My earlier post mentioned that I had been on an overseas assignment.
There was this week, where I had the luxury of working offsite.
Except, it was no pleasure. It became more like a nightmare.
I had no ability to checkin my work into their subversion repository. I am constantly in the fear of being out-of-sync. On the second day we had a resolution. They would check out the entire repository. I would merge my code. And then send it back to them. I have no idea how the other co-worker working offsite would be doing.
And of course, for communication, we had google group talk. But it felt slow and unresponsive. I could understand. When I was on site, the google talk client could not work. I had to use the browser based gmail. And I would not be notified of new chats unless I switch over to check it.
And for me, communication was a huge problem. Because the requirements were not fix, and comprehensive enough. There were many doubts, and many things to clarify. I felt my productivity go down to a snail. So much so that while waiting for responses... I was really out of tasks to do. I went to read a book I had just borrowed from the library instead.
There was also the timezone problem. Thailand is an hour behind Singapore. And they usually start work at around 930. Which means 1030 for me in Singapore. And they work late. Well not too late nowadays. Around 1900~2000 Bangkok time. And that would be 2000~2100 for me in Singapore.
Which is why, after the second day, I started working from home. No point sticking to the Singapore timezone.
I do envy how 37Signals got their style to work. It did not work for me.
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