<story><title>On Working Remotely</title><url>http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/05/on-working-remotely.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lukev</author><text>Oh, no... they don&apos;t add people. They add &quot;resources.&quot;</text></item><item><author>acro</author><text>And it sometimes seems very difficult to explain to the management types that adding people to the project will not make it go any faster.</text></item><item><author>lukev</author><text>Wow. I guess I&apos;m completely different from Jeff.&lt;p&gt;I have no need whatsoever for a &quot;coding buddy.&quot; I&apos;m considerably more comfortable working on a project solo. Even with a good team, I hate the coordination overhead.&lt;p&gt;I &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt;, of course, and good team skills are important. I&apos;m not saying that. But the coordination costs of software development increase super-linearly, so I tend to prefer using the minimum number of people that can possibly do a job. The break-even point is around 4-5 - after that, adding more people makes things &lt;i&gt;slower&lt;/i&gt;, unless you can split the project into autonomous chunks.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>MartinCron</author><text>Even though it was 15 years ago, I still vividly remember the disquiet I felt the first time I heard the term &quot;human resources&quot;. It felt so Soylent Green to me.&lt;p&gt;Even though he&apos;s not universally popular around here, I&apos;m going to admit to liking Seth Godin&apos;s &quot;Let&apos;s call it the talent department&quot; argument: 
 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/02/marketing-hr.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/02/marketing-hr...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>On Working Remotely</title><url>http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/05/on-working-remotely.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lukev</author><text>Oh, no... they don&apos;t add people. They add &quot;resources.&quot;</text></item><item><author>acro</author><text>And it sometimes seems very difficult to explain to the management types that adding people to the project will not make it go any faster.</text></item><item><author>lukev</author><text>Wow. I guess I&apos;m completely different from Jeff.&lt;p&gt;I have no need whatsoever for a &quot;coding buddy.&quot; I&apos;m considerably more comfortable working on a project solo. Even with a good team, I hate the coordination overhead.&lt;p&gt;I &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt;, of course, and good team skills are important. I&apos;m not saying that. But the coordination costs of software development increase super-linearly, so I tend to prefer using the minimum number of people that can possibly do a job. The break-even point is around 4-5 - after that, adding more people makes things &lt;i&gt;slower&lt;/i&gt;, unless you can split the project into autonomous chunks.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gaius</author><text>Yet they sure don&apos;t like being referred to as &quot;Powerpoint resources&quot;.</text></comment>