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I'm jealous of technology workers from about 10 years ago, before work IM tools like Slack, HipChat, and Teams became the standard. Being able to work uninterru

by dmart 3y ago

I'm jealous of technology workers from about 10 years ago, before work IM tools like Slack, HipChat, and Teams became the standard. Being able to work uninterruptedly except for emails (for which a delayed response was acceptable) sounds like an absolute dream. I dread the constant feeling of low-level anxiety induced by these tools (Gotta keep that status icon green! Gotta respond to messages right away!)

thewebcount 3y ago
I remember being at a small company in the late 90s. We hired a new engineer and he used AIM. The boss was furious that the new guy was spending his time on the clock chatting with friends (and possibly leaking company secrets to people at other companies!). They forbid him to use it, so he would log into it every morning and set his status to some childish message about how his employer wouldn’t allow him to use it during business hours. I remember thinking it was odd that the engineer would think it was OK to be chatting with friends while he was supposed to be working, but I also thought it was odd that the boss was so pissed off about it. It’s not like we didn’t (physically, IRL) chat among ourselves about non-work stuff, too. As long as we were getting our work done, who cares? Now everyone has chat and social media on every device, include their own that they bring with them anywhere, including work. I also remember that when I was a kid, I was never supposed to interrupt my father at work by calling him, unless it was an absolute real emergency, like the house burning down. Times have changed!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Trigg3r 3y ago
It was just email based instead (still is, somewhat?), plenty of distractions, how great would it be to just code (tm)?
rzzzt 3y ago
Do you have no IRC, ICQ, AIM or Skype in your past?
- mattacular 3y ago
  Yes, but in my experience at least, while these were used they were not used company wide. They weren't even department wide or team wide in some cases. So the communication over something like AIM was way more intentional, way more likely to be relevant to the teams work, and there was not the expectation of getting quick responses or keeping your status as green/available. So even still the situation was way more tenable for keeping focus time.
ardit33 3y ago
Plenty of distractions with email as well. Also, folks used MSN/Yahoo chat regularly before HipChat/Yammer/Slack came to picture. But I agree, overall it was a lot less distractions to get things done. On the other hand, the web had a lot less resources to get things done (this was before Stackoverflow), so if you stumbled into technical issues it took longer to resolve them.
- Trigg3r 3y ago
  MSM > 2023 Socials. *MSM not MSN
  - ardit33 3y ago
    It was actually called: MSN - Messenger https://www.techspot.com/article/2373-msn-messenger/ https://www.techspot.com/article/2373-msn-messenger/
moron4hire 3y ago
The boss still interrupted all the time. We just had phones on our desks.
BeetleB 3y ago
I turn my IM app off when I need to focus. When we were all in one office, I would keep it off for days at a time. The worst was when a manager insisted I have it on. He was literally 3 cubes away from me (and always present). Why does he need to IM with me?! He was in his 50's, and had spent most of his career without such tools. Another solution I now use since we're no longer in the office: If you ping me, I'll initiate a voice call. Async with constant notifications is a productivity killer. With a call, there is a fixed end point to the interruption.
- morkalork 3y ago
  You and me are like the complete opposite. You'd rather your boss waltz on over to your cube and interrupt you instead of a message notification you can put off a while?
  - BeetleB 3y ago
    Absolutely. Because: 1. When they waltz over to my cube, they are also interrupting themselves, so they are an order less likely to do it (i.e. do it only when important). 2. IM notifications every few minutes is far more disruptive than a quick 1-5 minute conversation. When he leaves the cube, I can focus. With IM, if I respond, I don't know when, or even if, he will respond. That consumes some of the focus. And an IM session can last 30+ minutes because of the async nature. 3. It's my manager. If he IMs me and I don't respond, and it's important enough, he'll come to my cube anyway (and be annoyed/upset). I can't always know what is important to him or not. So async doesn't really work that well. 4. I don't need the mental burden of tracking which IM sessions have pending responses. Email is much easier to manage. So my policy tends to be: "If I don't respond soon after seeing it, assume it is forgotten and ping me again."
  - quad_eye_oh 3y ago
    Seems like it's about symmetric costs and overall efficiency. To get up and walk over costs the Boss time and physical effort, so it won't take happen frequently, and it will likely happen on a predictable schedule (e.g. as boss goes to lunch). Context cues are available, and clarification is instant, which minimizes time-wasting rabbit holes. In contrast, for the Boss to rattle some misguided text into Slack takes much less effort on the Boss's part and doesn't break the Boss's concentration, but the misunderstanding will be harder to clear up. If there is a back and forth it will take longer and be more distracting and stressful to the engineer, and if there isn't a back and forth the engineer is more likely wondering wtf the Boss is on about.
kunalgupta 3y ago
Those are crazy expectations! I constantly turn everything to focus mode or else I wouldn’t be able to do anything hard.
creakingstairs 3y ago
Do you have to keep it green and respond right away? I put a meeting in my calendar as “focus time” and then turn off slack. People are usually quite understanding. It also helps to be regular so people know that you are never available around that time.
- deprecative 3y ago
  You might get away with not responding immediately but losing that green status means HR will be asking you to leave or sending you a box for your equipment by the end of the day. Managers (project, product, people) are notorious for demanding always green status icons. Fake meetings are fine until it is discovered you did a fake meeting. Then you get told not to do that again. They want the appearance of productivity -- they don't want productivity.
  - creakingstairs 3y ago
    > losing that green status means HR will be asking you to leave or sending you a box for your equipment by the end of the day I genuinely never had that fear in any of the places I worked at (or heard of one!). If that is a cause for termination or being written up, I'd probably look for some place else. > Fake meetings are fine until it is discovered you did a fake meeting My meetings are titled "focus time". It’s purely there to communicate to other team members why I may be unavailable during those time. If people need me during that time, they just ask me beforehand and I’m happy to oblige.
ryandrake 3y ago
Before IM, if the boss needed to know something OMFG URGENT RIGHT NOW, they'd pick up the phone and call you--also breaking your concentration. The problem is not the technology, it's people's willingness to destroy productivity just to get some nugget of information synchronously instead of asynchronously. I have empathy though, because I've had to break people's concentrations to urgently ping for information, too. It's always because my boss needed me to urgently get the information, and he's doing it because his boss needs to urgently get the informational and so on. Some senior VP somewhere makes an offhand remark about the status of Project X, and suddenly, 20 different managers are pinging their underlings for urgent information, breaking everyone's concentration.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Ugh. Your last paragraph rings incredibly true for me. The only (partial) antidote that I've found is having a reasonable cadence for updating major project status in a well-known place. If you publish reasonably current information on an on-going basis (which seems like a reasonable demand), you have a chance to avoid many of the curiosity escalations.

by dmart 3y ago

thewebcount 3y ago

I remember being at a small company in the late 90s. We hired a new engineer and he used AIM. The boss was furious that the new guy was spending his time on the clock chatting with friends (and possibly leaking company secrets to people at other companies!). They forbid him to use it, so he would log into it every morning and set his status to some childish message about how his employer wouldn’t allow him to use it during business hours. I remember thinking it was odd that the engineer would think it was OK to be chatting with friends while he was supposed to be working, but I also thought it was odd that the boss was so pissed off about it. It’s not like we didn’t (physically, IRL) chat among ourselves about non-work stuff, too. As long as we were getting our work done, who cares? Now everyone has chat and social media on every device, include their own that they bring with them anywhere, including work. I also remember that when I was a kid, I was never supposed to interrupt my father at work by calling him, unless it was an absolute real emergency, like the house burning down. Times have changed!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Trigg3r 3y ago

It was just email based instead (still is, somewhat?), plenty of distractions, how great would it be to just code (tm)?

rzzzt 3y ago

Do you have no IRC, ICQ, AIM or Skype in your past?

mattacular 3y ago
Yes, but in my experience at least, while these were used they were not used company wide. They weren't even department wide or team wide in some cases. So the communication over something like AIM was way more intentional, way more likely to be relevant to the teams work, and there was not the expectation of getting quick responses or keeping your status as green/available. So even still the situation was way more tenable for keeping focus time.

ardit33 3y ago

Plenty of distractions with email as well. Also, folks used MSN/Yahoo chat regularly before HipChat/Yammer/Slack came to picture. But I agree, overall it was a lot less distractions to get things done. On the other hand, the web had a lot less resources to get things done (this was before Stackoverflow), so if you stumbled into technical issues it took longer to resolve them.

Trigg3r 3y ago
MSM > 2023 Socials. *MSM not MSN
- ardit33 3y ago
  It was actually called: MSN - Messenger https://www.techspot.com/article/2373-msn-messenger/ https://www.techspot.com/article/2373-msn-messenger/

moron4hire 3y ago

The boss still interrupted all the time. We just had phones on our desks.

BeetleB 3y ago

I turn my IM app off when I need to focus. When we were all in one office, I would keep it off for days at a time. The worst was when a manager insisted I have it on. He was literally 3 cubes away from me (and always present). Why does he need to IM with me?! He was in his 50's, and had spent most of his career without such tools. Another solution I now use since we're no longer in the office: If you ping me, I'll initiate a voice call. Async with constant notifications is a productivity killer. With a call, there is a fixed end point to the interruption.

morkalork 3y ago
You and me are like the complete opposite. You'd rather your boss waltz on over to your cube and interrupt you instead of a message notification you can put off a while?
- BeetleB 3y ago
  Absolutely. Because: 1. When they waltz over to my cube, they are also interrupting themselves, so they are an order less likely to do it (i.e. do it only when important). 2. IM notifications every few minutes is far more disruptive than a quick 1-5 minute conversation. When he leaves the cube, I can focus. With IM, if I respond, I don't know when, or even if, he will respond. That consumes some of the focus. And an IM session can last 30+ minutes because of the async nature. 3. It's my manager. If he IMs me and I don't respond, and it's important enough, he'll come to my cube anyway (and be annoyed/upset). I can't always know what is important to him or not. So async doesn't really work that well. 4. I don't need the mental burden of tracking which IM sessions have pending responses. Email is much easier to manage. So my policy tends to be: "If I don't respond soon after seeing it, assume it is forgotten and ping me again."
- quad_eye_oh 3y ago
  Seems like it's about symmetric costs and overall efficiency. To get up and walk over costs the Boss time and physical effort, so it won't take happen frequently, and it will likely happen on a predictable schedule (e.g. as boss goes to lunch). Context cues are available, and clarification is instant, which minimizes time-wasting rabbit holes. In contrast, for the Boss to rattle some misguided text into Slack takes much less effort on the Boss's part and doesn't break the Boss's concentration, but the misunderstanding will be harder to clear up. If there is a back and forth it will take longer and be more distracting and stressful to the engineer, and if there isn't a back and forth the engineer is more likely wondering wtf the Boss is on about.

kunalgupta 3y ago

Those are crazy expectations! I constantly turn everything to focus mode or else I wouldn’t be able to do anything hard.

creakingstairs 3y ago

Do you have to keep it green and respond right away? I put a meeting in my calendar as “focus time” and then turn off slack. People are usually quite understanding. It also helps to be regular so people know that you are never available around that time.

deprecative 3y ago
You might get away with not responding immediately but losing that green status means HR will be asking you to leave or sending you a box for your equipment by the end of the day. Managers (project, product, people) are notorious for demanding always green status icons. Fake meetings are fine until it is discovered you did a fake meeting. Then you get told not to do that again. They want the appearance of productivity -- they don't want productivity.
- creakingstairs 3y ago
  > losing that green status means HR will be asking you to leave or sending you a box for your equipment by the end of the day I genuinely never had that fear in any of the places I worked at (or heard of one!). If that is a cause for termination or being written up, I'd probably look for some place else. > Fake meetings are fine until it is discovered you did a fake meeting My meetings are titled "focus time". It’s purely there to communicate to other team members why I may be unavailable during those time. If people need me during that time, they just ask me beforehand and I’m happy to oblige.

ryandrake 3y ago

Before IM, if the boss needed to know something OMFG URGENT RIGHT NOW, they'd pick up the phone and call you--also breaking your concentration. The problem is not the technology, it's people's willingness to destroy productivity just to get some nugget of information synchronously instead of asynchronously. I have empathy though, because I've had to break people's concentrations to urgently ping for information, too. It's always because my boss needed me to urgently get the information, and he's doing it because his boss needs to urgently get the informational and so on. Some senior VP somewhere makes an offhand remark about the status of Project X, and suddenly, 20 different managers are pinging their underlings for urgent information, breaking everyone's concentration.

sokoloff 3y ago
Ugh. Your last paragraph rings incredibly true for me. The only (partial) antidote that I've found is having a reasonable cadence for updating major project status in a well-known place. If you publish reasonably current information on an on-going basis (which seems like a reasonable demand), you have a chance to avoid many of the curiosity escalations.