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Cigarette break is not a break every time. You usually can't stop thinking about work for the 10 minutes you spend outside. It's quite the opposite. Smoking br

Cigarette break is not a break every time. You usually can't stop thinking about work for the 10 minutes you spend outside. It's quite the opposite. Smoking break usually shifts you the direction of thinking and you solve a problem probably faster. Not because of the cigarettes itself, but because of the environment change. This whole idea sounds like "People without social media accounts are allowed 1 more day off, because they don't spend time on checking their facebook messages."

mig39 9y ago
Cigarette breaks are sometimes ad-hoc meetings or brainstorming sessions. You get a few people together and talk about work stuff. I found these to be so valuable that even after I quit smoking, I'd still take "fresh air breaks" with others just for this very reason. It's like a forced elevator conversation or something like that :-)
nik736 9y ago
For us developers this might be true, but I also know people who just smoke every hour, they stop doing what they are doing just to get their cig... and that's everything but effective.
s73ver_ 9y ago
It could also be a health incentive, to get people to quit smoking, and thus lower their healthcare costs (if in the US).
otakucode 9y ago
Nicotine is one of the very few substances with strong clinical support as being a cognitive enhancer, so I wouldn't discount its role entirely... but yes, just getting away from things is often what people need. As a culture we are still trying to switch gears from an economy centered completely around mindless repetitive physical labor to one centered around mental work. They're two extremely different things that have to be tackled in different ways, but we still have people kicking around (mostly in management positions) who see taking a break from working on something as 'giving up' or 'slacking off' or similar. Eventually people will come to understand that expecting extended bouts of mental effort from human beings is exactly as reasonable as expecting to have people work for 8 hours without taking a bathroom break.

mig39 9y ago

Cigarette breaks are sometimes ad-hoc meetings or brainstorming sessions. You get a few people together and talk about work stuff. I found these to be so valuable that even after I quit smoking, I'd still take "fresh air breaks" with others just for this very reason. It's like a forced elevator conversation or something like that :-)

nik736 9y ago

For us developers this might be true, but I also know people who just smoke every hour, they stop doing what they are doing just to get their cig... and that's everything but effective.

s73ver_ 9y ago

It could also be a health incentive, to get people to quit smoking, and thus lower their healthcare costs (if in the US).

otakucode 9y ago

Nicotine is one of the very few substances with strong clinical support as being a cognitive enhancer, so I wouldn't discount its role entirely... but yes, just getting away from things is often what people need. As a culture we are still trying to switch gears from an economy centered completely around mindless repetitive physical labor to one centered around mental work. They're two extremely different things that have to be tackled in different ways, but we still have people kicking around (mostly in management positions) who see taking a break from working on something as 'giving up' or 'slacking off' or similar. Eventually people will come to understand that expecting extended bouts of mental effort from human beings is exactly as reasonable as expecting to have people work for 8 hours without taking a bathroom break.