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> It also means that I get to choose when I will allow myself to be interrupted, rather than sitting in an open concept office and being _continually_ interrupt

> It also means that I get to choose when I will allow myself to be interrupted, rather than sitting in an open concept office and being _continually_ interrupted. This is extremely situational. When I was in a larger house and had no kids, WFH was an easy way to avoid interruptions. Moving to a smaller house (more expensive city) and having kids flipped the situation around. Avoiding interruptions at home was extremely difficult because I was always only a door away from someone asking a “quick favor”. It’s not just me: As a remote manger I can almost always tell when summer break starts for everyone’s area because there’s a stepwise decline in productive when people’s kids aren’t in school. Likewise, the office environment makes all the difference. I’ve worked in open-office spaces where everybody respected each other and concentration was the default. I’ve also worked in private-office spaces where I could expect knocks on my door every 15 minutes or less because the culture was so bad that interrupting the engineers was the default practice. Lately, I’ve felt that fully remote has been the worst of all worlds. Once Slack becomes the default I’m pinged from every angle all day long. It’s hard to push back against people who want answers now now now and know they can get your attention by typing the right few characters into Slack. Comes down to culture, but Slack makes it easy for people to quietly interrupt people directly whereas it was much easier to police the interruptions (as a manager) when I could literally see the offenders bothering the engineers.

dleslie 5y ago
> Moving to a smaller house (more expensive city) and having kids flipped the situation around. I lived in an 800 square foot home with one bathroom for five of the last six years, with my wife and two children. My desk was beside the front entryway, with no door. > Avoiding interruptions at home was extremely difficult because I was always only a door away from someone asking a “quick favor”. That's a problem of setting boundaries. It never gets easier, but at least the spouse works and the kids go to school and day care. > I’ve felt that fully remote has been the worst of all worlds. Once Slack becomes the default I’m pinged from every angle all day long. It’s hard to push back against people who want answers now now now and know they can get your attention by typing the right few characters into Slack. More setting of boundaries. Be firm and say no. Better, don't respond outside of your core hours unless you're explicitly on pager duty.
tmmx 5y ago
When I want to focus, I pause slack notifications. Slack provide a way to still send it, but in my workplace people tend to respect that setting unless it is a real emergency.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  Yeah, this is the key. Whenever I hear about somebody's hellish Slack culture at their workplace and they blame Slack I always think, "That sounds like a bad office culture that would be bad even if Slack was removed from the equation."
  - jjav 5y ago
    To some extent that's true. But tools have their own culture as well. I've loved email for 30+ years because the culture is inherently async. I'll reply when I get to it, which might be tomorrow. Slack builds a culture of hyper-immediate distraction which seems difficult to avoid.
    - JohnBooty 5y ago
      But tools have their own culture as well. Yeah, admittedly, this is very true. Any tool encourages some behaviors and discourages others. I've loved email for 30+ years Email feels like a firehose to me. I can't get any value from it these days. 100's of emails per day of notifications and such. With effort it can be tamed. Filters and so on. But I've never gotten to a great place with it in modern times. With new sources of crap pouring into my inbox every day it is, at best, something that can be tamed but requires constant attention and maintenance. Of course, this is all subjective and personal. It's working for you! Kudos. =)
      - jjav 5y ago
        > With effort it can be tamed. Filters and so on. Yes, that is the key. Beauty of email is that it can be done because it's all open protocols. I've been dragged into a signal channel and that's one untamable firehose. Sequential stream of messages via proprietary UI so there is nothing I can do to automatically file messaged into various folders. Nothing I can do to auto-process certain messages, nothing I can do to mark some things read and some unread, etc.. Email allows for infinite flexibility in configuring it just how you need to work best. If you have just one inbox and everything lands there all the time, I can see how that's a firehose that's not going to be pleasant. But with email the tools exist to customize this away.
JohnBooty 5y ago
Once Slack becomes the default I’m pinged from every angle all day long. I recently began work on a team that has a brief "culture FAQ" regarding things like Slack messaging norms and expectations. We have an agreement that @'ing/DM'ing is expected to be asynchronous unless you explicitly let the recipient know otherwise - "hey, the server's down" or "hey, I'm blocked on this" etc. (above paragraph edited for clarity) It's been awesome. Very respectful environment. People @ you but you are not expected to stop what you're doing. By the same token, I can @ others without fear that I'm causing them an undue interuption, because asynchronous messaging is the norm.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  Doing this reduces efficiency. You are potentially blocking someone for half of a day when you might just need to send a simple message back.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    Ah, thanks for replying. I edited my post for clarity. I assure you we do not sit around, blocked, waiting for replies. =) The point being, if you need an immediate reply, you're expected to explicitly mention that. Otherwise it's assumed to be async. It's working well IMO.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      Do you look at notifications or how do you manage to separate those two? Where I work people can call me on slack or otherwise of it is urgent (no one has abused it so far). If I am in hyperfocus, anything in text is assumed asynchronous and won't get looked at until I resurface.
- ketzo 5y ago
  Our Slack is very similar, but no one's ever laid it out explicitly (at least not to me) - I love that.
- sharat87 5y ago
rzz3 5y ago
Everything you just says is a great advocacy of a hybrid environment. I’m diametrically opposed to ever working in an office again. I’ve never worked in an office where I felt comfortable. I’m wonderful at focusing from my home office and my productivity nearly doubled. I’m literally never going back. That said, it doesn’t work for you it seems, and that matters too. Hybrid is the answer, as one size does not fit all.
philwelch 5y ago
> Moving to a smaller house (more expensive city) and having kids flipped the situation around. Avoiding interruptions at home was extremely difficult because I was always only a door away from someone asking a “quick favor”. IMO full remote can eliminate the need to live in a small house in an expensive city.

dleslie 5y ago

> Moving to a smaller house (more expensive city) and having kids flipped the situation around. I lived in an 800 square foot home with one bathroom for five of the last six years, with my wife and two children. My desk was beside the front entryway, with no door. > Avoiding interruptions at home was extremely difficult because I was always only a door away from someone asking a “quick favor”. That's a problem of setting boundaries. It never gets easier, but at least the spouse works and the kids go to school and day care. > I’ve felt that fully remote has been the worst of all worlds. Once Slack becomes the default I’m pinged from every angle all day long. It’s hard to push back against people who want answers now now now and know they can get your attention by typing the right few characters into Slack. More setting of boundaries. Be firm and say no. Better, don't respond outside of your core hours unless you're explicitly on pager duty.

tmmx 5y ago

When I want to focus, I pause slack notifications. Slack provide a way to still send it, but in my workplace people tend to respect that setting unless it is a real emergency.

JohnBooty 5y ago
Yeah, this is the key. Whenever I hear about somebody's hellish Slack culture at their workplace and they blame Slack I always think, "That sounds like a bad office culture that would be bad even if Slack was removed from the equation."
- jjav 5y ago
  To some extent that's true. But tools have their own culture as well. I've loved email for 30+ years because the culture is inherently async. I'll reply when I get to it, which might be tomorrow. Slack builds a culture of hyper-immediate distraction which seems difficult to avoid.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    But tools have their own culture as well. Yeah, admittedly, this is very true. Any tool encourages some behaviors and discourages others. I've loved email for 30+ years Email feels like a firehose to me. I can't get any value from it these days. 100's of emails per day of notifications and such. With effort it can be tamed. Filters and so on. But I've never gotten to a great place with it in modern times. With new sources of crap pouring into my inbox every day it is, at best, something that can be tamed but requires constant attention and maintenance. Of course, this is all subjective and personal. It's working for you! Kudos. =)
    - jjav 5y ago
      > With effort it can be tamed. Filters and so on. Yes, that is the key. Beauty of email is that it can be done because it's all open protocols. I've been dragged into a signal channel and that's one untamable firehose. Sequential stream of messages via proprietary UI so there is nothing I can do to automatically file messaged into various folders. Nothing I can do to auto-process certain messages, nothing I can do to mark some things read and some unread, etc.. Email allows for infinite flexibility in configuring it just how you need to work best. If you have just one inbox and everything lands there all the time, I can see how that's a firehose that's not going to be pleasant. But with email the tools exist to customize this away.

JohnBooty 5y ago

Once Slack becomes the default I’m pinged from every angle all day long. I recently began work on a team that has a brief "culture FAQ" regarding things like Slack messaging norms and expectations. We have an agreement that @'ing/DM'ing is expected to be asynchronous unless you explicitly let the recipient know otherwise - "hey, the server's down" or "hey, I'm blocked on this" etc. (above paragraph edited for clarity) It's been awesome. Very respectful environment. People @ you but you are not expected to stop what you're doing. By the same token, I can @ others without fear that I'm causing them an undue interuption, because asynchronous messaging is the norm.

charcircuit 5y ago
Doing this reduces efficiency. You are potentially blocking someone for half of a day when you might just need to send a simple message back.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  Ah, thanks for replying. I edited my post for clarity. I assure you we do not sit around, blocked, waiting for replies. =) The point being, if you need an immediate reply, you're expected to explicitly mention that. Otherwise it's assumed to be async. It's working well IMO.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    Do you look at notifications or how do you manage to separate those two? Where I work people can call me on slack or otherwise of it is urgent (no one has abused it so far). If I am in hyperfocus, anything in text is assumed asynchronous and won't get looked at until I resurface.
ketzo 5y ago
Our Slack is very similar, but no one's ever laid it out explicitly (at least not to me) - I love that.
sharat87 5y ago

rzz3 5y ago

Everything you just says is a great advocacy of a hybrid environment. I’m diametrically opposed to ever working in an office again. I’ve never worked in an office where I felt comfortable. I’m wonderful at focusing from my home office and my productivity nearly doubled. I’m literally never going back. That said, it doesn’t work for you it seems, and that matters too. Hybrid is the answer, as one size does not fit all.

philwelch 5y ago

> Moving to a smaller house (more expensive city) and having kids flipped the situation around. Avoiding interruptions at home was extremely difficult because I was always only a door away from someone asking a “quick favor”. IMO full remote can eliminate the need to live in a small house in an expensive city.