The Home Depot

Benefits are pretty great. It has an open work culture. There are lots of competent developers, either still growing or mentoring. There are plenty of hackathons and opportunities for members of different teams across the org to share knowledge. There are also plenty of informative sessions on campus. OrangeMethod is pretty awesome.

Some teams are a little resistant to work with each other. Politics can sometimes get in the way of work, but it’s mostly not a problem.

People have misgivings about pair programming, and some can be sticklers about embracing pure TDD, which can sometimes stagnate progress.

I worked with a lot of talented people, but most of them were contractors and weren’t there for long before getting a new face to bring up to speed all over again. They’ve been converting more and more contractors to full-time, so hopefully that’ll change.

Incentivize teams to work together.

Seek mid- to long-term commitments with associates.

Communicate the need to follow procedures, but also allow some elbow room.