4 ms·
Interruptions are annoying but I think people are going a little overboard with this vitriol. I would wager that we are all just as guilty of doing the same to
by snarf21 5y ago
Interruptions are annoying but I think people are going a little overboard with this vitriol. I would wager that we are all just as guilty of doing the same to our team members who are deep in thought on something. "Did you merge that git branch?", "Is the staging server down for you?", "Can you take a look at this query and see if you notice anything?"; things like this are batted around between co-workers without thinking much about what someone else is doing. We expect co-workers to get back to us right away so that WE are no longer blocked. If someone is showing offline, we'll just ping the next person and so on until we get an answer. The difference is that the other engineers are on our team, we are in it together. The others aren't and they don't "deserve" to interrupt us.
The other thing I don't see being discussed is that maximizing LoC per day may not be the thing that provides the most value to the company. It is tough though because those things aren't necessarily concrete and don't give us the same kind of satisfaction and feedback. We can't point to a new class or module or page that is now done, even if what it does isn't actually the result needed from the business. Sometimes the most important value you can provide to a business is thinking about what you are working on or what the newest requests from the business side are.
- MattGaiser 5y agoAt least on the teams I have been on, we didn't physically interrupt people. We sent Slack and Teams messages for all of that stuff about merges and staging.
- snarf21 5y agoFair, but I think Slack/Teams are just as disruptive as physical interruptions, at least to me.
- cratermoon 5y agoThere's definitely an issue with notifications in things like Slack/Discord/Teams, but it's a symptom of a larger problem software where everything is competing for attention. Social media apps do it because it's part of their business model and built in to the addictive-by-design need to get eyes on ads. Chat systems aren't (yet?) dependent on ad revenue, so they don't need to copy the behavior of social media, but, possibly because they use the same operating-system level notification APIs, that's how they act.
- lolinder 5y agoHow disruptive depends on company culture. If the expectation is to respond immediately, it's no different than a physical interruption. On the other hand, I leave Slack notifications off and only use it through the browser. Usually, I only notice the tiny glowing favicon once I'm largely out of the zone anyway.
- varjag 5y agoThis weird preference on here for Slack interruptions is just another manifestation of generational call vs text divide. It's more about cultural context and personal anxiety than real disruptive effect.
- ElFitz 5y ago> We expect co-workers to get back to us right away so that WE are no longer blocked. Perhaps you do, but I and some of the people I’ve had the pleasure to work with do not. Personally, I’ve almost always worked asynchronously. If I have a question, I send it on the proper Slack channel and either keep going on what I was doing if isn’t blocking, or do something else when it is. Tasks are usually large enough for that. Regarding Slack interruptions, all my notifications aside from a handful of phone numbers are disabled. Things rarely are urgent, and can usually wait an hour or even until the next break.