100x yes, I think people are often conflating "background conversations" to all be the same thing. I feel bad for people who work in offices where people are so

100x yes, I think people are often conflating "background conversations" to all be the same thing. I feel bad for people who work in offices where people are so inconsiderate that they start yakking about their kid's baseball game behind some software engineer trying to get some shit done. Or where a topic becomes heated or emotional and they don't take it elsewhere. But rich, constructive conversations that are happening about the work but possibly tangential to the concrete task that that engineer is doing can be immensely valuable in so many ways.