4 ms·

We find that it REALLY helps us minimize meetings and email/Slack since we can quickly turn to the person we need, ask our question, get an answer, and get back

by dvtrn 8y ago

We find that it REALLY helps us minimize meetings and email/Slack since we can quickly turn to the person we need, ask our question, get an answer, and get back to work. Someone downvoted me in another thread about open-offices because I do this. A coworker who sits three feet away often pings me multiple times a day with questions that are much easier answered by turning around, wheeling over pointing to a few things on their screen, explaining how they related and wheeling back over. They said "I was part of the problem". Because it's quicker to turn around and have a human conversation with someone sitting a yard away than type, take screenshots, and beam them over the network?

watwut 8y ago
Cause slack does not interrupt while I am focused while your question does interrupt while I am focused. It takes effort and time to get back to focused state. Frequent random interrupts kill productivity. So, while it is making you faster, it is killing focus and productivity of the person you are asking to. Which is fine as long as the other person does not have deadline or other need to produce more.
- fossuser 8y ago
  They’re answering questions, not asking them.
- dvtrn 8y ago
  it is killing focus and productivity of the person you are asking to. At the expense of mine by asking me a question, and asking me for help. Seems rather one-sided, no? A colleague has asked for my help. Their concentration is already broken because there is a problem they need help solving, and probably their work progress is halted because they're unsure what to do about a given problem, and think I am someone who can help them. I genuinely do not understand the objection to whipping around and offering to help that person solve a problem that prevents them from accomplishing a task, project, assignment or obligation. I ask for help understanding the conceit here, that the person who turns around and helps their colleague is at fault of 'breaking someone's concentration' when they were asked to provide help to a coworker.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - watwut 8y ago
    > I ask for help understanding the conceit here, that the person who turns around and helps their colleague is at fault of 'breaking someone's concentration' when they were asked to provide help to a coworker. How on earth did you came to that interpretation? The person who asks question is interrupting the other one. Asking via slack is less intrusive as it gives the colleague the chance to finish whatever the colleague is doing before answering.
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      How on earth did you came to that interpretation? Because SO many of the replies to my original inquiry seem-by verbiage-to have taken what I said as an indicator that I was the one causing the interruption, not the one responding to it. Or, maybe I misunderstood their replies wholesale, and are in fact suggesting that responding to someone who asks for help electronically with ad hoc assistance contributes to the spiraling decline of office productivity by turning to the person sitting 36" away and offering the requested assistance.
      - watwut 8y ago
        Ah, I did actually misunderstood your original comment. I apologise.
- jacobr 8y ago
  I almost always have noise cancelling headphones and my colleagues ping me on Slack, "got a minute?" and when I'm ready (often instantly, sometimes not) I roll over to their desk. Decent compromise.
rayiner 8y ago
Yes, you're part of the problem. (It's okay, I do this too, but I'm trying to stop!) We have private offices, but an "open door" policy. I recently noticed that I was pinging my boss several times a day on stuff that could've been handled by email. It dawned on my that my doing this, multiplied by the several other people who do this, was bad for productivity. So I started consciously sending things by email. Humans are not interrupt-driven real-time systems. We're circa 1965 batch-processing machines. Email is great because it allows you to queue up a set of tasks and work in batches with natural breaks. Interruptions are bad because they break batch processing. Interruptions are also selfish. They prioritize the interuptee's desire to get immediate answers with the interrupted's need to work in batches. Some people don't mind it--or they think they don't mind it. I used to be one of those people until I started using Pomodoro. Now you interrupt me in the middle of a session, and I'm like >:-@
- dvtrn 8y ago
  I guess I'm just going to resign myself to this then, and own it. Now look, I don't disagree with your points about people's ability to handle, triage and effectively respond to interruptions. It's a completely valid argument to make. Where I'm having a hard time agreeing with the seeming majority here: is that when I'm interrupted in something I'm doing, by someone who sits two feet away, whipping around and saying "here's how you do that, it goes here, and does this" makes me the problem person (I use problem in the most delicate of ways, I hope the meaning is taken well and in good faith), when it was my work time and efficiency that was interrupted by someone seeking guidance. If it's in a group channel, makes a bit more sense. When it's a direct message, well then here we are. But I'll mull this over.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    My mistake, I thought you were the interrupter. In that case, it's very nice of you to sacrifice your time to enable anti-social behavior on the part of your coworkers!
    - dvtrn 8y ago
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
> They said "I was part of the problem". You are. > Because it's quicker to turn around and have a human conversation with someone sitting a yard away than type, take screenshots, and beam them over the network? No. Because, if everybody does that the office gets loud and distracting and also nothing gets documented and people have to waste time asking and answering the same questions again and again.
- dvtrn 8y ago
  I'm hesitant to look at this a problem of "either answer the question verbally" OR "document the solution for later reference" because people and teams have the capability to discuss problems face-to-face, distill that answer and create documentation based on that collaboration at a later time or date-like during a sprint review. In fact, I think many in this profession do exactly that: issue is brought up, solutions are discussed either via chat or ad hoc, a solution is found, and documentation is created around those discussions. Nor do I think this is an issue of asking the same questions repeatedly when it could have been answered once. What is presented here is a simple enough scenario where someone asks for help, and I do what is in my means to render aid. Adding additional variables or considerations to the equation that weren't proffered as elements of the initial problem isn't an entirely helpful tactic to the discussion.
Bartweiss 8y ago
It's funny - I'd have said that this is a fairly good outcome, including the "pings you on Slack" part. It separates "this question is best answered in person" from "this question is best raised in person", which does a lot of good. It means that if you need 30 seconds to save, commit, and pull the relevant branch (or 50 minutes for an urgent bugfix), the other person doesn't have to hover awkwardly or walk away. And it means that if you don't know the answer and have to check something, you can do that before talking to them. And then, yes, you can talk in person. Because that still really is the best answer a lot of the time. I think I understand their complaint, because depending on how an open plan office is laid out this might be efficient for 2 people and distracting for 10 around them, but I don't think that's inevitable. Even with open plan, it's possible to have relatively low interference and seat people who talk often close together. (Companies seating by rank or function instead of need for contact are, obviously, doing it wrong.) For all the complaints about Slack as a distraction, my experience has been that it's a huge boon relative to what it replaces. It's pretty well understood that in-person and phone contact mean "answer now" and email means "answer in some hours" or even "tomorrow morning". Channel messages as "someone answer in 10-60 minutes" and DMs as "answer in a few minutes barring a crisis" are a huge improvement in terms of focus.

by dvtrn 8y ago

watwut 8y ago

Cause slack does not interrupt while I am focused while your question does interrupt while I am focused. It takes effort and time to get back to focused state. Frequent random interrupts kill productivity. So, while it is making you faster, it is killing focus and productivity of the person you are asking to. Which is fine as long as the other person does not have deadline or other need to produce more.

fossuser 8y ago
They’re answering questions, not asking them.
dvtrn 8y ago
it is killing focus and productivity of the person you are asking to. At the expense of mine by asking me a question, and asking me for help. Seems rather one-sided, no? A colleague has asked for my help. Their concentration is already broken because there is a problem they need help solving, and probably their work progress is halted because they're unsure what to do about a given problem, and think I am someone who can help them. I genuinely do not understand the objection to whipping around and offering to help that person solve a problem that prevents them from accomplishing a task, project, assignment or obligation. I ask for help understanding the conceit here, that the person who turns around and helps their colleague is at fault of 'breaking someone's concentration' when they were asked to provide help to a coworker.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- watwut 8y ago
  > I ask for help understanding the conceit here, that the person who turns around and helps their colleague is at fault of 'breaking someone's concentration' when they were asked to provide help to a coworker. How on earth did you came to that interpretation? The person who asks question is interrupting the other one. Asking via slack is less intrusive as it gives the colleague the chance to finish whatever the colleague is doing before answering.
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    How on earth did you came to that interpretation? Because SO many of the replies to my original inquiry seem-by verbiage-to have taken what I said as an indicator that I was the one causing the interruption, not the one responding to it. Or, maybe I misunderstood their replies wholesale, and are in fact suggesting that responding to someone who asks for help electronically with ad hoc assistance contributes to the spiraling decline of office productivity by turning to the person sitting 36" away and offering the requested assistance.
    - watwut 8y ago
      Ah, I did actually misunderstood your original comment. I apologise.
jacobr 8y ago
I almost always have noise cancelling headphones and my colleagues ping me on Slack, "got a minute?" and when I'm ready (often instantly, sometimes not) I roll over to their desk. Decent compromise.

rayiner 8y ago

Yes, you're part of the problem. (It's okay, I do this too, but I'm trying to stop!) We have private offices, but an "open door" policy. I recently noticed that I was pinging my boss several times a day on stuff that could've been handled by email. It dawned on my that my doing this, multiplied by the several other people who do this, was bad for productivity. So I started consciously sending things by email. Humans are not interrupt-driven real-time systems. We're circa 1965 batch-processing machines. Email is great because it allows you to queue up a set of tasks and work in batches with natural breaks. Interruptions are bad because they break batch processing. Interruptions are also selfish. They prioritize the interuptee's desire to get immediate answers with the interrupted's need to work in batches. Some people don't mind it--or they think they don't mind it. I used to be one of those people until I started using Pomodoro. Now you interrupt me in the middle of a session, and I'm like >:-@

dvtrn 8y ago
I guess I'm just going to resign myself to this then, and own it. Now look, I don't disagree with your points about people's ability to handle, triage and effectively respond to interruptions. It's a completely valid argument to make. Where I'm having a hard time agreeing with the seeming majority here: is that when I'm interrupted in something I'm doing, by someone who sits two feet away, whipping around and saying "here's how you do that, it goes here, and does this" makes me the problem person (I use problem in the most delicate of ways, I hope the meaning is taken well and in good faith), when it was my work time and efficiency that was interrupted by someone seeking guidance. If it's in a group channel, makes a bit more sense. When it's a direct message, well then here we are. But I'll mull this over.
- rayiner 8y ago
  My mistake, I thought you were the interrupter. In that case, it's very nice of you to sacrifice your time to enable anti-social behavior on the part of your coworkers!
  - dvtrn 8y ago

eeZah7Ux 8y ago

> They said "I was part of the problem". You are. > Because it's quicker to turn around and have a human conversation with someone sitting a yard away than type, take screenshots, and beam them over the network? No. Because, if everybody does that the office gets loud and distracting and also nothing gets documented and people have to waste time asking and answering the same questions again and again.

dvtrn 8y ago
I'm hesitant to look at this a problem of "either answer the question verbally" OR "document the solution for later reference" because people and teams have the capability to discuss problems face-to-face, distill that answer and create documentation based on that collaboration at a later time or date-like during a sprint review. In fact, I think many in this profession do exactly that: issue is brought up, solutions are discussed either via chat or ad hoc, a solution is found, and documentation is created around those discussions. Nor do I think this is an issue of asking the same questions repeatedly when it could have been answered once. What is presented here is a simple enough scenario where someone asks for help, and I do what is in my means to render aid. Adding additional variables or considerations to the equation that weren't proffered as elements of the initial problem isn't an entirely helpful tactic to the discussion.

Bartweiss 8y ago

It's funny - I'd have said that this is a fairly good outcome, including the "pings you on Slack" part. It separates "this question is best answered in person" from "this question is best raised in person", which does a lot of good. It means that if you need 30 seconds to save, commit, and pull the relevant branch (or 50 minutes for an urgent bugfix), the other person doesn't have to hover awkwardly or walk away. And it means that if you don't know the answer and have to check something, you can do that before talking to them. And then, yes, you can talk in person. Because that still really is the best answer a lot of the time. I think I understand their complaint, because depending on how an open plan office is laid out this might be efficient for 2 people and distracting for 10 around them, but I don't think that's inevitable. Even with open plan, it's possible to have relatively low interference and seat people who talk often close together. (Companies seating by rank or function instead of need for contact are, obviously, doing it wrong.) For all the complaints about Slack as a distraction, my experience has been that it's a huge boon relative to what it replaces. It's pretty well understood that in-person and phone contact mean "answer now" and email means "answer in some hours" or even "tomorrow morning". Channel messages as "someone answer in 10-60 minutes" and DMs as "answer in a few minutes barring a crisis" are a huge improvement in terms of focus.