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To be the annoying naysayer, but more as a thought experiment: many jobs benefit from increased focus. And like.. yeah, unnecessary notifications are unnecessar

by rtpg 3y ago

To be the annoying naysayer, but more as a thought experiment: many jobs benefit from increased focus. And like.. yeah, unnecessary notifications are unnecessary! Tautological. But in context: a coworker needs a piece of information. You are there. You have the information. Asking you saves them 30 minutes. Should they interrupt you? What if it's 5 minutes? What if it's 15? What is the level of urgency on their end? Is there pedagogical value in them figuring this out without you? Ultimately interruptions have varying degrees of necessity, and we should be evaluating a team's interruptions as a whole. "Turn off all notifications" might indeed be the proper baseline, but at the end of the day the real thing is team interaction. Is the problem interruptions? Or is it role distribution? Is it knowledge sharing? It's very easy in a context free situation to apply blanket statements but there's so much nuance to these interactions that I have a hard time establishing any sort of blanket rule. But at the end of the day, people's norms are different, so something needs to be said. "Don't talk to your coworkers" just rubs me the wrong way. It is definitely what is said to many teams who interact with programmers, though.

throwaway2037 3y ago
When I started my career, I only had a phone and slow email. Then, email got faster. Eventually, I got chat. Things got so much faster with chat. Then, I got alerts for chats. Again: Faster because you never miss an alert. Then, chatbots appears to show alerts and help with simple things. Again: You go faster and get more information instantly. The places that delivered the most monetary value all had very high information velocity.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
It's all about expectations. I'm a startup CTO. So, I'm constantly being pulled into meetings asked about this or that on Slack and there's always stuff piling up in my inbox. None of it requires a real time response from me. Most of those meetings are not that urgent/important. A lot of things on Slack resolve itself without me responding instantly. Me interrupting whatever it is I'm trying to do is super disruptive. A few tactical strikes on my calendar can remove any chance whatsoever to get anything significant done on a day. So me dropping everything I'm doing to respond to some random inbound thing is actually very expensive and disruptive. The way I deal with it is not responding immediately other than by accident. People stop expecting it when you stop doing that. They adapt. And they appreciate when you eventually do respond. Basically asynchronous communication makes responding more efficient. Instead of constantly attention hopping you simply periodically respond to stuff in order of priority. When urgent stuff really needs attention, people will find you. I turn off notifications/alerts for most things and I simply check when I have some time. Tools and apps begging for attention rank very low on my priority queue of things that need attention. Most email I still receive is actually notifications and not requests for lengthy replies. I rarely use email for discussions of any kind any more. Wrong medium for it. If my phone rings, it's generally a spam call. Most important calls are scheduled. And I prefer taking them on my laptop via a video call. If I don't recognize the number, I don't answer at all. All this eliminates interruptions of rare moments I have when I can actually focus on something. Focus time is actually blocked in my calendar and I don't allow stuff to creep into that other than by exception. And I strongly encourage people to not even attempt to book meetings with me outside a few dedicated slots I have for that. There's always more stuff to do than I can do. So, it's important to cherry pick and do it well.
- sails 3y ago
  > I turn off notifications/alerts for most things and I simply check when I have some time. This is the answer - the phone rings when it is urgent.
therealdrag0 3y ago
Agree anything “black and white” is probably wrong. Just like devs like to not see the value in the existence of tech debt or management or coding interviews some seem unable to weigh the pros and cons of notifications and being randomized. Everything is complicated.

by rtpg 3y ago

throwaway2037 3y ago

When I started my career, I only had a phone and slow email. Then, email got faster. Eventually, I got chat. Things got so much faster with chat. Then, I got alerts for chats. Again: Faster because you never miss an alert. Then, chatbots appears to show alerts and help with simple things. Again: You go faster and get more information instantly. The places that delivered the most monetary value all had very high information velocity.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

It's all about expectations. I'm a startup CTO. So, I'm constantly being pulled into meetings asked about this or that on Slack and there's always stuff piling up in my inbox. None of it requires a real time response from me. Most of those meetings are not that urgent/important. A lot of things on Slack resolve itself without me responding instantly. Me interrupting whatever it is I'm trying to do is super disruptive. A few tactical strikes on my calendar can remove any chance whatsoever to get anything significant done on a day. So me dropping everything I'm doing to respond to some random inbound thing is actually very expensive and disruptive. The way I deal with it is not responding immediately other than by accident. People stop expecting it when you stop doing that. They adapt. And they appreciate when you eventually do respond. Basically asynchronous communication makes responding more efficient. Instead of constantly attention hopping you simply periodically respond to stuff in order of priority. When urgent stuff really needs attention, people will find you. I turn off notifications/alerts for most things and I simply check when I have some time. Tools and apps begging for attention rank very low on my priority queue of things that need attention. Most email I still receive is actually notifications and not requests for lengthy replies. I rarely use email for discussions of any kind any more. Wrong medium for it. If my phone rings, it's generally a spam call. Most important calls are scheduled. And I prefer taking them on my laptop via a video call. If I don't recognize the number, I don't answer at all. All this eliminates interruptions of rare moments I have when I can actually focus on something. Focus time is actually blocked in my calendar and I don't allow stuff to creep into that other than by exception. And I strongly encourage people to not even attempt to book meetings with me outside a few dedicated slots I have for that. There's always more stuff to do than I can do. So, it's important to cherry pick and do it well.

sails 3y ago
> I turn off notifications/alerts for most things and I simply check when I have some time. This is the answer - the phone rings when it is urgent.

therealdrag0 3y ago

Agree anything “black and white” is probably wrong. Just like devs like to not see the value in the existence of tech debt or management or coding interviews some seem unable to weigh the pros and cons of notifications and being randomized. Everything is complicated.