In my last post, I talked about how I’m a semi-happy employee.  The reason I’m only semi-happy is that I work remotely, from my house.  Many folks think that working remotely is the bees’ knees.  For some people, it may be.  For me, not so much.  I really miss the interaction with my team members, who are all really smart.  It’s very difficult to do a pair designing session over the phone.

I also live 3000 miles from Redmond, and 3 time zones away.  The time difference and the physical separation just serve to make working with my team even more difficult.

There are very few remote R&D (dev, test, program management) folks at Microsoft.  Since there are so few, it’s pretty hard to find managers who are willing to take a chance on a remote worker.  My team was only willing to do it because I had been on the team for over a year, and demonstrated my competence.  I’ve talked to dozens of managers since then, and none of them are interested/willing to deal with having a remote dev/tester.

There are a bunch of technologies that I use, daily, to make the remote thing more bearable.  Of course, I use IM, in the form of Office Communicator. I also make heavy use of Office Live Meeting.  Both technologies allow me to have video conferences with my coworkers in Redmond.  I also use Direct Access every single day.  We have a VPN system that has been around a while, but Direct Access is way better.  For one thing, it’s always on.  It seems to be more performant, as well.

Part of my motivation for searching for a new job is to get a relocation benefit, so we can move back to Redmond.  Being in Redmond (or one of the other dev centers) is really a requirement for a successful Microsoft career.  We’re not interested in California, or Boston, or North Carolina, so Redmond is the place for us.