Ha, one of the most relatable HN submissions in a long, long time. Many people, me included, link those out-of-the-blue messages with "you are fired" or "can y

Ha, one of the most relatable HN submissions in a long, long time. Many people, me included, link those out-of-the-blue messages with "you are fired" or "can you please work weekends for one month", and both are not welcome news. But there's also very often another thing: a creator/maker like the programmers are (or should be) assuming that the other party will not interrupt you if it wasn't for anything important -- because you know you wouldn't want that for yourself and are trying to be considerate towards other people's concentration. Turns out however, people send these messages for all sorts of random unimportant things. With time I learned to respond immediately so I don't allow any anxiety to take a hold in me -- but then when I see that it's something trivial (and is not blocking the other party) I also immediately reply with "sure but I'll do it later since I got plenty on my plate right now". A few people took offense but I got over it. They too. --- But then there's also the other extreme. My last long-ish contract I was in a company where the CTO and his second in command were literally impossible to reach outside of biweekly scheduled meetings -- and even then nothing they deem off-topic is allowed. I get that you have to preserve your focus and concentration but they took it to the other extreme and it was very, VERY not okay because super important decisions only the CTO can make were being dragged out for months, leading to improvisation by the rest of the team that was then criticized by the said CTO.