On this episode of if/else, host Mayuko Inoue explores a choice faced by developers and the companies that employ them: is it better to work remotely or in an office?

Remote work can give employees and contractors greater flexibility and autonomy, but it can also lead to social isolation. On-site work can result in better social connection with co-workers, but it can also mean annoying commutes for employees, and expensive office space for businesses.

The episode begins with a quick backgrounder on these two options, and you’ll hear from several software developers about what they like and dislike about each scenario.

You’ll also meet Jonathan Sexton. Jonathan is a front end developer based in San Antonio, Texas. He’s weighing two job offers; one for a remote gig, and one at an office. Jonathan values the potential flexibility of the remote job as he manages a busy family life, but he also knows that, as a junior developer, he may learn more from senior colleagues if he’s on-site.

To help Jonathan decide on which option might work best for his career and his young family, we’ve enlisted the help of two experts to debate the promises and pitfalls of remote and on-site work.

Emily Freeman is the author of DevOps for Dummies and leads the modern operations team in cloud advocacy at Microsoft.

Katie Womersley is the VP of Engineering at Buffer and advocates for remote work and distributed teams.

Katie and Emily join Mayuko to explore the pros and cons of each job scenario to give Jonathan—and anyone else facing this important decision—some useful advice on what he should consider as he weighs his options. They also discuss the contentious issue of location-based pay; should remote developers living in areas with a lower cost of living, be paid less than their colleagues in expensive cities?

During the debate, Katie references a study on increased productivity from remote work. You can also read about the unintended consequences of open-concept offices in a study from the Harvard Business School.

if/else is an original podcast by CTO.ai, makers of The Ops Platform. The Ops Platform makes it easy for development teams to create and share workflow automations without leaving the command line. Visit cto.ai/platform to join the beta.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating or review on Apple Podcasts.

On this episode of if/else, host Mayuko Inoue explores a choice faced by independent developers and large companies alike: which cloud platform will best suit their needs now, and in the future?

There are several companies offering services in the cloud computing space, but we’re going to focus on two of the more high-profile platforms: Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.

You’ll get a quick backgrounder on these two options, and you’ll hear from several developers about what they like and dislike about each one.

You’ll also meet Justin. Justin is a senior developer at a large company, but he’s also working independently on his own app. He’s weighing the pros and cons of AWS and GCP for his specific needs, particularly the learning curve and cost of each platform. To help Justin decide on which might work best for his app, we’ve enlisted the help of two cloud computing experts.

Charity Majors is a co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb.io. She used AWS to spin up the infrastructure for her company and knows the platform inside out.

Daniel Compton is the founder of Deps, a private Maven repository service. He is also the project leader of Clojurists Together. He is using GCP for several of his projects.

Charity and Daniel join Mayuko to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each platform and to give Justin - and anyone else facing this important decision - some real-world perspectives on each option. They also discuss the fascinating topic of innovation tokens.

if/else is an original podcast by CTO.ai, makers of The Ops Platform. The Ops Platform makes it easy for development teams to create and share workflow automations without leaving the command line. Visit cto.ai/platform to join the beta.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating or review on Apple Podcasts.

On this episode of if/else, host Mayuko Inoue explores a choice faced by many software development teams: which agile methodology should they use?

There are several different agile frameworks, including Lean, Crystal Clear, Extreme Programming, and Feature Driven Development, but we’ll focus on two of the more popular approaches: Scrum and Kanban.

You’ll learn about the history and philosophy behind these two methodologies, and you’ll hear some perspectives from several developers about their experiences–good and bad–working with these processes.

You’ll also meet Grant Ammons. Grant is a development team leader at an online marketing tools company. Grant and his colleagues have been working in the Scrum framework, and it has dramatically improved communication with their stakeholders. But they’re running into problems with certain aspects of the process, and are beginning to think about giving Kanban a try. To help Grant decide whether to tweak his teams current process or jump into a completely new one, we’ve enlisted the help of two industry veterans.

Eric Brechner is a Principal Software Engineering Manager for Azure at Microsoft. He is also author of Agile Project Management with Kanban.

Ken Rubin is the founder of Innolution, an Agile and Scrum coaching and consulting firm, and he’s the author of Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process.

Ken and Eric join Mayuko to discuss the guiding principles of each methodology, and to debate the strengths and weaknesses of each system. You’ll also hear about the types of teams that each approach best suits. The idea is to give Grant, or anyone else facing a similar decision, the information needed to make a solid choice.

if/else is an original podcast by CTO.ai, makers of The Ops Platform. The Ops Platform makes it easy for development teams to create and share workflow automations without leaving the command line. Visit cto.ai/platform to join the beta.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating or review on Apple Podcasts

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