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> You also lose the ease of just walking over to someone to ask a question. Well, the person that got interrupted by you probably lost quite a bit of productiv
by steve1977 3y ago
> You also lose the ease of just walking over to someone to ask a question.
Well, the person that got interrupted by you probably lost quite a bit of productivity because of you.
- chrisallenlane 3y agoYeah. One of my favorite things about working remote is that people can't do this to me. It's a feature, not a bug.
- cdelsolar 3y agoCan you jump on a zoom real quick
- sensanaty 3y agoI've literally never said yes to this question unless it was something incredibly urgent like prod being down or whatever.
- mr_gibbins 3y agotriggered
- zoover2020 3y agoEasy, just learn to push back or setup mechanisms like office hours to attend for folks whom are in need of support. Like security, the human chain will always be the weakest link here. If you don't have backbone to stand up for your own time, that's on you - not the remote work inherently IMO.
- escapedmoose 3y ago“Sorry, I need to focus on something right now. Try asking [person]” Or if I’m already on DND? Ignore, and create an appointment for later.
- bradlys 3y agoThis is a great way to get management up your ass and get fired. End of the day, it’s all about the culture of your workplace. No one here really understands that. I’ve been interrupted more during remote work at some companies than when in person at others. It’s entirely culture dependent.
- JohnFen 3y ago> This is a great way to get management up your ass and get fired. If you get fired for doing that sort of thing, the company is doing you a favor.
- fullspectrumdev 3y agoStatus on IM platform set to busy, notifications suppressed unless from a select group (direct manager, etc). So uh no. Can’t jump on a zoom real quick, I’m doing work.
- dgfitz 3y ago“Nope.”
- berniedurfee 3y agoSorry already in a meeting, can we chat here?
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago"Sorry, you'll have to give me 15. I'll send you a message when I'm available, OK?"
- red-iron-pine 3y ago"let me finish this email, i'll poke you in 10" 10 might actually be 2 hours, but whatever.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoWell, ideally you follow through. The only way to get people to respect the social contact is by honouring it yourself.
- xenolith234 3y agoIt's always my direct manager that does this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dekhn 3y agoor just "Hello, dekhn" without any additional context.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Lio 3y ago...and when you stop what you're doing and reply they don't follow up for 10 minutes, just a moment after you go back to your work.
- godshatter 3y agoI don't understand this way of looking at things. I sometimes learn something new by answering a question from someone who is looking at things from a different direction than I am, or discussing something I don't have a quick answer to. That helps both of us. If I don't even have to think about it, it helps the other person be immediately productive (and learn something) at the cost of taking me out of "the flow" as opposed to having them beat their head against it for who knows how long while I get a a couple more minutes of uninterrupted time. I can hop back into "the flow" pretty much immediately. If it happened every five minutes that's a different story.
- chrisallenlane 3y ago> I sometimes learn something new by answering a question from someone who is looking at things from a different direction than I am, or discussing something I don't have a quick answer to This can happen on Slack or whatever too, but with much less friction. I'm not ignoring teammates for days - I just want to be able to take 10 minutes or whatever to reach a reasonable place to context-switch versus being forced to do so right now. > I can hop back into "the flow" pretty much immediately. I envy you, but I very much cannot do this. If I'm working on something of sufficient complexity, I'm going to lose at least 15 minutes every time I'm forced to make a substantive context-switch. It's a huge drain for me.
- bluedino 3y agoYour lack of communication can hurt others. One person being 'productive' while causing blocks for others isn't good for the team.
- JohnFen 3y agoWhy do you assume he's causing blocks? I don't see what he said as lacking communication. It's enhancing it by allowing them to "schedule" it according to their workflow. Very rarely does anything actually need an immediate response, and when it does, just call the person.
- elcomet 3y agoBut what if overall the productivity is higher ?
- lolinder 3y agoAn org can find ways to ensure juniors don't stay blocked while also ensuring that seniors can keep in flow state for long, uninterrupted periods. Prioritize docs and tests. Teach juniors how to use docs and tests. Spread knowledge and mentorship around enough that a question on the team channel gets an answer from someone who is available. All of these things have other major benefits in addition to restoring flow state for seniors—juniors learn faster, your tests are more comprehensive, seniors can basically onboard themselves, your bus factor goes way up. "Stick everyone in the same room" is just a local maximum, not peak productivity.
- commandlinefan 3y ago> overall the productivity is higher Then why is my performance review always individual?
- HDThoreaun 3y agoThe company at large doesn't care about your individual performance review when making decisions that effect everyone.
- zabana 3y agoTraining a junior or helping a collaborator is everything but loss of productivity.
- nonethewiser 3y agoIn a way, but not the way that counts. If you spend all day helping people with their work will you be lauded when you make 0 progress on yours?
- lesuorac 3y agoIf your superiors don't consider you training people part of your job then you should either get them (ahead of time) to agree it's part of your job or you should stop doing it.
- Technotroll 3y agoYou certainly should because you're building the company that way.
- vbezhenar 3y agoCompany which those juniors will switch to as soon as possible.
- saiya-jin 3y agoAnd then seniors have to pull overtimes just because they need to semi-constantly babysit juniors, or clueless managers of other teams or projects who only know how to escalate and chase etc. I get it, if you are junior, there are benefits. If you are senior (and not ie team lead and control freak at the same time), you lose. Hell you lose a LOT, can confirm. Offices are way more stressful, so this is clear downgrade for senior people. Constant noise and interruptions way overweight the benefits. Guess who brings more added value to companies, juniors or seniors? (not talking about long term perspective, most companies are led by people who focus on next bonus only, and who they manage is steered that way too).
- asoneth 3y agoI think this is the crux of why people have such disparate estimates of remote productivity. Senior folks seem to experience more upside and less downside being remote whereas junior folks seem to experience more downside and less upside. Depending on the makeup of the team, one or the other may be net more productive even if you yourself feel less productive. (It may also depend on whether your company sufficiently acknowledges and rewards the work senior folks do unblocking and mentoring others.)
- bluefishinit 3y agoI don't think senior/junior is the right divide. There's tons of young people cranking out absolutely amazing things from home in the open source community. What I've found is that product focused people who ship with high velocity like remote work, regardless of their time in the industry. Low velocity shippers who lean on process are the ones who seem to want to go back in the office. Presumably because you can mask not shipping by chatting with your manager or playing meeting roulette.
- asoneth 3y agoI don't doubt your experience, but it is not my own. There are absolutely exceptions who prove the rule but on average we found productivity plummet with remote junior hires and remain similar for folks who have been at the company for decades across all skill levels. Even high-velocity junior folks seemed to be spinning their wheels or getting stuck when remote in a way that perfectly average senior folks did not. I was anticipating employee pushback as the company switched from remote to return-to-office 3 days a week last year. But the junior folks I've talked to have seemed mostly enthusiastic (with significantly higher retention than when we were remote) whereas the objections mostly came from senior folks. The people who quit to keep working remotely were almost entirely senior folks.
- doxeddaily 3y agoWell sure, seniors have concerns outside of work that juniors often don't have.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoI never minded someone asking me a question. At the very least I reason my 5 minutes loss of productivity saved their loss of perhaps hours.
- lolinder 3y agoSome people don't work like that. When I'm in a flow state, a 5 minute interruption can break me out of it and slow me down for a half hour or more before I'm finally able to get back into flow.
- berniedurfee 3y agoSame. I typically have 4 or 5 threads of things I’m working on simultaneously. It takes a bunch of time to get back in that headspace.
- masfuerte 3y agoThey are doing it wrong. If you keep two or three things on the go you can switch to a different one when you get stuck without wasting hours or interrupting someone else right this minute. Very often, having switched focus the solution to the original problem will reveal itself without needing to bother anyone.
- bionsystem 3y agoI agree. Most people only see the 5 minutes lost though...
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoAbout ten years ago I worked at a company with a DBA who saw gatekeeping everything database related as a form of job security. But he also complained bitterly about how often he was interrupted. Even simple things like adding a column to a table required his participation. When developing, these types of changes are frequent and often blocking, so creating something like a ticket queue wasn't a good solution. Our manager was not only aware of the situation but seemed entertained by the inherent conflict it created. Since going through that extreme case of blocking through gatekeeping, I try to keep my eyes out for ways to allow other to self-service as much as possible. It's not possible to eliminate all interruptions but it's often worth spending a bit of time examining how the interruption could have been avoided in the first place and if similar interruptions are likely, invest in creating something more self-service. At least in the DBA situation I was in back then, simply allowing developers to have local database or even control over development database on a dedicated database instance would have eliminated most of the blocking and interruptions.
- JackFr 3y agoYou seem to think that answering my question isn't part of his job. It may be that you have the wrong measure of productivity.