access different people
  • Lonocloud builds next generation multi-cloud federating infrastructure platforms
  • Emphasis on dynamic information policies
  • Distributed team working on distributed applications

06:40 – Hiring developers

  • Some people worked together previously and became available at the same time
  • Closure language community

08:16 – Difference between remote work and fully distributed work

  • Effort between teams with a central office/being fully distributed
  • Separate cliques between in-office and out-of-office groups
  • Fully distributed teams are all working towards the same goal
  • Shared pain of being fully remote
  • Unify around benefits of working from home

12:08 – A day in the life of Lonocloud

  • Daily developer call
  • Central server to log in remotely
  • Own development environment on their own screen; but can step in to see others work
  • Ad hoc pairing and splitting
  • More minds usefully contributing more quickly to a problem
  • Pairing, tripling as needed

17:22 – Topic-oriented meetings versus individual-oriented

  • People can chime in with input if they want, but don’t have to
  • Google Doc for daily agenda
  • Not ticket-driven

19:34 – Tools

26:05 – Yours/Mine protocol while pairing

  • Context
  • Vocalized

28:38 – Splitting up work

  • Obvious fits
  • Dynamic
  • See what makes sense
  • Key person help sessions
  • People normally step up without obligation

About the Author: Avdi Grimm

Avdi has been leading and participating in dispersed software development teams since 2007. He works from home in Southern Pennsylvania, and loves the fact that working remotely enables him to spend more time with his wife and five (soon to be six) children.

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