5 ms·

Hmmm, lots of "yeah, I hate it when that happens" comments. Does anybody have ideas on how to fight this? Does anybody keep track like edw did, and then use it

Hmmm, lots of "yeah, I hate it when that happens" comments. Does anybody have ideas on how to fight this? Does anybody keep track like edw did, and then use it to defend themselves for the next "just ten minutes" task? Successfully? I haven't been able to make a point about how it's not "just ten minutes" without coming off as rude/unhelpful/lazy. I've tried to explain the cost of context-switching, or push it off until I'm not being interrupted, or at least have other people do pre-requisite work first (filing a bug would've fast-forwarded to somewhere between 12:14 and 12:38 here). In my dream world, a manager respects (or fears) you enough that you can say "you sit right here with me through this whole ordeal, and every minute of mine we waste, you owe me after 5 o'clock" and pull it off. Out here in the real world?

pavel_lishin 15y ago
I work for a small enough company, where my immediate supervisor commits code with the rest of us, and therefore understands these issues.
hluska 15y ago
Sorry to say this, but I think that the 'just ten minutes' task is a symptom of a much deeper corporate problem. For example, consider the boss in this story. Why does he/she think a task like this will only take 10 minutes? Is he a developer? Does he keep track of what is going on in other departments? Does he understand how a (seemingly simple) bug like this fits in the context of the whole project? Or, here's another question. Why is a developer sitting on that particular conference call? Doesn't the company have a QA department, or an internal support department that documents the issue and provides steps to replicate? Forgive me if I come across as being somewhat dismissive, but when I hear stories like this, I see signs of a very sick company that needs life support.
- patrickyeon 15y ago
  There is definitely a corporate problem (or many) here. At least the manager deciding that "this needs to be looked into right now" above edw's opinion, and the idea that the whole conf call + webconf dance was a better move than filing a ticket. > Why is a developer sitting on that particular conference call? Doesn't the company have a QA department, or an internal support department that documents the issue and provides steps to replicate? Exactly. How should one fight that these steps be taken, when your manager is trying to skip them? The thought process that I expect led to this situation were similar to "I could file a ticket, which will take me 5 minutes, or if I just show it to someone, it'll only take me 3 [not voiced: if nothing goes wrong.] That's working smarter!" Similarily, how do you convey to people the true cost of asking for something like this, instead of them treating everybody else's time and effort as externalities. Yes, there are signs of a sick culture. Culture is fluid though, so how does one push it back towards health? Preferrably without getting classed as difficult/rude/not-a-team-player and then having any argument you bring ignored.
  - vacri 15y ago
    Eh? There was a ticket filed. Finding it is what took up part of the 3 hours.
- sskates 15y ago
  You might be shocked to hear this but the vast majority of businesses in the real world have such huge process issues that you'd diagnose most of the economy as full of "very sick companies that need life support".
  - hluska 15y ago
    I'm far from shocked, in fact, I'd be surprised if the opposite were true.
Kadrith 15y ago
I'm often on the other end of this; assigning "10 minute" tasks to people. What I try to do is have a common place where I will put these with the expectation that it is checked at least once per day; normally OneNote. I don't expect all of the tasks to be done each day, but I also don't want them sent into a black hole. I leave it up to the team to figure out when they can accomplish the tasks based upon when I need the work done or to provide me with feedback on feasibility. If I have an urgent item that has to be done RIGHT NOW there may be an exception but in four years of being in this job I've only had a few of those. Those types of events are usually patient safety events where a patient's life is literally on the line and some piece of technology is acting up.
rickmb 15y ago
It starts by saying "no". The first few times this may be followed by an explanation. But if you don't say no, if you don't show that you are a serious professional who takes responsibility for his work, everything else will sound like whining. Yes, there a lots of clueless non-technical managers out there, but most of them are neither complete douchebags, nor are they too thick to understand the problem. Most of them will listen if you show them you're serious and not just trying to weasel your way out of something. If only because it is in their interests to take you seriously.
- petervandijck 15y ago
  I'm starting to think, almost everything good starts by saying "no".
Chris_Newton 15y ago
I think there are four recurring mistakes that cause these comical situations. Two are technical and two are social. The first technical mistake is using communications tools with built-in latency: e-mail instead of IM/IRC, conference call that everyone must dial into at a specific time instead of starting with at least two people on a call and calling others to join in real time. E-mail and scheduled dial-in conference calls must be just about the least efficient methods of professional communication ever invented. The other technical mistake is not having software for remote communications, particularly desktop sharing/presentations, that is readily available at the click of a mouse and familiar enough for all participants to set it up in moments. (A related mistake is using a dial-in conference service that isn't actually reliable. If you can't find one that works as it's supposed to -- and a lot of them don't, IME -- then you can at least ask someone to spend a bit of time and money installing an in-house solution if you need this facility often.) The first social mistake is allowing one person's lack of preparation to waste time for everyone in the group. There is no excuse for coming to multiple people and asking them to set up a call to discuss a bug when you don't know the bug number, nor for them not to have the details in front of them when joining the call. It's basic good practice for any meeting that everyone know in advance who will be attending, why, and what the goals of the meeting are, that someone lead the meeting efficiently, and that the results be circulated promptly afterwards. If you get to the scale where you have to involve multiple people at the same time, failing to do these things will almost inevitably waste time, and again it will often be the whole group's time while one individual sorts out something they should have done earlier. The second social mistake is being accepting of people who are late when a large meeting has been scheduled. Whenever possible, the meeting should start precisely on-time, and should not deviate from the published agenda to bring latecomers up to speed. If they miss out, it's their job to catch up afterwards, not the entire group's job to spin its wheels while someone recaps. If key people are consistently late and wasting others' time in this way, that is a serious management issue and someone needs to address why it is happening. Otherwise, you get to having a dozen people on the call, and if one key person is 10 minutes late because they were "just finishing an e-mail" then you've found another way to turn 10 minutes into two hours...
nandemo 15y ago
If it was 10 minutes to investigate and fix an urgent production bug, it would be OK. But he was asked time to join a teleconference in order to listen to a bug report! You can say "no" right there. A bug should be reported via a bug tracking system, maybe email for redundancy. There's no justification whatsoever to jump into a teleconference for a non-critical bug. Besides they got a QA department, so surely they have someone else (more technical than the bug reporter) who could look at it first to determine if it was really a bug, etc. > "you sit right here with me through this whole ordeal, and every minute of mine we waste, you owe me after 5 o'clock" That's not very savvy, to say the least. You sell your time to the company. The manager is not wasting your time, they're wasting the company's time or the "team's time" if you prefer. So you have to let him know when they're making decisions against their own best interest: "look, we have tasks A, B, and C, currently A is high priority, if you wish me to do task D, I'll be happy to do it, but it will delay A for n hours. And which of B or C should we re-schedule? I think it's C because blablah".

pavel_lishin 15y ago

I work for a small enough company, where my immediate supervisor commits code with the rest of us, and therefore understands these issues.

hluska 15y ago

Sorry to say this, but I think that the 'just ten minutes' task is a symptom of a much deeper corporate problem. For example, consider the boss in this story. Why does he/she think a task like this will only take 10 minutes? Is he a developer? Does he keep track of what is going on in other departments? Does he understand how a (seemingly simple) bug like this fits in the context of the whole project? Or, here's another question. Why is a developer sitting on that particular conference call? Doesn't the company have a QA department, or an internal support department that documents the issue and provides steps to replicate? Forgive me if I come across as being somewhat dismissive, but when I hear stories like this, I see signs of a very sick company that needs life support.

patrickyeon 15y ago
There is definitely a corporate problem (or many) here. At least the manager deciding that "this needs to be looked into right now" above edw's opinion, and the idea that the whole conf call + webconf dance was a better move than filing a ticket. > Why is a developer sitting on that particular conference call? Doesn't the company have a QA department, or an internal support department that documents the issue and provides steps to replicate? Exactly. How should one fight that these steps be taken, when your manager is trying to skip them? The thought process that I expect led to this situation were similar to "I could file a ticket, which will take me 5 minutes, or if I just show it to someone, it'll only take me 3 [not voiced: if nothing goes wrong.] That's working smarter!" Similarily, how do you convey to people the true cost of asking for something like this, instead of them treating everybody else's time and effort as externalities. Yes, there are signs of a sick culture. Culture is fluid though, so how does one push it back towards health? Preferrably without getting classed as difficult/rude/not-a-team-player and then having any argument you bring ignored.
- vacri 15y ago
  Eh? There was a ticket filed. Finding it is what took up part of the 3 hours.
sskates 15y ago
You might be shocked to hear this but the vast majority of businesses in the real world have such huge process issues that you'd diagnose most of the economy as full of "very sick companies that need life support".
- hluska 15y ago
  I'm far from shocked, in fact, I'd be surprised if the opposite were true.

Kadrith 15y ago

I'm often on the other end of this; assigning "10 minute" tasks to people. What I try to do is have a common place where I will put these with the expectation that it is checked at least once per day; normally OneNote. I don't expect all of the tasks to be done each day, but I also don't want them sent into a black hole. I leave it up to the team to figure out when they can accomplish the tasks based upon when I need the work done or to provide me with feedback on feasibility. If I have an urgent item that has to be done RIGHT NOW there may be an exception but in four years of being in this job I've only had a few of those. Those types of events are usually patient safety events where a patient's life is literally on the line and some piece of technology is acting up.

rickmb 15y ago

It starts by saying "no". The first few times this may be followed by an explanation. But if you don't say no, if you don't show that you are a serious professional who takes responsibility for his work, everything else will sound like whining. Yes, there a lots of clueless non-technical managers out there, but most of them are neither complete douchebags, nor are they too thick to understand the problem. Most of them will listen if you show them you're serious and not just trying to weasel your way out of something. If only because it is in their interests to take you seriously.

petervandijck 15y ago
I'm starting to think, almost everything good starts by saying "no".

Chris_Newton 15y ago

I think there are four recurring mistakes that cause these comical situations. Two are technical and two are social. The first technical mistake is using communications tools with built-in latency: e-mail instead of IM/IRC, conference call that everyone must dial into at a specific time instead of starting with at least two people on a call and calling others to join in real time. E-mail and scheduled dial-in conference calls must be just about the least efficient methods of professional communication ever invented. The other technical mistake is not having software for remote communications, particularly desktop sharing/presentations, that is readily available at the click of a mouse and familiar enough for all participants to set it up in moments. (A related mistake is using a dial-in conference service that isn't actually reliable. If you can't find one that works as it's supposed to -- and a lot of them don't, IME -- then you can at least ask someone to spend a bit of time and money installing an in-house solution if you need this facility often.) The first social mistake is allowing one person's lack of preparation to waste time for everyone in the group. There is no excuse for coming to multiple people and asking them to set up a call to discuss a bug when you don't know the bug number, nor for them not to have the details in front of them when joining the call. It's basic good practice for any meeting that everyone know in advance who will be attending, why, and what the goals of the meeting are, that someone lead the meeting efficiently, and that the results be circulated promptly afterwards. If you get to the scale where you have to involve multiple people at the same time, failing to do these things will almost inevitably waste time, and again it will often be the whole group's time while one individual sorts out something they should have done earlier. The second social mistake is being accepting of people who are late when a large meeting has been scheduled. Whenever possible, the meeting should start precisely on-time, and should not deviate from the published agenda to bring latecomers up to speed. If they miss out, it's their job to catch up afterwards, not the entire group's job to spin its wheels while someone recaps. If key people are consistently late and wasting others' time in this way, that is a serious management issue and someone needs to address why it is happening. Otherwise, you get to having a dozen people on the call, and if one key person is 10 minutes late because they were "just finishing an e-mail" then you've found another way to turn 10 minutes into two hours...

nandemo 15y ago

If it was 10 minutes to investigate and fix an urgent production bug, it would be OK. But he was asked time to join a teleconference in order to listen to a bug report! You can say "no" right there. A bug should be reported via a bug tracking system, maybe email for redundancy. There's no justification whatsoever to jump into a teleconference for a non-critical bug. Besides they got a QA department, so surely they have someone else (more technical than the bug reporter) who could look at it first to determine if it was really a bug, etc. > "you sit right here with me through this whole ordeal, and every minute of mine we waste, you owe me after 5 o'clock" That's not very savvy, to say the least. You sell your time to the company. The manager is not wasting your time, they're wasting the company's time or the "team's time" if you prefer. So you have to let him know when they're making decisions against their own best interest: "look, we have tasks A, B, and C, currently A is high priority, if you wish me to do task D, I'll be happy to do it, but it will delay A for n hours. And which of B or C should we re-schedule? I think it's C because blablah".