Moving to Derby

Well, we've finally moved to Derby (Egg that is, not me). That means an hour and a half commute each way for a while at least.

The new office is pretty impressive. Half of a large tin shed, but with nice desks, new machines with plenty of grunt and I managed to get dual-monitors into the spec for all developers' machines. If you haven't tried being 'Tommy Two Tellies' as Morgan Skinner has insisted on calling me for the past 6 months then I strongly recommend it. Microsoft Research are doing some measurements of productivity gains for high concentration tasks, such as development work, so look there for some stats soon.

The biggest problem for me is that our business colleagues have brought with them a hang up from the other building, a call centre. They like piped music, in the background all day, every day. This makes pair-programming much harder as two people focussed on a problem and communicating well are often disturbed by one or other noticing a track they either like or dislike. Ho hum, maybe one day people will realise how much developers need to concentrate.

If I do this for the next six months I'll have been at Egg for five years. That's a long time and I think it might be time to look for a new challenge.