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How many times during past 3 years have you pumped into someone at work and just offhandedly started to discuss what you are working on and actually helped one

How many times during past 3 years have you pumped into someone at work and just offhandedly started to discuss what you are working on and actually helped one of you out? I sure haven't since I dont bump into people at my home. But that happened often back in the office days. It is not only chasing some personal flow state - having physical presence where you can just talk with people has a lot of not so obvious benefits that no amount of emailing or IM-ing or zooming can fix. I guess it really depends on your team. But with my team 3 our of 8 have multiple young kids constantly disrupting work.

XorNot 3y ago
> How many times during past 3 years have you pumped into someone at work and just offhandedly started to discuss what you are working on and actually helped one of you out? Literally never. This has never happened to me. Whereas firing a message into group chat has yielded results all the time, and also effective collaboration on account of we're both at our computers, all the tools are right there, and moving information around precisely is easy. I've also discovered I don't actually hate pair programming, I just hate trying to crowd a workstation when two-way screen sharing is possible and I can throw multiple 4K monitors at the problem. On the other hand I definitely quit the second job I ever had after 2 years because I could not deal with the noise in the open plan office, or someone scratching the hell out of a porcelain bowl with a fork every single day right behind me for what seemed like 1.5 hours.
theonlybutlet 3y ago
Those interactions do occur via phone call or teams chat. The in office ones tended to be procedural, send me a task. Something they in truth knew the answer to anyway. When they actually wanted help, they'd ask me regardless of the format. That's poor etiquette on your team members part, a gentle request from your manager to those offenders should help. No different to someone not answering their phone etc. I do believe a more casual approach to taking calls when WFH is best, but that's just taking advantage. Sometimes young parent's are not self aware in my, perhaps controversial opinion (it's understandable it happens kids take over their lives), but don't take it out on the rest of us.

XorNot 3y ago

> How many times during past 3 years have you pumped into someone at work and just offhandedly started to discuss what you are working on and actually helped one of you out? Literally never. This has never happened to me. Whereas firing a message into group chat has yielded results all the time, and also effective collaboration on account of we're both at our computers, all the tools are right there, and moving information around precisely is easy. I've also discovered I don't actually hate pair programming, I just hate trying to crowd a workstation when two-way screen sharing is possible and I can throw multiple 4K monitors at the problem. On the other hand I definitely quit the second job I ever had after 2 years because I could not deal with the noise in the open plan office, or someone scratching the hell out of a porcelain bowl with a fork every single day right behind me for what seemed like 1.5 hours.

theonlybutlet 3y ago

Those interactions do occur via phone call or teams chat. The in office ones tended to be procedural, send me a task. Something they in truth knew the answer to anyway. When they actually wanted help, they'd ask me regardless of the format. That's poor etiquette on your team members part, a gentle request from your manager to those offenders should help. No different to someone not answering their phone etc. I do believe a more casual approach to taking calls when WFH is best, but that's just taking advantage. Sometimes young parent's are not self aware in my, perhaps controversial opinion (it's understandable it happens kids take over their lives), but don't take it out on the rest of us.