Linux Lancers

Lars Marowsky-Brée is a principal engineer at SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, working on High Availability and Storage solutions. He is also the team leader for one of the three SUSE Labs Linux kernel teams, which are responsible for the kernels in the openSUSE and Enterprise products, and upstream contributors. He joined the S.u.S.E. Linux Solutions GmbH in 2000.

LL:
Hello Lars and thank you for taking your time. First i’d like to ask you a few personal questions so our readers get to know you a bit better.

What is your favorite food and beverage?

LMB:
Very varied; as long as it is well prepared from excellent ingredients. North indian is wonderful, though, as is French chocolate. And I wouldn’t know what I’d do without freshly ground espresso in the morning!

LL:
And your favorite piece of software?

LMB:
Perl; it feels natural to me and is omnipotent. Every year, I get a Nethack flash and can’t stop until I have ascended.

The most used are my e-mail client mutt, mairix, vim, and IRC.

LL:
What hardware do you use at home?

LMB:
Mostly my laptop, currently an IBM ThinkPad T43, with a large external display. A Linux box as a router, and a very loud Intel 8-core for testing my virtualized clusters on.

The hardware I probably use the most is my office chair, and I can only recommend you get the best one money can buy. That is the one investment worth making.

LL:
Since when do you work in a home office?

LMB:
Ever since I joined SuSE, in the beginning of 2000.

LL:
How did you get to work from home, did SUSE suggest it to you or did you ask them?

LMB:
It developed naturally; I was hired to do Linux consulting, and moving was not necessary - I was either travelling or on the phone anyway. When I transitioned to development and engineering full-time, it became even less of an issue. I have since move three times, to Cologne, to Hamburg, and then within Hamburg, and only informed my employer.

As long as I have good network connectivity and a phone, I think nobody cares. Home office was simply the obvious choice.

LL:
What is it you like most about working from a home office?

LMB:
The flexibility is great; work integrates naturally with the rest of my life. I can take a long lunch break as well as finishing an idea on the weekend.

It also saves a lot of wasted time on commuting.

LL:
Is self discipline needed to work from home, or does it come with the task?

LMB:
Discipline is needed, I think; but not just in the way most reluctant managers think of: it is actually quite difficult to stop working, or make a clear cut between work and personal spaces. The “just one more mail”-syndrome. And accommodating conference calls in the middle of the night is another downside of the deal.

Finding the balance can be hard, and there are those days where one can’t get into work or can’t seem to stop. I think it evens out in the end, with a tendency towards working more than intended.

LL:
Let’s take a look at your team and how a home office interacts with distributed work.

How big is your team and how many of them work also from a home office?

LMB:
My team, including myself, consists of eight people. Six of them work from home all the time; the other two only part-time.

LL:
Where are the people you work with in your team from?

LMB:
Vienna, Austria; Beijing, China; Canberra and Sydney, Australia; Moscow, Russia; two in Bangalore, India; and I myself am based in Hamburg, as mentioned.

Now, to provide the full perspective, when you mention “the people I work with”, this includes my boss, who works from Prague; colleagues from other teams all over Germany, UK, Europe, USA, Canada, and I wouldn’t even be able to name all cities; both inside SUSE, Novell, and of course the rest of the community. I think all continents except Antarctica, really; it does not get more global.

LL:
How often do you meet in real to discuss the further development?

LMB:
The whole SUSE Labs department has an internal, annual conference, where we meet all colleagues, and many from other groups within the company.

Of course, we all tend to travel to Linux conferences as well, or also Novell’s BrainShare; so we might meet on average once per quarter, but rarely more than a few people from the group.

I personally travel on business about once per month, but that is unusual and mostly due to my manager role.

Really, most conversations occur through personal e-mail, mailing lists, IRC, bugzilla etcetera. Even phone conversations are rare, as finding timezone overlap is usually hard if more than two people are involved.

LL:
What is the major difference, between the topics you discuss online and in a real meeting?

LMB:
The most important aspect of meeting everyone in person is wonderfully expressed by http://www.xkcd.com/438/

I think this environment attracts people who are confident to communicate in writing - e-mail and chat -, and overall I think we do a great job at this; but every geek needs to admit that that is not everything.

So, while we tend to have a fair share of rather focused technical discussions, where we get a lot of progress done, as the communication latency is exceptionally low, the really important part, and which cannot be readily quantified, is to talk in-person during the breaks and the evenings. The presentations and conferences just tend to be excuses for the budget.

Afterwards, communicating on-line benefits immensely from remembering that that person is indeed another human, and not a moron.

LL:
What’s the best part about working online with others together?

LMB:
The diversity. I get to work with people from all over the world, which means we get to pick the best based on global standards, not just based on the local pool - how cool is that?

And, of course, when one travels, there are all those different types of cuisine ;-)

LL:
You are not only kernel developer but also a team leader, let’s take a look at things from this point of view so maybe other team leaders can be persuaded to hand out more home offices.

In your honest opinion, what are the advantages and disadvantages from working at home?

LMB:
As I have already mentioned, the advantages are the flexibility, and more effective use of time. This goes both ways, and benefits both the employer and employee.

Of course, for full-time home office workers, no desk space in the office is necessary, which reduces costs. Thankfully, such budget decisions are above my position though.

Disadvantages are that some people just do not enjoy working from home full-time; it can be a bit difficult to not see and meet any colleagues for weeks, or they might indeed lack the discipline either way. These might be better suited by part-time arrangements, or decide to not work in home offices at all.

But really, software development and engineering requires uninterrupted work and solitude as well as communication; there is really no reason why part-time home office should not be available to everybody.

LL:
Would you say the quality of the work you do is increased by the home office environment and if yes, how come?

LMB:
The quality is hard to judge. But yes, because I am not forced to work when I don’t feel productive - in the extreme of an 8-5 job, I would be spending my 40 hours each week in the office, regardless of whether I am getting anything done or not. When this happens in my home office, I just stop and do something else, like cook lunch or dinner, and continue afterwards.

Of course, that might appear frightening to a card-punching manager; but one needs to learn to trust employees, and to judge by results, not by effort.

LL:
What do employers gain most from having their people work from home?

LMB:
Diversity. Access to employees one might otherwise be unable to hire, if one would ask them to relocate. And the flexibility.

Obviously, it can also be a great motivator and way to retain employees; I flat out do not consider job offers which would require me to move.

It is not so much a direct budget decision due to the ability to hire in off-shore locations; I’d say that evens out when one hires talent where one finds it.

LL:
I hope you enjoyed answering these questions as much as i did asking them. I would haveone last question for you :-)

Which piece of advice would you give to people starting to work from a home office?

LMB:
Get a separate room where you can close the door from the inside while working, or from the outside while not working. That helps to set boundaries. And remember to get dressed before video conferencing. ;-)

LL:
Thank you Lars!