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

HipChat
SIP service phones
Video sharing while pairing

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

distributed teams Interviews podcast remote work

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.