30 ms·

Makers, Don't Let Yourself Be Forced into the 'Manager Schedule'

798 points by huntermeyer 7y ago

orev 7y ago
Good idea in theory. Almost impossible in practice.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway713 7y ago
As a maker (individual contributor), I have been having this issue a lot, but my attempts at pushing back do not seem to be going so well. Any time I reserve a large chunk of time on my calendar, people set up meetings on top of it anyway, or message me asking if that block time is "real" (as though quiet focused work isn’t a thing). My days are filled with little dabs of 30 minutes here and there that are barely enough to remember what I had been working on before another meeting started, so I normally end up getting my actual work done late at night after an early dinner, which my wife is not particularly happy about. Any recommendations? I’ve broached the topic lightly with my manager but don’t want to come across as whining, so I’ve generally just been trying to push back on meetings in the friendliest way that I can.
- NotAnEconomist 7y ago
  I had similar problems, and resorted to just declining meetings that interrupted that work block. I didn't even mark it on the calendar, I just declined any meeting before 11a. I actually was more aggressive than you were: mornings were never for meetings, until 11am standup; after lunch I gave up getting work done and packed it with back-to-back meetings and (when there was gaps) working on quick things -- reading docs, comments on design docs, code reviews, small experiments, etc.
- nicoburns 7y ago
  Do you have anybody in a project manager kind of position (who is responsible for delivering things as fast as possible). I'd talk to them and tell them that you can't get anything done if you constantly have meetings, and ask if they could be scheduled together. I feel like this might work better if it was a company or team policy rather than just you trying to do enforce this by yourself.
- jdr23bc 7y ago
  Maybe link them this article and phrase it as an experiment. If velocity increases then your manager will know it is worthwhile.
- mv4 7y ago
  If you can find another individual (or two) who's dealing with the same problem, you can schedule a block of time with them (a meeting) and work side-by-side. May even collaborate. Name it something important: critical feature optimization, application security audit, system integration... do not call it focusing on your work.
- war1025 7y ago
  My mom was an administrator at the local hospital, and always seemed to have too much on her plate. The thing my dad would always criticize her about is that she always picked up the slack. If you are putting in a valid effort, you have to let things slip. Otherwise the people above you won't know that you are being assigned too much. The first thing you need to do is stop working at night. You are paid to work during the day. Anything beyond that is you taking on unpaid work.
- LegitShady 7y ago
  >people set up meetings on top of it anyway, or message me asking if that block time is "real" Your problem here is you. You were booked. When someone sends you a double booking, hit "DECLINE" and they get an email right away saying you declined it. Then you say "Hey I already had something in my schedule for that time, can't make it. You have access to my calendar why would you make meetings when I'm busy? That isn't very respectful." If someone asks if a block of time is "real" always say yes. your problem is that apparently you have blocks of time that aren't real. if you only have real blocks of time in your schedule, nobody will guess which aren't or are real. If someone asks you in person, have the backbone and willpower to say "Hey I'm already booked" and suggest another time. You're the one causing your problems, but you're describing it as other people doing it to you.
  - organsnyder 7y ago
    This can be difficult to do in certain contexts. This approach could easily cause them to be perceived as arrogant, "not a team player", or some other cliche. If their calendar is open to others (so it shows event details more than just free/busy), it's hard to portray those blocks of time as equivalent to "real" meetings. Involving your manager is potentially a great step—though you have the best gauge as to whether it's the right move. If you've discussed your approach with them, they can provide some much-needed cover if colleagues complain that you're not available enough.
    - LegitShady 7y ago
      Again, this is why you 1) Start from the 'respect' angle. 2) Suggest an alternate time so that it can work. 3) Leave a paper trail. I would only involve a manager if it became a serial issue and you've made your concerns clear and in writing. Whether you come off as disinterested, not a team player, or just busy and the other person isn't willing to respect your schedule is up to you. But it all depends on you.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    The problem is that when you do this, and then don't go to the meeting, and then a decision is made that you don't agree with, you are told, "well you had a chance but you didn't come to the meeting". The other problem is that sometimes people will literally see you working in your cube/office during the meeting and then ask you why you declined if you clearly weren't busy, because they don't equate coding with being busy. Sitting at your desk == not busy in their mind. So now you have a political problem because you're seen as uninterested/not a team player.
- shantly 7y ago
  > so I normally end up getting my actual work done late at night after an early dinner, which my wife is not particularly happy about. Until that stops, they won't knock it off. Start telling them exactly what you're doing in those time blocks and how much the meeting will make that slip by. Do not work after hours. If they want to pay you to sit in meeting rooms rather than ship features, that's their choice, but you have to make them choose, or they'll take both. [EDIT] mind, make them choose by communicating. Email (or whatever your management-tier uses to communicate) is your friend. Explicitly call out your expected meeting burden in estimation sessions and politely but firmly alert (send an email/message) when that burden is exceeded. Bring it up in retros. This is especially effective if you have someone up the chain who wants features shipped and who is not the one calling these meetings. Part of their job is to make other people knock off unproductive shit. Give them the info they need to do their job (that you're being scheduled for too many low-value meetings). Your only other alternative is to start delegating, until you're accidentally a "lead" and like 50% of your time is supposed to be meetings, another 25% delegating, with the balance helping other devs getting unstuck.
- twic 7y ago
  I wonder if you could start the blocks small and then grow them over time. If you have half an our reserved somewhere, maybe people won't schedule a meeting against it. Then make it an hour, after a month and hour and a half, etc. Or just block out the four hours you need by filling it up with loads of fake important-sounding half-hour meetings.
- ddingus 7y ago
  There can be only one primary task. When this happens, the question is, "what is worth what?" You must pose it to them, or others will ask for and expect both. And where they lack knowledge, this must be escalated to someone who can make the call and account for said call; otherwise, you are already accountable for commitments made prior to their request. Doing both is not realistic, because there can only be one primary task, and this is why you end up doing work off hours. I would share more calendar details, put what the task is on the time block, and in general set up that question. Others will attempt to schedule your time so they do not end up doing catch up work off hours too. It is you or them, or something just is not as important as everyone thinks it is. Which is it? Also, make task switch time clear. A 30 minute meeting in the middle of, say a 2 to 3 hour block of time, may actually cost all or reduce the effective time to a small fraction of what is allocated. One effective way to handle this is to ask how many more meetings can now be scheduled into this wasted block of time? It can also mean moving that block slightly, allowing meetings at the very end of it, or before it starts. Either can be cheaper, with meetings at the end of it being cheapest generally. Your whole pushback is centered on there can be only one primary task. That is as real as it gets. Use it.
- tbihl 7y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree with the techniques others are recommending for improving the situation, but at the same time I think you should look for ways to cope with what you have as you make the transition. I would best be considered a mid-level manager with 3-5 additional projects to tackle at any given time, and I face this problem on many different scales. Best case, I'm trying to get longer tasks done, and the longest uninterrupted intervals I can get are about 20 minutes. Other days, I need to complete 3 minute tasks and the longest uninterrupted time I can get is about 40 seconds. In either case, I outline the things I need to get done so that I can track where I am and quickly be reminded after an interruption. If the list ridiculously overflows the time in my day, I go further by writing down the priority order to make sure I don't lose track of that important detail. From there, I tend to get into sticky notes: when I'm interrupted, I write myself a note sufficiently detailed to quickly resume after the expected duration of the interruption. When people come to me with non-immediate concerns, those go on sticky notes to address when I'm not in the middle of things (or it can just stay in email if you're excellent at controlling and addressing your inbox). All sticky notes get addressed or stored before I leave. The handwritten aspect is important because sticky notes take up space, and each additional transfer of them takes time vs CTRL+V. It's far less enjoyable than having a block of time to focus with minimized task-switching overhead, but maybe it can help you return some of your work to your actual workday while you improve the situation around you.
- gwbas1c 7y ago
  Without knowing much about your situation, this could indicate either poor culture in your company, or poor management. In other words, is this really a sign that you should get another job (or another assignment under someone else)? That being said, assuming you like your job / manager: > I’ve broached the topic lightly with my manager but don’t want to come across as whining, so I’ve generally just been trying to push back on meetings in the friendliest way that I can. Don't broach the topic lightly. Be very direct. "I have too many meetings, and I need to reduce them. As a result, I'm doing too much work at home. This is a problem for my family." See where that goes. Before you discuss this, though, there are some things to consider: Some people hold meetings as a form of procrastination, or as a way to feel important. It's important to figure out which of your meetings are these kinds, and decline them. It's also worth looking at how to hold an effective meeting. When I worked at Intel in 2005, "effective meetings" was part of onboarding for all new employees. It gave us a lot of tools to pushback on bogus meetings, including a clear culture of declining bogus meetings. It's important that you set some clear boundaries / limits, and not give in at all. (Even if this means finding a new job or assignment with a different manager.) What that something is, really depends on your relationships with your manager and peers. It could be that you decline meetings, (as other people suggest,) or it could be that you demand better planned meetings in order to attend. What's important is that you set some clear boundaries, and leave if they aren't respected. Finally, if you don't get much support from your manager, and you still like your job, I suggest bringing the problem up the chain of command.
- nwalker85 7y ago
  I am in this situation pretty frequently. Are you just a solid communicator? I know I tend to get roped into meetings because I'm good at leading meetings, while other engineers are frankly terrible at it.
  - zentiggr 7y ago
    "Damn, it, I have PEOPLE SKILLS!" But seriously, it seems to me sometimes, that having a "meeting guru" would be truly helpful sometimes... a SPOC that can filter all meeting requests by the email / 5 minutes / required vs inflated attendees / agenda / etc criteria before they even happen. Most of those questions aren't detail specific, so someone well versed in asking them politely and choosing the appropriate action could save so much time and attention suck.
    - kraigie 7y ago
      >a SPOC that can filter all meeting requests by the email / 5 minutes / required vs inflated attendees / agenda / etc criteria before they even happen. That's the project manager's job. The more meetings they allow. The more the project suffers. The more that are missed. The less poltical power. So they need to focus on fewer quality meetings for the ICs. More meetings for the PM.
- dsaavy 7y ago
  Last year I resorted to blocking off 11-230 every single day of the week. Sometimes people grumble about the lack of openness on my calendar but end up scheduling around it anyways. So now I get that whole time to myself and take a lunch break either at the beginning or ending of that block.
- gwittel 7y ago
  As a high level IC, I run into this a lot and still struggle. Largely it boils down to setting expectations, sticking with them, and having support. I have to push back on meetings, along with manager support for 'no meeting days', task offload, WFH, etc. Some weeks are better than others. The solution (if any) will depend on your company, and position within it. First is manager support. Without it, you're stuck. During 1:1s, sprint retros, its entirely valid to say something to the effect of "I couldn't get X done, because I had to spend most of my time in meetings. I need X chunk of focused time to get it done." A manager should have your back and be able to push back on others to keep your time free for non-meeting work. The answer should not be to work more hours. Some of these tactics won't work unless other people who need your time are aligned with this. That includes things like maker hours -- if one team has them, and another doesn't, its bound to not work well. The main questions around any meeting I ask are: (1) Is the meeting necessary? Is there a clear agenda? Can this be answered in email or a 5 minute chat? Often people schedule a meeting, and leave the thinking for later. (2) Do I need to be there? Without me physically present (or giving out of band input via email), will the meeting fail or have a bad end result (like a bad decision), politics, etc. (3) How urgent is this? Frequently, meetings are scheduled for the requestors' convenience. Not the attendees. Sure if its a high level meeting where its hard to get everyone in the same room, you might be stuck. Most of the time, that's not the case and gentle pushback to reschedule is fine (give options!). Locate other distraction sources and figure out how to manage them: (1) Sources of toil -- Do you frequently spend time on tasks that could be automated or otherwise made to go away? (2) Are people always coming to me vs my manager or team? Ideally you should not be the single source for all things. You want to train people to bug your manager or team (mailing list or group chat) and not you. In other words, if you're busy, do you really need to be L1 support all the time? This also promotes cross training. (3) Other co-workers -- Sometimes headphones just don't signal "go away" enough. Especially in open offices where everyone may be wearing them. Can you WFH one day a week and 'hide'? (4) The internet :)
- gorpomon 7y ago
  Just reply that you can't make the meeting, you don't have to give them a specific reason.
- cgrealy 7y ago
  > I normally end up getting my actual work done late at night after an early dinner, which my wife is not particularly happy about. Whatever else you do, don't do this. Work is simply not that important. If you constantly perform miracles, no one is inclined to fix the problems.
- kraigie 7y ago
  >Any recommendations? Yes. That 'maker' time is a 'virtual' meeting. If you can schedule it with a name. E.g. TPS report meeting with Bob it is much more respected. Your in a meeting, so you must be very busy. Harder in an open plan or Easy to see office Works best with a couple of friendly coder from another site in the company. Set up a notebook to skype with each other then mute it. Pop headset on. You must be busy with all those people in that zoom meeting. They will respect meetings with other coders in a way they won't respect make time. Make sure it's regular on the calendar. Remember to mark how your most productive work comes out of the "pair programming meeting"
PragmaticPulp 7y ago
The core message is true: Constant interruptions are bad, dedicated periods of focus are good, managers should help foster sustained focus for their employees. I think we can all agree on that. However, this isn't an unbiased article: This company wants to sell you a SaaS product that they think will reduce interruptions. They have an incentive to make you think that the manager's schedule is as terrible as possible, because they want you to sign up for their SaaS tool. In my experience, each additional SaaS tool piled on to developers, no matter how well-intentioned, just introduces more distractions and overhead. Reading toward the end suggests some possibly helpful tools, but I'm not seeing anything that can't be accomplished with some common sense and existing tools. This blog post has unhealthy amounts of exaggeration and hyperbole. Consider the "Actual Schedule" chart in this article that only shows blocks of "Ruined Morning" and "Ruined Afternoon". Or the claim that a single standup meeting can blow an entire afternoon because it interrupts the afternoon flow. The study they linked doesn't even support such excessive problems with disruption. These exaggerated narratives are seductive for two reasons: First, it's true that interruptions come at a cost to focus on other tasks. Second, it gives us an easy out to blame everyone else for our lack of productivity or focus. Did I waste my afternoon on Twitter and HN instead of getting my work done? Well, I read an article that says it's my manager's fault for that 30 minute scheduled meeting that I've known about for a week. It's always tempting to blame someone else, especially when there's a shred of truth to it. I'll admit that I fell into this trap for a while when I was younger. Having grown up on "Maker's schedule vs. manager's schedule" I was a die-hard believer that managers had it easy, while engineers got the short end of the stick due to all of those pesky distractions. When I switched to management, I was shocked to discover that I still needed periods of sustained focus and that I still had problems dealing with interruptions. The maker vs. manager distinction I had learned about didn't really exist, but in the manager role I had no choice but to work around it. Once I stopped blaming everyone else for my poor ability to recover focus or get into flow states, I became much better at managing my own time. I firmly believe that articles like this are counter-productive, because they send a message that poor time management and excessive time wasting are not your fault, and therefore not your responsibility. That mindset closes the door for any possibility of improvement, which is the opposite of what you want. Yes, it would be great in an ideal world if we could work for a week straight without interruptions, but that's not reality. Instead, focus on skills to better manage your own time and plan around interruptions. Practice responding to people with "I'm in the middle of something right now, can we talk about this after our scheduled meeting in the afternoon?" to coalesce your meetings together. Or statements like "I'm happy to help, but I'm really busy right now. Can you write this up in an e-mail, cc my manager, and we'll look at it in the morning?" If your manager is to blame, broach the subject in a professional manner and politely ask if your manager can help batch your interruptions into a single daily conversation. Put it on the calendar if you must, but the important thing is to take charge of your time management. Finally, put deliberate effort into getting back into a flow state after interruptions. If your first reaction after returning to your desk is to open up HN or Twitter, then you're part of the problem. I've found that putting my headphones on and spending 10-20 seconds mentally retracing my steps before the interruption is very helpful.
cjfd 7y ago
This is kind of true but the article is pushing it a bit far. In the schema there is an afternoon with block of two hours. One would hope that a maker could do something in a two hour block...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
C0d3r 7y ago
> At the same time, real work is not getting done. Meaningful work is usually done quietly and in solitude. You can do great work by pairing or mobbing too. Being isolated is good, but it's harder to learn new things working by yourself.
- pmorici 7y ago
  "it's harder to learn new things working by yourself." I strongly disagree. I rarely learn anything of consequence when working with others. Pairing and mobbing strike me as fads.
  - geerlingguy 7y ago
    Some people thrive in that kind of environment (XP and all that), I know it sucked the soul out of me the one time it was forced on my team at a prior employer.
  - dheera 7y ago
    I generally do not work well if there's someone staring at me as I work. I also have my own, high-productivity, quirky ways of using computers that mostly only work for me in solitude.
  - C0d3r 7y ago
    Interesting, I guess it depends on the person and on the thing you're learning like someone else mentioned. I do think you need some time by yourself to really go deep at your own speed to learn something. Pairing and mobbing are not fads, they've been around for a while and in my experience they've been very useful, I'd recommend you try it with someone with experience with it.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > harder to learn new things working by yourself Depends on the things. Another person might be able to share a few tricks with you: you may not know that you can drag the lower corner of an excel spreadsheet cell to copy formulas, for example, or that you can use "cw" to change a word in vi. On the other hand, learning something like relational database modeling or functional programming requires dedicated focus that another person is probably going to get in the way of.
the-dude 7y ago
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=manager+schedule https://hn.algolia.com/?q=manager+schedule http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html And 7 days ago : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21440456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21440456 ( The Manager’s Schedule Is Holding Back Remote Work )
war1025 7y ago
The endless focus on "rockstar" productivity seems misplaced to me. This is a profession. You're going to be doing it for a long time. No need to burn the candle at both ends.
scandox 7y ago
Sometimes the problem can be one of self-definition, or of self-definition over time. Professionally, I have had years where I was definitely in maker mode and years where I was in manager mode. There are times when for a few months your head is down and you're just making stuff. Then the making slows down and what you've made goes into maintenance or into a next planning phase where lots of things have to happen at the same time. The problem can be that some developers see themselves as forever in maker mode: in other words they treat being asked to talk and discuss things as mere interruptions. A lot of managers I think are quite traumatized by this in a way: they can feel like they literally have no power to make things happen. As a result they may well over-react over the course of a career and treat anyone in maker mode as simply another developer who won't talk to them.
- dsaavy 7y ago
  Phew, thought I was the only one who went through these cycles. The maker > maintenance > manager/planning cycle always feels unsettling during the maintenance phase.
bayesian_horse 7y ago
Erm, working at night has some serious health disadvantages. even if you get enough sleep during the day. One of the worst things you can do is switch those schedules regularly. Some people may be able to do this, especially for a few months or years. Many however, will break down sooner or later!
- tluyben2 7y ago
  I have heard this before (long haul stewardesses and breast cancer I think) but was that researched enough to say it like you say? Quite a lot of people who do this for decades without issues... I can see how it can be bad for people, but is the cause of that too little sleep, some reason of anxiety being unable to cope with 'the day', doing drugs, some stress factors that make it easier to work when the rest sleep etc; if one exchanges night with day fully, has that been proved to be objectively bad?
  - bayesian_horse 7y ago
    There may be people who can shift their night cycle, maybe even because of genetics or circumstance, but medical science says that circadian rhythms are hard to change and changing sleep cycles too fast leads to issues. And this may also be a case of how many problems you have. Night shifts might not be a problem on its own, but throw in a little depression, or getting overweight, or whatever, and it's going to suck big time.
- codesushi42 7y ago
  This should be the top comment in the thread. This kind of work schedule is not healthy or sustainable. Long term success is like running a marathon.
  - Enginerrrd 7y ago
    For most people that's probably true. But I definitely know people that are just like that to the point that it's at least sustainable for them. They were absolutely brilliant, but kind of manic at times, and that's just how they worked best. They'd work for like 20 hours straight without eating and then come home, wolf down some food ravenously and sleep for 14 hours. Who am I to judge the schedule they chose?
thrower123 7y ago
It's often less the "manager schedule" that is the problem, but getting screwed into complying totally with the "customer schedule." The one that has been the bane of my existence for years now is the 9AM daily call with the customer that is on Europe or Delhi time. It just destroys the day when you start things off with that kind of thing, and get immediately tossed into placating and containment mode. Then whatever you thought you might be able to do for the day gets tossed out the window in order to react to the latest fire drill before the next call. It's entirely reactive, rather than proactive, and it is soul crushing. It's almost lunch time now, and I haven't done anything worthwhile yet today, other than try to bring some kind of order to this chaos and triage.
- aisengard 7y ago
  Unfortunately, your role is "customer support engineer". Ideally there is another team that does not directly interact with the client that is actually able to get real work done on the product. Try to get on that team.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    You have to wear all the hats on a small team, unfortunately. Between Thanksgiving and New Years is typically one of the better periods of the year for getting real work done, so there is that to look forward to.
heyflyguy 7y ago
I had this exact situation come up with an engineer that I can only call brilliant, with the most conservative of overtones. He was more than that. Being a maker myself I gladly encouraged him to work when he wanted, sometimes that meant he'd work 48 hours straight and sleep for two days and show up Friday. His 3 days of work (as his peers would describe it), easily was double the quality and output of his closest colleague. I loved having him on my team. Eventually, other people started asking to work 3 days a week, suggesting that they too would pull all-nighters in an effort to have 2 mid-week days off. I let a few experiments happen but sadly in most cases the result was less than 50% of what they had been previously able to accomplish. This led to a new merit based working system when we placed emphasis on sprints and achieving. This too ended up failing because the interconnected dependandcies of sprints were always bottlenecked by the slowest operator. The final result was the eventual departure of my most prized teammate, and mostly due to peer pressure. I often think about how I could have better allowed his brilliance while not alienating the rest of his team, but in the end I failed.
- tikhonj 7y ago
  This is one of the often unspoken benefits of remote work—it obscures how (and when) you work and exposes only the results. This naturally pushes back on micromanagement not only from managers but also from everyone else on the team. It's not fool-proof by any means—you can still build up processes and expectations that lead to micromanagement if your managers or culture are so inclined—but it makes the default behavior of the team distinctly less oriented towards micromanagement. You'll waste a lot less time and energy worrying about optics if people being present at a particular place and time is not an obvious signal of dedication/hard work/whatever.
  - jes5199 7y ago
    in the age of slack, where managers about to instant message you any second, you don't really get control of your schedule
    - rriepe 7y ago
lxe 7y ago
Conversely, get better at handling interruptions. In almost every non-junior role (not just "manager") you will be required to deal with many things throughout the day, coding being just one of them.
- rch 7y ago
  > almost every non-junior role To me, this sounds far from being universally true. Some Sr. roles allow for hard-split meeting days vs. productive days, and moving to six week self managed "sprints" with regular updates to a draft publication instead of shuffling vaguely defined tickets around a board.
  - kraigie 7y ago
    >Some Sr. roles allow for hard-split meeting days vs. productive days Such as?
- jbeninger 7y ago
  I'm not sure "get better at handling interruptions" is possible. If I'm juggling a dozen ideas in my head and am interrupted, that tower is going to crumble regardless. If you're suggesting I rebuild my methods of developing from the ground up to avoid that mindset, that's a huge ask. I'm not convinced it's even possible. I'm able to muddle through a task with regular interruptions, but I'll be more likely to make mistakes and it will take longer. There's a world of difference between what I accomplish in an "office" day vs a "coding" day. I think the article has it right. Dedicate some "office hours" to being interrupted, but recognize that some people are far more productive during long uninterrupted periods.
- afarrell 7y ago
  Any tips on how to do this?
twblalock 7y ago
The ability to work during normal business hours, dealing with interruptions and collaborating with your colleagues, is a skill that every engineer should develop. This skill doesn't come naturally to some people, but it can be developed and it will make you more productive. In particular, develop the ability to enforce encapsulation on your mental model of the program you are working on, so you don't need to keep the entire thing in your head all the time (this will probably make your code better too). This makes it easier to get back into the flow after being interrupted. The most productive engineers I know work during normal business hours, get interrupted constantly because they work on important projects with a lot of stakeholders, and get a lot of work done anyway. That's what 99% of engineers should aspire to. There are very few rockstars like Carmack who are so good that the benefits of their crazy work styles outweigh the drawbacks.
- inetknght 7y ago
  > That's what 99% of engineers should aspire to. I wholeheartedly disagree. You're trying to force a generation of imagination into a box. That will only destroy the very imagination you need.
  - mathgladiator 7y ago
    So, I have a different and more sinister version. My sinister version is yes, yes, please, keep those imaginations in the box so that I may continue to have a monopoly.... whwhahahaahhaa ---- I'm a principal engineer with a fully capable imagination, and I once got the feedback that my creativity was "transcendental"; the reality is that I don't confine myself to schedule, and my only real discipline is using English to describe my thoughts and improve as a writer. I try very hard to get people to think out of the box, but it is really hard because 99% of the work does not require "divine inspiration". Most people gravitate towards this advice because it is most applicable, and it becomes a virtuous cycle for them. However, it creates a vicious cycle of the Pareto distribution where 1% of engineers can actually use their max level of creativity and use the full breadth of computer science.
    - 7y ago
cwyers 7y ago
> At the same time, real work is not getting done. Meaningful work is usually done quietly and in solitude. I don't really like this definition of meaningful work. Yes, there are some tasks that require focus and inventive mental work. But those aren't the only tasks a "maker" faces. And they aren't always the most important ones.
meristem 7y ago
I agree with the post's view of maker time. I disagree with its ideas around manager's ideal schedule. My experiences as a manager were that the disruptions of hourly 'something new' were unhelpful for strategy development or even moving the tactical horizon to something past 'next week'. This resulted in my 'actual' work being done before anyone else arrived or after everyone else left. I have met very few managers who did not have similar concerns.
jpincheira 7y ago
Totally. These days what I do is I allocate time for features/product and just go hard on it for Standups [1]. I do say 1-2 weeks building product as if it were a hackathon. When I am done, I go back to marketing & sales, in the manager's schedule. So in short, I do things on consecutive days: * to code, I do maker's schedule. * to sell/talk to users, I do manager's schedule. I'm feeling like writing on the topic as well, as it can be valuable for other solo founders too. I struggled a lot in the beginning when building Standups. [1] https://standups.io https://standups.io
- npo9 7y ago
  Why do you do both? Why not stick with the one you enjoy the most?
  - jpincheira 7y ago
    Because to do creative (product: code/design) work I have to really get uninterrupted streaks of work. But to do sales, talking to users, I have to do it on the manager's schedule, with the typical slots within a day calendar schedule.
    - npo9 7y ago
      No. You misunderstand. Why do you want to do both creative work and sales?
wizzard 7y ago
> The reason why many managers fail to see and address this problem is that they are used to looking at communication and assume it's a good thing. Because they see activity. People are attending meetings, talking to each other, the online presence indicators are bright green. Clearly, a lot of work is happening! Yes, this. And a similar problem occurs when manager-types try to come up with metrics to measure programmer productivity. Their yardsticks for what constitutes meaningful work, as a manager, cannot simply be translated over to makers.
- kraigie 7y ago
  >manager-types try to come up with metrics to measure programmer productivity. Plenty can. The CFO types look at profit per commit/schedule whatever. A lot of middle managment types look at activity per commit. The real issue here is that mangement by productivity data. Means most management is deadweight that can be replaced by a spreedsheet with the ability to send form emails to those falling behind on the metrics. Anywhere else would be downsized, but management has enough power go protect it's own existence at the expense of the company.
graphememes 7y ago
As a manager it's very hard to get everyone else on board with this
- kraigie 7y ago
  >As a manager it's very hard to get everyone else on board with this If management was easy then everyone would do it. How about this for a start? You taking total control of your direct report's calendar. They have read only so can see what meetings you have scheduled they should attend. You book the meetings. Anyone who wants a meeting has to disturb the manager (so there will be fewer requests) and pushback will have more force. It's not whiny engineer saying they can't attend the meeting. It's the manager saying they are too busy. You could also send just 1 report to a meeting instead of the whole team. Since you control the calendar you can choose who goes.
gowld 7y ago
I find that the simplest way to avoid getting stuck on someone else's schedule is to get a ~month ahead of your expected productivity (even if that means sandbagging estimates, or working extra, or accepting a bad performance rating because you are holding back on reporting your accomplishments), and then whenever you are asked for status update for management/customer, report what you were working on last week/month, not what you are working on right now. This means you are never playing "catch up" externally to yourself. It's like having a month of living expenses saved in your bank account it's a month of political capital saved up at your job.
draklor40 7y ago
Carmack was able to choose his timings because it was HIS company. People worked for him, not vice versa. To be the master of your time, you have to work for yourself, not under someone else. When reality and idealism clashes, reality wins.
- kukabynd 7y ago
  Couldn’t say it better. This is something most people who work for others don’t understand.
martin_henk 7y ago
Actually someone understands my trouble
ben7799 7y ago
I feel like we're only having this discussion at this point because: - Agile brought interruptions to a new level of pain - We have too many instant interruption communication points (slack) - Open Offices have made interrution far worse There were books about this concept 30 years ago. It was totally recognized that you shouldn't break up an engineer's time into tiny chunks with 1000 cuts worth of meetings. But we threw it all out the window in the last 10-15 years with the rise of Agile + Open Office + Instant Message/Always-On communication programs.
- bonestamp2 7y ago
  Out of all of these things, open offices have been the worst in my opinion. At least with slack (or whatever other messenger you use) you can ignore that until your thought is complete or you want to make a quick note of your thoughts before allowing the distraction. When someone taps your shoulder it's much harder to ask them to wait, so it happens much less than it should... not to mention the constant passive distraction of people moving around and having other conversations. We used to be in small offices of 2-4 people. That was perfect and I miss those days. The office looks a lot nicer now that it's open, but it's a disaster from a concentration standpoint. But, I think a lot of managers like the open concept because it's easier to see people and because it does often look nicer and often has more natural light.
  - mc3 7y ago
    I have never worked in a 2-4 office and certainly not a 1-office, but I find about 10 in an office is manageable if they are all quiet non-phone-calling people. I worked a place with 400 people in open plan close proximity, where your workspace doubles up as a corridor, and no meeting spaces, so it also doubles up as a meeting room for any teams meetings. It was impossible to concentrate. That drove me to some Howard Leight earplugs, beefy headphones with "the ocean machine set to 9". The impomptu meetings now sounded like a squeek, but it was still distracting. I had to leave that job because of this and other negative effects of a cattle-like approach to handling software talent.
- eikenberry 7y ago
gdubs 7y ago
I'm curious what the meeting schedule of Bell Labs was like. I get the sense that the researchers had plenty of time to invent, take naps in their office, and at the same time bring a lot of stuff to market.
meed 7y ago
So much truth...
GCA10 7y ago
Paul Graham is so very, very right when he highlights the limitations of managers' view that "one hour" is an important increment of time. For me, the most important interval is a decade. Get your big goals right, and that huge swath of time will let you do something hugely transformative in your work, your sidelights or your personal relationships. But to get there, you need the stubbornness to work through the hard stuff for a long time without immediate rewards. You also need the freedom to reinvent your approach a couple times, without feeling embarrassed or doomed. Being a maker calls for a totally different clock.
tboyd47 7y ago
The fact that he had to work at night in order to get any concentration time would be a company culture fail in most situations. But, the devil's in the details. > David Kushner reflected on the unconventional working style of the company's ace coder, John Carmack. "Ace coder" isn't quite accurate job title. He was a co-founder. People act differently when they have legal ownership over their work.
- blueboo 7y ago
  When you talk to effective people, you quickly learn they get most of their work-work done before 10am or after 5pm.
  - timeimp 7y ago
    I wonder, sincerely, if this is to do with the sun / the idea that other people are awake and there is opportunity for disruption...
    - throwaway10x 7y ago
      Sometimes you get the most brilliant of ideas in the shower after your work day, and you just can't wait till you get back to work next day (also because you know you'll have a ton of meetings anyways).
- throwaway10x 7y ago
  I work very late into nights on the project I created. I hate myself sometimes for doing this because this now the company's cash cow and I get nothing more than any other engineer. I've contemplated quitting but I see no benefit to this, it's still one of the coolest projects I've worked on. It's not just legal ownership that can drive people.
  - tboyd47 7y ago
    Why not just put your resume out there and see what happens?
jariel 7y ago
Very, very apt article, except I'm uncomfortable with the notion of the 'manager' moniker. A lot of work can be done on these terms, just not 'maker work'. Maybe best to call it 'business schedule' v 'maker schedule'.
galaxyLogic 7y ago
To be a SW rock star you need to master 3 languages: 1. The programming language used and its (de facto) standard libraries 2. The language of the important design- and tooling patterns that are useful in the said programming environment 3. The language of the Problem Domain. If you can master all three, then you are a rock star your productivity will be much higher than those of your colleagues who have not achieved the mastery of these. Now what is the language of the problem domain? Often it is just the methods and functions already present in the application. Here whoever made the original design has a clear advantage over others who started working on the same application later. When starting from scratch it is the language of the business, say accounting terms, and their meaning if you are building an accounting system of some kind. The code is just something written in these 3 languages, if you can speak in those languages you can write the code down, and can read it and understand it and thus modify it further. To master all 3 of these languages can take a lot of effort over time. But so it is with true rock stars. Think Jimmy Page, he had a long career on stage and in studio before he joined Led Zeppelin.
alchemism 7y ago
It’s practically from another era at this point, but on this topic I cannot recommend enough Time Management for Systems Administrators[1]. Ops Engineers have the Firefighter-Maker-Manager dilemma to contend with. The techniques to balance reactive work with planned work adapts well to SWEs in open offices with too many meetings. [1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596007836.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596007836.do
ThomPete 7y ago
The makers response should always by default be. “Do you want i know or when its done” then after that a discussion about delivery schedules can be had.
TomMckenny 7y ago
If you genuinely are an X times programmer, unless you find the right environment, it is irrelevant. You will find under-utilization is common and so burnout comes quickly. As you can see in the comments, many places are unable to find ways to maximize your productivity. And once underutilized, you are of less value and so less valued. And even though these places will want you, they are a catastrophically bad match. Since the risk of burnout from frustration is real, if you value your career, you will need to leave such places quickly until you find one that can utilize you maximally.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dfilppi 7y ago
That's why remote workers are more productive, provided they can get isolated at home.
systematical 7y ago
I was digging this blog until... "The most straightforward way to address this is to build a team knowledge base. Not only does that minimize the number of repetitive questions bounced around the office, it allows new team members to basically onboard themselves." # Insert nuclino advert # Right....That's a culture thing, more than it is a software solution. You can only use a software solution to aid the culture, not the other way around. In my experience, This culture needs to come from the top-down.
peferron 7y ago
My impostor syndrome briefly reappears every time I read articles like this :) I don't feel any state of "flow" or "zone" or whatever, and certainly wouldn't consider my entire afternoon ruined because of a single meeting in the middle as illustrated in the article. If there's a hard problem to solve, sure, I'll work on it until 4 AM because I have a hard time letting go of unfinished things, but that's mostly throwing hours at the problem and I don't think I'm massively more productive than during the day at the office.
- throwawayjava 7y ago
  Intense focus can be a symptom of ADD/ADHD [1]. I've always wondered if software developers who experience flow/zone (myself included) have varying levels of mild ADD that presents as intense focus. [1] https://www.additudemag.com/understanding-adhd-hyperfocus/ https://www.additudemag.com/understanding-adhd-hyperfocus/
mathattack 7y ago
Who are these managers with nice even 1 hour blocks? My time gets chiseled down to 30 and sometimes 15 minute blocks, with rampant double scheduling.
kmstout 7y ago
A few things that I've found helpful: 1. I start my day a couple hours later than typical for my organization. This both lets me work quieter hours and shaves time off my commute. 2. From 2 p.m. on is reserved as "Real, Actual Work" on my calendar. 3. I check email a few times a day. Any other time, Outlook is closed. Those who need me immediately can call my phone or visit my desk. 4. At least once a week, usually Friday, I work either as late as I can or until I reach a suitable milestone. The clock doesn't matter.
movieswebsite 7y ago
https://superfastblog1.blogspot.com/2019/11/best-free-photo-editor-online.html https://superfastblog1.blogspot.com/2019/11/best-free-photo-...
teekert 7y ago
Agreed wholeheartedly, in fact I try have meeting days and work days, the workdays I am usually working from home.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
I have always time shifted my working hours, at SAIC, Angel Studios, Google, and Capital One I would arrive very early to get some quality thinking and coding time - and then leave early. Some people at work probably thought I was goofing off, but they would roll in at 9am and not know I got to work hours before they did.
ilaksh 7y ago
My suggestion is that you get rid of the managers and have senior engineers manage themselves.
edisonjoao 7y ago
interesting

798 points by huntermeyer 7y ago

orev 7y ago

Good idea in theory. Almost impossible in practice.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

throwaway713 7y ago

As a maker (individual contributor), I have been having this issue a lot, but my attempts at pushing back do not seem to be going so well. Any time I reserve a large chunk of time on my calendar, people set up meetings on top of it anyway, or message me asking if that block time is "real" (as though quiet focused work isn’t a thing). My days are filled with little dabs of 30 minutes here and there that are barely enough to remember what I had been working on before another meeting started, so I normally end up getting my actual work done late at night after an early dinner, which my wife is not particularly happy about. Any recommendations? I’ve broached the topic lightly with my manager but don’t want to come across as whining, so I’ve generally just been trying to push back on meetings in the friendliest way that I can.

NotAnEconomist 7y ago
I had similar problems, and resorted to just declining meetings that interrupted that work block. I didn't even mark it on the calendar, I just declined any meeting before 11a. I actually was more aggressive than you were: mornings were never for meetings, until 11am standup; after lunch I gave up getting work done and packed it with back-to-back meetings and (when there was gaps) working on quick things -- reading docs, comments on design docs, code reviews, small experiments, etc.
nicoburns 7y ago
Do you have anybody in a project manager kind of position (who is responsible for delivering things as fast as possible). I'd talk to them and tell them that you can't get anything done if you constantly have meetings, and ask if they could be scheduled together. I feel like this might work better if it was a company or team policy rather than just you trying to do enforce this by yourself.
jdr23bc 7y ago
Maybe link them this article and phrase it as an experiment. If velocity increases then your manager will know it is worthwhile.
mv4 7y ago
If you can find another individual (or two) who's dealing with the same problem, you can schedule a block of time with them (a meeting) and work side-by-side. May even collaborate. Name it something important: critical feature optimization, application security audit, system integration... do not call it focusing on your work.
war1025 7y ago
My mom was an administrator at the local hospital, and always seemed to have too much on her plate. The thing my dad would always criticize her about is that she always picked up the slack. If you are putting in a valid effort, you have to let things slip. Otherwise the people above you won't know that you are being assigned too much. The first thing you need to do is stop working at night. You are paid to work during the day. Anything beyond that is you taking on unpaid work.
LegitShady 7y ago
>people set up meetings on top of it anyway, or message me asking if that block time is "real" Your problem here is you. You were booked. When someone sends you a double booking, hit "DECLINE" and they get an email right away saying you declined it. Then you say "Hey I already had something in my schedule for that time, can't make it. You have access to my calendar why would you make meetings when I'm busy? That isn't very respectful." If someone asks if a block of time is "real" always say yes. your problem is that apparently you have blocks of time that aren't real. if you only have real blocks of time in your schedule, nobody will guess which aren't or are real. If someone asks you in person, have the backbone and willpower to say "Hey I'm already booked" and suggest another time. You're the one causing your problems, but you're describing it as other people doing it to you.
- organsnyder 7y ago
  This can be difficult to do in certain contexts. This approach could easily cause them to be perceived as arrogant, "not a team player", or some other cliche. If their calendar is open to others (so it shows event details more than just free/busy), it's hard to portray those blocks of time as equivalent to "real" meetings. Involving your manager is potentially a great step—though you have the best gauge as to whether it's the right move. If you've discussed your approach with them, they can provide some much-needed cover if colleagues complain that you're not available enough.
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    Again, this is why you 1) Start from the 'respect' angle. 2) Suggest an alternate time so that it can work. 3) Leave a paper trail. I would only involve a manager if it became a serial issue and you've made your concerns clear and in writing. Whether you come off as disinterested, not a team player, or just busy and the other person isn't willing to respect your schedule is up to you. But it all depends on you.
- jedberg 7y ago
  The problem is that when you do this, and then don't go to the meeting, and then a decision is made that you don't agree with, you are told, "well you had a chance but you didn't come to the meeting". The other problem is that sometimes people will literally see you working in your cube/office during the meeting and then ask you why you declined if you clearly weren't busy, because they don't equate coding with being busy. Sitting at your desk == not busy in their mind. So now you have a political problem because you're seen as uninterested/not a team player.
shantly 7y ago
> so I normally end up getting my actual work done late at night after an early dinner, which my wife is not particularly happy about. Until that stops, they won't knock it off. Start telling them exactly what you're doing in those time blocks and how much the meeting will make that slip by. Do not work after hours. If they want to pay you to sit in meeting rooms rather than ship features, that's their choice, but you have to make them choose, or they'll take both. [EDIT] mind, make them choose by communicating. Email (or whatever your management-tier uses to communicate) is your friend. Explicitly call out your expected meeting burden in estimation sessions and politely but firmly alert (send an email/message) when that burden is exceeded. Bring it up in retros. This is especially effective if you have someone up the chain who wants features shipped and who is not the one calling these meetings. Part of their job is to make other people knock off unproductive shit. Give them the info they need to do their job (that you're being scheduled for too many low-value meetings). Your only other alternative is to start delegating, until you're accidentally a "lead" and like 50% of your time is supposed to be meetings, another 25% delegating, with the balance helping other devs getting unstuck.
twic 7y ago
I wonder if you could start the blocks small and then grow them over time. If you have half an our reserved somewhere, maybe people won't schedule a meeting against it. Then make it an hour, after a month and hour and a half, etc. Or just block out the four hours you need by filling it up with loads of fake important-sounding half-hour meetings.
ddingus 7y ago
There can be only one primary task. When this happens, the question is, "what is worth what?" You must pose it to them, or others will ask for and expect both. And where they lack knowledge, this must be escalated to someone who can make the call and account for said call; otherwise, you are already accountable for commitments made prior to their request. Doing both is not realistic, because there can only be one primary task, and this is why you end up doing work off hours. I would share more calendar details, put what the task is on the time block, and in general set up that question. Others will attempt to schedule your time so they do not end up doing catch up work off hours too. It is you or them, or something just is not as important as everyone thinks it is. Which is it? Also, make task switch time clear. A 30 minute meeting in the middle of, say a 2 to 3 hour block of time, may actually cost all or reduce the effective time to a small fraction of what is allocated. One effective way to handle this is to ask how many more meetings can now be scheduled into this wasted block of time? It can also mean moving that block slightly, allowing meetings at the very end of it, or before it starts. Either can be cheaper, with meetings at the end of it being cheapest generally. Your whole pushback is centered on there can be only one primary task. That is as real as it gets. Use it.
tbihl 7y ago
I wholeheartedly agree with the techniques others are recommending for improving the situation, but at the same time I think you should look for ways to cope with what you have as you make the transition. I would best be considered a mid-level manager with 3-5 additional projects to tackle at any given time, and I face this problem on many different scales. Best case, I'm trying to get longer tasks done, and the longest uninterrupted intervals I can get are about 20 minutes. Other days, I need to complete 3 minute tasks and the longest uninterrupted time I can get is about 40 seconds. In either case, I outline the things I need to get done so that I can track where I am and quickly be reminded after an interruption. If the list ridiculously overflows the time in my day, I go further by writing down the priority order to make sure I don't lose track of that important detail. From there, I tend to get into sticky notes: when I'm interrupted, I write myself a note sufficiently detailed to quickly resume after the expected duration of the interruption. When people come to me with non-immediate concerns, those go on sticky notes to address when I'm not in the middle of things (or it can just stay in email if you're excellent at controlling and addressing your inbox). All sticky notes get addressed or stored before I leave. The handwritten aspect is important because sticky notes take up space, and each additional transfer of them takes time vs CTRL+V. It's far less enjoyable than having a block of time to focus with minimized task-switching overhead, but maybe it can help you return some of your work to your actual workday while you improve the situation around you.
gwbas1c 7y ago
Without knowing much about your situation, this could indicate either poor culture in your company, or poor management. In other words, is this really a sign that you should get another job (or another assignment under someone else)? That being said, assuming you like your job / manager: > I’ve broached the topic lightly with my manager but don’t want to come across as whining, so I’ve generally just been trying to push back on meetings in the friendliest way that I can. Don't broach the topic lightly. Be very direct. "I have too many meetings, and I need to reduce them. As a result, I'm doing too much work at home. This is a problem for my family." See where that goes. Before you discuss this, though, there are some things to consider: Some people hold meetings as a form of procrastination, or as a way to feel important. It's important to figure out which of your meetings are these kinds, and decline them. It's also worth looking at how to hold an effective meeting. When I worked at Intel in 2005, "effective meetings" was part of onboarding for all new employees. It gave us a lot of tools to pushback on bogus meetings, including a clear culture of declining bogus meetings. It's important that you set some clear boundaries / limits, and not give in at all. (Even if this means finding a new job or assignment with a different manager.) What that something is, really depends on your relationships with your manager and peers. It could be that you decline meetings, (as other people suggest,) or it could be that you demand better planned meetings in order to attend. What's important is that you set some clear boundaries, and leave if they aren't respected. Finally, if you don't get much support from your manager, and you still like your job, I suggest bringing the problem up the chain of command.
nwalker85 7y ago
I am in this situation pretty frequently. Are you just a solid communicator? I know I tend to get roped into meetings because I'm good at leading meetings, while other engineers are frankly terrible at it.
- zentiggr 7y ago
  "Damn, it, I have PEOPLE SKILLS!" But seriously, it seems to me sometimes, that having a "meeting guru" would be truly helpful sometimes... a SPOC that can filter all meeting requests by the email / 5 minutes / required vs inflated attendees / agenda / etc criteria before they even happen. Most of those questions aren't detail specific, so someone well versed in asking them politely and choosing the appropriate action could save so much time and attention suck.
  - kraigie 7y ago
    >a SPOC that can filter all meeting requests by the email / 5 minutes / required vs inflated attendees / agenda / etc criteria before they even happen. That's the project manager's job. The more meetings they allow. The more the project suffers. The more that are missed. The less poltical power. So they need to focus on fewer quality meetings for the ICs. More meetings for the PM.
dsaavy 7y ago
Last year I resorted to blocking off 11-230 every single day of the week. Sometimes people grumble about the lack of openness on my calendar but end up scheduling around it anyways. So now I get that whole time to myself and take a lunch break either at the beginning or ending of that block.
gwittel 7y ago
As a high level IC, I run into this a lot and still struggle. Largely it boils down to setting expectations, sticking with them, and having support. I have to push back on meetings, along with manager support for 'no meeting days', task offload, WFH, etc. Some weeks are better than others. The solution (if any) will depend on your company, and position within it. First is manager support. Without it, you're stuck. During 1:1s, sprint retros, its entirely valid to say something to the effect of "I couldn't get X done, because I had to spend most of my time in meetings. I need X chunk of focused time to get it done." A manager should have your back and be able to push back on others to keep your time free for non-meeting work. The answer should not be to work more hours. Some of these tactics won't work unless other people who need your time are aligned with this. That includes things like maker hours -- if one team has them, and another doesn't, its bound to not work well. The main questions around any meeting I ask are: (1) Is the meeting necessary? Is there a clear agenda? Can this be answered in email or a 5 minute chat? Often people schedule a meeting, and leave the thinking for later. (2) Do I need to be there? Without me physically present (or giving out of band input via email), will the meeting fail or have a bad end result (like a bad decision), politics, etc. (3) How urgent is this? Frequently, meetings are scheduled for the requestors' convenience. Not the attendees. Sure if its a high level meeting where its hard to get everyone in the same room, you might be stuck. Most of the time, that's not the case and gentle pushback to reschedule is fine (give options!). Locate other distraction sources and figure out how to manage them: (1) Sources of toil -- Do you frequently spend time on tasks that could be automated or otherwise made to go away? (2) Are people always coming to me vs my manager or team? Ideally you should not be the single source for all things. You want to train people to bug your manager or team (mailing list or group chat) and not you. In other words, if you're busy, do you really need to be L1 support all the time? This also promotes cross training. (3) Other co-workers -- Sometimes headphones just don't signal "go away" enough. Especially in open offices where everyone may be wearing them. Can you WFH one day a week and 'hide'? (4) The internet :)
gorpomon 7y ago
Just reply that you can't make the meeting, you don't have to give them a specific reason.
cgrealy 7y ago
> I normally end up getting my actual work done late at night after an early dinner, which my wife is not particularly happy about. Whatever else you do, don't do this. Work is simply not that important. If you constantly perform miracles, no one is inclined to fix the problems.
kraigie 7y ago
>Any recommendations? Yes. That 'maker' time is a 'virtual' meeting. If you can schedule it with a name. E.g. TPS report meeting with Bob it is much more respected. Your in a meeting, so you must be very busy. Harder in an open plan or Easy to see office Works best with a couple of friendly coder from another site in the company. Set up a notebook to skype with each other then mute it. Pop headset on. You must be busy with all those people in that zoom meeting. They will respect meetings with other coders in a way they won't respect make time. Make sure it's regular on the calendar. Remember to mark how your most productive work comes out of the "pair programming meeting"

PragmaticPulp 7y ago

The core message is true: Constant interruptions are bad, dedicated periods of focus are good, managers should help foster sustained focus for their employees. I think we can all agree on that. However, this isn't an unbiased article: This company wants to sell you a SaaS product that they think will reduce interruptions. They have an incentive to make you think that the manager's schedule is as terrible as possible, because they want you to sign up for their SaaS tool. In my experience, each additional SaaS tool piled on to developers, no matter how well-intentioned, just introduces more distractions and overhead. Reading toward the end suggests some possibly helpful tools, but I'm not seeing anything that can't be accomplished with some common sense and existing tools. This blog post has unhealthy amounts of exaggeration and hyperbole. Consider the "Actual Schedule" chart in this article that only shows blocks of "Ruined Morning" and "Ruined Afternoon". Or the claim that a single standup meeting can blow an entire afternoon because it interrupts the afternoon flow. The study they linked doesn't even support such excessive problems with disruption. These exaggerated narratives are seductive for two reasons: First, it's true that interruptions come at a cost to focus on other tasks. Second, it gives us an easy out to blame everyone else for our lack of productivity or focus. Did I waste my afternoon on Twitter and HN instead of getting my work done? Well, I read an article that says it's my manager's fault for that 30 minute scheduled meeting that I've known about for a week. It's always tempting to blame someone else, especially when there's a shred of truth to it. I'll admit that I fell into this trap for a while when I was younger. Having grown up on "Maker's schedule vs. manager's schedule" I was a die-hard believer that managers had it easy, while engineers got the short end of the stick due to all of those pesky distractions. When I switched to management, I was shocked to discover that I still needed periods of sustained focus and that I still had problems dealing with interruptions. The maker vs. manager distinction I had learned about didn't really exist, but in the manager role I had no choice but to work around it. Once I stopped blaming everyone else for my poor ability to recover focus or get into flow states, I became much better at managing my own time. I firmly believe that articles like this are counter-productive, because they send a message that poor time management and excessive time wasting are not your fault, and therefore not your responsibility. That mindset closes the door for any possibility of improvement, which is the opposite of what you want. Yes, it would be great in an ideal world if we could work for a week straight without interruptions, but that's not reality. Instead, focus on skills to better manage your own time and plan around interruptions. Practice responding to people with "I'm in the middle of something right now, can we talk about this after our scheduled meeting in the afternoon?" to coalesce your meetings together. Or statements like "I'm happy to help, but I'm really busy right now. Can you write this up in an e-mail, cc my manager, and we'll look at it in the morning?" If your manager is to blame, broach the subject in a professional manner and politely ask if your manager can help batch your interruptions into a single daily conversation. Put it on the calendar if you must, but the important thing is to take charge of your time management. Finally, put deliberate effort into getting back into a flow state after interruptions. If your first reaction after returning to your desk is to open up HN or Twitter, then you're part of the problem. I've found that putting my headphones on and spending 10-20 seconds mentally retracing my steps before the interruption is very helpful.

cjfd 7y ago

This is kind of true but the article is pushing it a bit far. In the schema there is an afternoon with block of two hours. One would hope that a maker could do something in a two hour block...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

C0d3r 7y ago

> At the same time, real work is not getting done. Meaningful work is usually done quietly and in solitude. You can do great work by pairing or mobbing too. Being isolated is good, but it's harder to learn new things working by yourself.

pmorici 7y ago
"it's harder to learn new things working by yourself." I strongly disagree. I rarely learn anything of consequence when working with others. Pairing and mobbing strike me as fads.
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  Some people thrive in that kind of environment (XP and all that), I know it sucked the soul out of me the one time it was forced on my team at a prior employer.
- dheera 7y ago
  I generally do not work well if there's someone staring at me as I work. I also have my own, high-productivity, quirky ways of using computers that mostly only work for me in solitude.
- C0d3r 7y ago
  Interesting, I guess it depends on the person and on the thing you're learning like someone else mentioned. I do think you need some time by yourself to really go deep at your own speed to learn something. Pairing and mobbing are not fads, they've been around for a while and in my experience they've been very useful, I'd recommend you try it with someone with experience with it.
commandlinefan 7y ago
> harder to learn new things working by yourself Depends on the things. Another person might be able to share a few tricks with you: you may not know that you can drag the lower corner of an excel spreadsheet cell to copy formulas, for example, or that you can use "cw" to change a word in vi. On the other hand, learning something like relational database modeling or functional programming requires dedicated focus that another person is probably going to get in the way of.

the-dude 7y ago

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=manager+schedule https://hn.algolia.com/?q=manager+schedule http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html And 7 days ago : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21440456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21440456 ( The Manager’s Schedule Is Holding Back Remote Work )

war1025 7y ago

The endless focus on "rockstar" productivity seems misplaced to me. This is a profession. You're going to be doing it for a long time. No need to burn the candle at both ends.

scandox 7y ago

Sometimes the problem can be one of self-definition, or of self-definition over time. Professionally, I have had years where I was definitely in maker mode and years where I was in manager mode. There are times when for a few months your head is down and you're just making stuff. Then the making slows down and what you've made goes into maintenance or into a next planning phase where lots of things have to happen at the same time. The problem can be that some developers see themselves as forever in maker mode: in other words they treat being asked to talk and discuss things as mere interruptions. A lot of managers I think are quite traumatized by this in a way: they can feel like they literally have no power to make things happen. As a result they may well over-react over the course of a career and treat anyone in maker mode as simply another developer who won't talk to them.

dsaavy 7y ago
Phew, thought I was the only one who went through these cycles. The maker > maintenance > manager/planning cycle always feels unsettling during the maintenance phase.

bayesian_horse 7y ago

Erm, working at night has some serious health disadvantages. even if you get enough sleep during the day. One of the worst things you can do is switch those schedules regularly. Some people may be able to do this, especially for a few months or years. Many however, will break down sooner or later!

tluyben2 7y ago
I have heard this before (long haul stewardesses and breast cancer I think) but was that researched enough to say it like you say? Quite a lot of people who do this for decades without issues... I can see how it can be bad for people, but is the cause of that too little sleep, some reason of anxiety being unable to cope with 'the day', doing drugs, some stress factors that make it easier to work when the rest sleep etc; if one exchanges night with day fully, has that been proved to be objectively bad?
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  There may be people who can shift their night cycle, maybe even because of genetics or circumstance, but medical science says that circadian rhythms are hard to change and changing sleep cycles too fast leads to issues. And this may also be a case of how many problems you have. Night shifts might not be a problem on its own, but throw in a little depression, or getting overweight, or whatever, and it's going to suck big time.
codesushi42 7y ago
This should be the top comment in the thread. This kind of work schedule is not healthy or sustainable. Long term success is like running a marathon.
- Enginerrrd 7y ago
  For most people that's probably true. But I definitely know people that are just like that to the point that it's at least sustainable for them. They were absolutely brilliant, but kind of manic at times, and that's just how they worked best. They'd work for like 20 hours straight without eating and then come home, wolf down some food ravenously and sleep for 14 hours. Who am I to judge the schedule they chose?

thrower123 7y ago

It's often less the "manager schedule" that is the problem, but getting screwed into complying totally with the "customer schedule." The one that has been the bane of my existence for years now is the 9AM daily call with the customer that is on Europe or Delhi time. It just destroys the day when you start things off with that kind of thing, and get immediately tossed into placating and containment mode. Then whatever you thought you might be able to do for the day gets tossed out the window in order to react to the latest fire drill before the next call. It's entirely reactive, rather than proactive, and it is soul crushing. It's almost lunch time now, and I haven't done anything worthwhile yet today, other than try to bring some kind of order to this chaos and triage.

aisengard 7y ago
Unfortunately, your role is "customer support engineer". Ideally there is another team that does not directly interact with the client that is actually able to get real work done on the product. Try to get on that team.
- thrower123 7y ago
  You have to wear all the hats on a small team, unfortunately. Between Thanksgiving and New Years is typically one of the better periods of the year for getting real work done, so there is that to look forward to.

heyflyguy 7y ago

I had this exact situation come up with an engineer that I can only call brilliant, with the most conservative of overtones. He was more than that. Being a maker myself I gladly encouraged him to work when he wanted, sometimes that meant he'd work 48 hours straight and sleep for two days and show up Friday. His 3 days of work (as his peers would describe it), easily was double the quality and output of his closest colleague. I loved having him on my team. Eventually, other people started asking to work 3 days a week, suggesting that they too would pull all-nighters in an effort to have 2 mid-week days off. I let a few experiments happen but sadly in most cases the result was less than 50% of what they had been previously able to accomplish. This led to a new merit based working system when we placed emphasis on sprints and achieving. This too ended up failing because the interconnected dependandcies of sprints were always bottlenecked by the slowest operator. The final result was the eventual departure of my most prized teammate, and mostly due to peer pressure. I often think about how I could have better allowed his brilliance while not alienating the rest of his team, but in the end I failed.

tikhonj 7y ago
This is one of the often unspoken benefits of remote work—it obscures how (and when) you work and exposes only the results. This naturally pushes back on micromanagement not only from managers but also from everyone else on the team. It's not fool-proof by any means—you can still build up processes and expectations that lead to micromanagement if your managers or culture are so inclined—but it makes the default behavior of the team distinctly less oriented towards micromanagement. You'll waste a lot less time and energy worrying about optics if people being present at a particular place and time is not an obvious signal of dedication/hard work/whatever.
- jes5199 7y ago
  in the age of slack, where managers about to instant message you any second, you don't really get control of your schedule
  - rriepe 7y ago

lxe 7y ago

Conversely, get better at handling interruptions. In almost every non-junior role (not just "manager") you will be required to deal with many things throughout the day, coding being just one of them.

rch 7y ago
> almost every non-junior role To me, this sounds far from being universally true. Some Sr. roles allow for hard-split meeting days vs. productive days, and moving to six week self managed "sprints" with regular updates to a draft publication instead of shuffling vaguely defined tickets around a board.
- kraigie 7y ago
  >Some Sr. roles allow for hard-split meeting days vs. productive days Such as?
jbeninger 7y ago
I'm not sure "get better at handling interruptions" is possible. If I'm juggling a dozen ideas in my head and am interrupted, that tower is going to crumble regardless. If you're suggesting I rebuild my methods of developing from the ground up to avoid that mindset, that's a huge ask. I'm not convinced it's even possible. I'm able to muddle through a task with regular interruptions, but I'll be more likely to make mistakes and it will take longer. There's a world of difference between what I accomplish in an "office" day vs a "coding" day. I think the article has it right. Dedicate some "office hours" to being interrupted, but recognize that some people are far more productive during long uninterrupted periods.
afarrell 7y ago
Any tips on how to do this?

twblalock 7y ago

The ability to work during normal business hours, dealing with interruptions and collaborating with your colleagues, is a skill that every engineer should develop. This skill doesn't come naturally to some people, but it can be developed and it will make you more productive. In particular, develop the ability to enforce encapsulation on your mental model of the program you are working on, so you don't need to keep the entire thing in your head all the time (this will probably make your code better too). This makes it easier to get back into the flow after being interrupted. The most productive engineers I know work during normal business hours, get interrupted constantly because they work on important projects with a lot of stakeholders, and get a lot of work done anyway. That's what 99% of engineers should aspire to. There are very few rockstars like Carmack who are so good that the benefits of their crazy work styles outweigh the drawbacks.

inetknght 7y ago
> That's what 99% of engineers should aspire to. I wholeheartedly disagree. You're trying to force a generation of imagination into a box. That will only destroy the very imagination you need.
- mathgladiator 7y ago
  So, I have a different and more sinister version. My sinister version is yes, yes, please, keep those imaginations in the box so that I may continue to have a monopoly.... whwhahahaahhaa ---- I'm a principal engineer with a fully capable imagination, and I once got the feedback that my creativity was "transcendental"; the reality is that I don't confine myself to schedule, and my only real discipline is using English to describe my thoughts and improve as a writer. I try very hard to get people to think out of the box, but it is really hard because 99% of the work does not require "divine inspiration". Most people gravitate towards this advice because it is most applicable, and it becomes a virtuous cycle for them. However, it creates a vicious cycle of the Pareto distribution where 1% of engineers can actually use their max level of creativity and use the full breadth of computer science.
  - 7y ago

cwyers 7y ago

> At the same time, real work is not getting done. Meaningful work is usually done quietly and in solitude. I don't really like this definition of meaningful work. Yes, there are some tasks that require focus and inventive mental work. But those aren't the only tasks a "maker" faces. And they aren't always the most important ones.

meristem 7y ago

I agree with the post's view of maker time. I disagree with its ideas around manager's ideal schedule. My experiences as a manager were that the disruptions of hourly 'something new' were unhelpful for strategy development or even moving the tactical horizon to something past 'next week'. This resulted in my 'actual' work being done before anyone else arrived or after everyone else left. I have met very few managers who did not have similar concerns.

jpincheira 7y ago

Totally. These days what I do is I allocate time for features/product and just go hard on it for Standups [1]. I do say 1-2 weeks building product as if it were a hackathon. When I am done, I go back to marketing & sales, in the manager's schedule. So in short, I do things on consecutive days: * to code, I do maker's schedule. * to sell/talk to users, I do manager's schedule. I'm feeling like writing on the topic as well, as it can be valuable for other solo founders too. I struggled a lot in the beginning when building Standups. [1] https://standups.io https://standups.io

npo9 7y ago
Why do you do both? Why not stick with the one you enjoy the most?
- jpincheira 7y ago
  Because to do creative (product: code/design) work I have to really get uninterrupted streaks of work. But to do sales, talking to users, I have to do it on the manager's schedule, with the typical slots within a day calendar schedule.
  - npo9 7y ago
    No. You misunderstand. Why do you want to do both creative work and sales?

wizzard 7y ago

> The reason why many managers fail to see and address this problem is that they are used to looking at communication and assume it's a good thing. Because they see activity. People are attending meetings, talking to each other, the online presence indicators are bright green. Clearly, a lot of work is happening! Yes, this. And a similar problem occurs when manager-types try to come up with metrics to measure programmer productivity. Their yardsticks for what constitutes meaningful work, as a manager, cannot simply be translated over to makers.

kraigie 7y ago
>manager-types try to come up with metrics to measure programmer productivity. Plenty can. The CFO types look at profit per commit/schedule whatever. A lot of middle managment types look at activity per commit. The real issue here is that mangement by productivity data. Means most management is deadweight that can be replaced by a spreedsheet with the ability to send form emails to those falling behind on the metrics. Anywhere else would be downsized, but management has enough power go protect it's own existence at the expense of the company.

graphememes 7y ago

As a manager it's very hard to get everyone else on board with this

kraigie 7y ago
>As a manager it's very hard to get everyone else on board with this If management was easy then everyone would do it. How about this for a start? You taking total control of your direct report's calendar. They have read only so can see what meetings you have scheduled they should attend. You book the meetings. Anyone who wants a meeting has to disturb the manager (so there will be fewer requests) and pushback will have more force. It's not whiny engineer saying they can't attend the meeting. It's the manager saying they are too busy. You could also send just 1 report to a meeting instead of the whole team. Since you control the calendar you can choose who goes.

gowld 7y ago

I find that the simplest way to avoid getting stuck on someone else's schedule is to get a ~month ahead of your expected productivity (even if that means sandbagging estimates, or working extra, or accepting a bad performance rating because you are holding back on reporting your accomplishments), and then whenever you are asked for status update for management/customer, report what you were working on last week/month, not what you are working on right now. This means you are never playing "catch up" externally to yourself. It's like having a month of living expenses saved in your bank account it's a month of political capital saved up at your job.

draklor40 7y ago

Carmack was able to choose his timings because it was HIS company. People worked for him, not vice versa. To be the master of your time, you have to work for yourself, not under someone else. When reality and idealism clashes, reality wins.

kukabynd 7y ago
Couldn’t say it better. This is something most people who work for others don’t understand.

martin_henk 7y ago

Actually someone understands my trouble

ben7799 7y ago

I feel like we're only having this discussion at this point because: - Agile brought interruptions to a new level of pain - We have too many instant interruption communication points (slack) - Open Offices have made interrution far worse There were books about this concept 30 years ago. It was totally recognized that you shouldn't break up an engineer's time into tiny chunks with 1000 cuts worth of meetings. But we threw it all out the window in the last 10-15 years with the rise of Agile + Open Office + Instant Message/Always-On communication programs.

bonestamp2 7y ago
Out of all of these things, open offices have been the worst in my opinion. At least with slack (or whatever other messenger you use) you can ignore that until your thought is complete or you want to make a quick note of your thoughts before allowing the distraction. When someone taps your shoulder it's much harder to ask them to wait, so it happens much less than it should... not to mention the constant passive distraction of people moving around and having other conversations. We used to be in small offices of 2-4 people. That was perfect and I miss those days. The office looks a lot nicer now that it's open, but it's a disaster from a concentration standpoint. But, I think a lot of managers like the open concept because it's easier to see people and because it does often look nicer and often has more natural light.
- mc3 7y ago
  I have never worked in a 2-4 office and certainly not a 1-office, but I find about 10 in an office is manageable if they are all quiet non-phone-calling people. I worked a place with 400 people in open plan close proximity, where your workspace doubles up as a corridor, and no meeting spaces, so it also doubles up as a meeting room for any teams meetings. It was impossible to concentrate. That drove me to some Howard Leight earplugs, beefy headphones with "the ocean machine set to 9". The impomptu meetings now sounded like a squeek, but it was still distracting. I had to leave that job because of this and other negative effects of a cattle-like approach to handling software talent.
eikenberry 7y ago

gdubs 7y ago

I'm curious what the meeting schedule of Bell Labs was like. I get the sense that the researchers had plenty of time to invent, take naps in their office, and at the same time bring a lot of stuff to market.

meed 7y ago

So much truth...

GCA10 7y ago

Paul Graham is so very, very right when he highlights the limitations of managers' view that "one hour" is an important increment of time. For me, the most important interval is a decade. Get your big goals right, and that huge swath of time will let you do something hugely transformative in your work, your sidelights or your personal relationships. But to get there, you need the stubbornness to work through the hard stuff for a long time without immediate rewards. You also need the freedom to reinvent your approach a couple times, without feeling embarrassed or doomed. Being a maker calls for a totally different clock.

tboyd47 7y ago

The fact that he had to work at night in order to get any concentration time would be a company culture fail in most situations. But, the devil's in the details. > David Kushner reflected on the unconventional working style of the company's ace coder, John Carmack. "Ace coder" isn't quite accurate job title. He was a co-founder. People act differently when they have legal ownership over their work.

blueboo 7y ago
When you talk to effective people, you quickly learn they get most of their work-work done before 10am or after 5pm.
- timeimp 7y ago
  I wonder, sincerely, if this is to do with the sun / the idea that other people are awake and there is opportunity for disruption...
  - throwaway10x 7y ago
    Sometimes you get the most brilliant of ideas in the shower after your work day, and you just can't wait till you get back to work next day (also because you know you'll have a ton of meetings anyways).
throwaway10x 7y ago
I work very late into nights on the project I created. I hate myself sometimes for doing this because this now the company's cash cow and I get nothing more than any other engineer. I've contemplated quitting but I see no benefit to this, it's still one of the coolest projects I've worked on. It's not just legal ownership that can drive people.
- tboyd47 7y ago
  Why not just put your resume out there and see what happens?

jariel 7y ago

Very, very apt article, except I'm uncomfortable with the notion of the 'manager' moniker. A lot of work can be done on these terms, just not 'maker work'. Maybe best to call it 'business schedule' v 'maker schedule'.

galaxyLogic 7y ago

To be a SW rock star you need to master 3 languages: 1. The programming language used and its (de facto) standard libraries 2. The language of the important design- and tooling patterns that are useful in the said programming environment 3. The language of the Problem Domain. If you can master all three, then you are a rock star your productivity will be much higher than those of your colleagues who have not achieved the mastery of these. Now what is the language of the problem domain? Often it is just the methods and functions already present in the application. Here whoever made the original design has a clear advantage over others who started working on the same application later. When starting from scratch it is the language of the business, say accounting terms, and their meaning if you are building an accounting system of some kind. The code is just something written in these 3 languages, if you can speak in those languages you can write the code down, and can read it and understand it and thus modify it further. To master all 3 of these languages can take a lot of effort over time. But so it is with true rock stars. Think Jimmy Page, he had a long career on stage and in studio before he joined Led Zeppelin.

alchemism 7y ago

It’s practically from another era at this point, but on this topic I cannot recommend enough Time Management for Systems Administrators[1]. Ops Engineers have the Firefighter-Maker-Manager dilemma to contend with. The techniques to balance reactive work with planned work adapts well to SWEs in open offices with too many meetings. [1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596007836.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596007836.do

ThomPete 7y ago

The makers response should always by default be. “Do you want i know or when its done” then after that a discussion about delivery schedules can be had.

TomMckenny 7y ago

If you genuinely are an X times programmer, unless you find the right environment, it is irrelevant. You will find under-utilization is common and so burnout comes quickly. As you can see in the comments, many places are unable to find ways to maximize your productivity. And once underutilized, you are of less value and so less valued. And even though these places will want you, they are a catastrophically bad match. Since the risk of burnout from frustration is real, if you value your career, you will need to leave such places quickly until you find one that can utilize you maximally.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dfilppi 7y ago

That's why remote workers are more productive, provided they can get isolated at home.

systematical 7y ago

I was digging this blog until... "The most straightforward way to address this is to build a team knowledge base. Not only does that minimize the number of repetitive questions bounced around the office, it allows new team members to basically onboard themselves." # Insert nuclino advert # Right....That's a culture thing, more than it is a software solution. You can only use a software solution to aid the culture, not the other way around. In my experience, This culture needs to come from the top-down.

peferron 7y ago

My impostor syndrome briefly reappears every time I read articles like this :) I don't feel any state of "flow" or "zone" or whatever, and certainly wouldn't consider my entire afternoon ruined because of a single meeting in the middle as illustrated in the article. If there's a hard problem to solve, sure, I'll work on it until 4 AM because I have a hard time letting go of unfinished things, but that's mostly throwing hours at the problem and I don't think I'm massively more productive than during the day at the office.

throwawayjava 7y ago
Intense focus can be a symptom of ADD/ADHD [1]. I've always wondered if software developers who experience flow/zone (myself included) have varying levels of mild ADD that presents as intense focus. [1] https://www.additudemag.com/understanding-adhd-hyperfocus/ https://www.additudemag.com/understanding-adhd-hyperfocus/

mathattack 7y ago

Who are these managers with nice even 1 hour blocks? My time gets chiseled down to 30 and sometimes 15 minute blocks, with rampant double scheduling.

kmstout 7y ago

A few things that I've found helpful: 1. I start my day a couple hours later than typical for my organization. This both lets me work quieter hours and shaves time off my commute. 2. From 2 p.m. on is reserved as "Real, Actual Work" on my calendar. 3. I check email a few times a day. Any other time, Outlook is closed. Those who need me immediately can call my phone or visit my desk. 4. At least once a week, usually Friday, I work either as late as I can or until I reach a suitable milestone. The clock doesn't matter.

movieswebsite 7y ago

https://superfastblog1.blogspot.com/2019/11/best-free-photo-editor-online.html https://superfastblog1.blogspot.com/2019/11/best-free-photo-...

teekert 7y ago

Agreed wholeheartedly, in fact I try have meeting days and work days, the workdays I am usually working from home.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

I have always time shifted my working hours, at SAIC, Angel Studios, Google, and Capital One I would arrive very early to get some quality thinking and coding time - and then leave early. Some people at work probably thought I was goofing off, but they would roll in at 9am and not know I got to work hours before they did.

ilaksh 7y ago

My suggestion is that you get rid of the managers and have senior engineers manage themselves.

edisonjoao 7y ago

interesting