I'm a UK employer of developers based in central London and I let people work from home. Almost all do so every now and then (we allow 15 days a year automatically and always add more if asked). Some work from home on a regular or semi-regular basis 1 or 2 days a week. I have had one person move to Hong Kong for 4 years and one move to Mexico City for 18 months. Both are now back in the UK and both are working as hard as ever and delivering great work.

The problem is less about working from home, more about finding the right people with the right skills. It's not just development skills (I'm looking for Progress and Python coders currently) but it's also the ability to communicate remotely, to pick up the nuances of meetings remotely and to have the self-motivation. A lot of the work is pretty boring (we're contract developers rather than a trendy web shop or start-up) and so it is easy to not communicate and not pick up the vibe. Don't expect to just not show up at the office one day and for everything to be fine. Some of our team work from home for a day and we just don't hear from them or even know that they exist. Don't let yourself be one of them! Be prepared to put in the days in the office when you start - otherwise people just won't know who you are.

Rubbish. The English language belongs to the people of England. There is proper English and that is the English that is spoken by the English. Not all British people speak English. Not all English people speak English (listen to the Cornish or a passing Geordie). Americans certainly don't speak English. Neither do Australians. But the difference between English and French is that we English aren't so possessive and uppity about about our language. Besides, we defeated them in 1815 just like we put the Spaniards in their place in 1588. English is continually developing because we've been accepting good, hard working and ambitious people from all over Europe for millennia and people from our former colonies for a hundred years or so and they all bring interesting variations. We made room for them by shipping all the misfits to other places thereby spreading the beauty of our ways. We don't mind you (and everyone else) messing with our language and not being able to spell "programme", "catalogue" or even "colour" because at least you're nearly speaking the same language as us and so we don't have to bother learning another. Instead we can spend our time being the best country in the world by teaching our children to measure in metres (SI) whilst having yards (BS) on our road signs!

We already have one of these. The speaker is good. It's the mic that's rubbish. If you hold it too close the sound is mashed. If you don't then no-one can hear you because of the room...

Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

Passing around a real mic is exactly what I am hoping to do. I was asking /. for recommendations for such a mic! Looks like I've got to check out Shure and Blue Microphone's offerings. Many thanks for your comments!

It is neither a swimming pool (yup, I had to look up "natatorium" and it's an indoor swimming pool) nor is it a closet. It's a room 8m by 4m with 4m ceiling in the middle of a grade 1 listed former royal palace in the middle of London. The people - 6 to 10 - are standing around the end of the table. We have tried a polycom phone through our Asterisk based VOIP phone system but that requires people to sit down and it has even worse echo. I can't fix the room because I need special permission to even drill a hole in the wall (that's what being listed does for you). I can either move out to a new location (seems drastic) or find a solution. There have been some good recommendations for mics to look at (Shure and Blue Microphones) and I've already found one dealer who is a stockist for both so I'll go and take a look and will report back.

I think that you need to look at how many people will be using this database app and how strong the demand is for a fat app. Most of my development as been to a web interface for which, in general, I use Python with Flask and as few Javascript frameworks as possible. By sticking to responsive HTML5 you can ensure that as many people as possible can access your data regardless of what OS they are needing and it really shows up Linux's very best (headless) ability. However if you insist on a GUI then my only positive experience has been via a Qt/QML interface. You have a small choice of languages to use but perhaps the least dependency issues if you stick to C. Everything just caused me frustrations (but that might be more to do with my skills than anything else...).

PS. At a risk of starting a flame-war - head for PostgreSQL...

PPS. and write it with Emacs...

PPPS. with Git for version control. You see, there's just so much choice and everyone has their own (probably incorrect) view.