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> Working with a largely distributed team, I trained myself to treat all of these requests the same. Why?

ryukafalz 6y ago
If you prioritize the local coworker over your remote coworkers simply because they're nearby, that contributes to the idea that remote coworkers are less effective, because you're making them less effective.
- iateanapple 6y ago
  > If you prioritize the local coworker over your remote coworkers simply because they're nearby So the right answer is to answer calls etc from remote colleagues promptly - not to ignore local coworkers who walk over. It’s not to make local communication less effective to prop up remote work.
  - DevKoala 6y ago
    You don’t ignore people who come to talk to you. You tell them politely that you are focused on a task, and to wait until you are free. Over time people learn to send you a message first to coordinate when you are free to talk. At the company I work for, the norm at the office is to always ask first “is this a good time to discuss X?”. Not even the CTO gets a free pass to interrupt engineers. Actually he was one of the people who coached me to prioritize my focus first and to learn to say “No”.
    - iateanapple 6y ago
      > You tell them politely that you are focused on a task, and to wait until you are free. If I’m coming to talk to you then I think it’s important enough to interrupt you. You are in effect gimping local communication.
      - interactivecode 6y ago
        It is, you are putting your own issue in higher regard just because you don't know someone else’s situation. When working remotely think ahead and assume your issue/question isn’t as important as you think it is. Because most of the time questions for colleagues aren't as urgent for anyone except you.
        iateanapple 6y ago
        > It is, you are putting your own issue in higher regard just because you don't know someone else’s situation. Most of the time the communication is within the team and we do know the other team members situations (work wise). And we have decided it is important enough to interrupt them. And we are mostly knowledge workers who understand the cost of interruptions. Yes, there are bad eggs who waste everyone’s time, but they are in the small minority. What I find happens a lot is devs focus on their personal productivity ahead of the teams productivity.
        matthewowen 6y ago
        the bad eggs can be in the minority as members of the population, but still provide the majority of interruptions: the good eggs know to be judicious about it, but the bad eggs just interrupt and interrupt and interrupt.
        iateanapple 6y ago
        Agreed - so why not deal with the bad eggs individually? Because at the end of the day most managers aren’t really concerned with productivity - it’s far easier and less emotionally draining to just proscribe blanket bans. That’s one of the main reasons remote working hasn’t taken off more.
        DevKoala 6y ago
        You don’t prioritize your personal focus, you prioritize an objective. Most often these objectives are very clear to the rest of the team. Also I can’t believe you “know” something is “important enough to interrupt them”. I work for a place in which the most “junior” dev is worth a quarter of a million dollars a year. I am not going to tell some dude who is probably figuring out a new way to pack data to save us thousands of dollars a day, to take a minute to listen to me. It better be a fire.

If you prioritize the local coworker over your remote coworkers simply because they're nearby, that contributes to the idea that remote coworkers are less effective, because you're making them less effective.

iateanapple 6y ago
> If you prioritize the local coworker over your remote coworkers simply because they're nearby So the right answer is to answer calls etc from remote colleagues promptly - not to ignore local coworkers who walk over. It’s not to make local communication less effective to prop up remote work.
- DevKoala 6y ago
  You don’t ignore people who come to talk to you. You tell them politely that you are focused on a task, and to wait until you are free. Over time people learn to send you a message first to coordinate when you are free to talk. At the company I work for, the norm at the office is to always ask first “is this a good time to discuss X?”. Not even the CTO gets a free pass to interrupt engineers. Actually he was one of the people who coached me to prioritize my focus first and to learn to say “No”.
  - iateanapple 6y ago
    > You tell them politely that you are focused on a task, and to wait until you are free. If I’m coming to talk to you then I think it’s important enough to interrupt you. You are in effect gimping local communication.
    - interactivecode 6y ago
      It is, you are putting your own issue in higher regard just because you don't know someone else’s situation. When working remotely think ahead and assume your issue/question isn’t as important as you think it is. Because most of the time questions for colleagues aren't as urgent for anyone except you.
      - iateanapple 6y ago
        > It is, you are putting your own issue in higher regard just because you don't know someone else’s situation. Most of the time the communication is within the team and we do know the other team members situations (work wise). And we have decided it is important enough to interrupt them. And we are mostly knowledge workers who understand the cost of interruptions. Yes, there are bad eggs who waste everyone’s time, but they are in the small minority. What I find happens a lot is devs focus on their personal productivity ahead of the teams productivity.
        matthewowen 6y ago
        the bad eggs can be in the minority as members of the population, but still provide the majority of interruptions: the good eggs know to be judicious about it, but the bad eggs just interrupt and interrupt and interrupt.
        iateanapple 6y ago
        Agreed - so why not deal with the bad eggs individually? Because at the end of the day most managers aren’t really concerned with productivity - it’s far easier and less emotionally draining to just proscribe blanket bans. That’s one of the main reasons remote working hasn’t taken off more.
        DevKoala 6y ago
        You don’t prioritize your personal focus, you prioritize an objective. Most often these objectives are very clear to the rest of the team. Also I can’t believe you “know” something is “important enough to interrupt them”. I work for a place in which the most “junior” dev is worth a quarter of a million dollars a year. I am not going to tell some dude who is probably figuring out a new way to pack data to save us thousands of dollars a day, to take a minute to listen to me. It better be a fire.