5 ms·

WFH encourages scheduled meetings. It's a nightmare. I'd much rather just get an interruption out of the blue than have someone schedule a meeting to talk to me

by flir 3y ago

WFH encourages scheduled meetings. It's a nightmare. I'd much rather just get an interruption out of the blue than have someone schedule a meeting to talk to me, because in the run-up to the meeting I won't try to start anything (what's the point if I've got a pending interruption?) At least my standups are first thing in the morning.

swozey 3y ago
I don't understand it. My company is fully remote but they are absolutely horrendous at async comms. I was trying to walk someone through adding a docker build process to their CI and.... he just couldn't communicate/understand it through slack and he wanted to schedule a meeting. Great, now instead of being able to respond while working on other things I have to cut out an entire hour of my day just for you. Thanks. Beyond that I refuse to do daily standups. I'll quit a company if they won't let me do async or communicate through slack. I'm not logging in and the start of my day being a meeting every single day. Absolutely not. I've been there before.
- flir 3y ago
  Interesting. I like the daily meeting - gives me an anchor for my day that works with the meds. But like most ADHD people when unmedicated I get more productive at night, so I can see why you'd hate the daily checkin.
  - swozey 3y ago
    I'm about 20 years in and the first 10 years of my career as a SWE I had absolutely horrendous managers and daily checkins felt more like proving to someone that you had done any work the day prior, shaming you if you didn't produce enough. I have a hugely negative connotation to them even today, vs feeling that they're a positive team-collab sort of scenario. At two companies the actual CEO and CTO were in every single one of our standups (startups of course).
    - JohnBooty 3y ago
      It's funny how good (or shitty) experiences shape things. I like peer reviews and regular 1:1s with management. I've had good experiences with them, and have sorely missed them at jobs where they didn't happen. But I know good engineers (who are also good communicators) that loathe them with a great passion.
- tayo42 3y ago
  Idk if that has to do with async working. People pull that kind of stuff in office too. "Hey I don't get this, can we schedule some time so we can /you just do this for me " then you sit at a conference table or at their desk for an hour lol
- greenie_beans 3y ago
  that's unfortunate, you have 20 years of experience but don't want to pair program or help out other developers.
  - swozey 3y ago
    I'm a Staff SRE. I literally mentor an entire SRE team every single day. I didn't say a single thing about paired programming. Christ. Did I say that the dev wanted to pair program? No, I didn't. I would have happily hopped in a huddle with him as OPPOSED to scheduling a meeting 3 days later. I am sick of meetings and people who are incapable of working async, especially when we're in different timezones, which is exactly what this thread I'm responding to is about.
    - greenie_beans 3y ago
      > I was trying to walk someone through adding a docker build process to their CI and.... he just couldn't communicate/understand it through slack and he wanted to schedule a meeting. this sounds like pair programming imo. > Great, now instead of being able to respond while working on other things I have to cut out an entire hour of my day just for you. this reads as a bad attitude towards mentorship. sorry for that assumption.
      - swozey 3y ago
        Nope, I love mentoring. My frustration is not knocking this out over 10 slack messages right now and having to round back to it days later. I want it done and off my plate. I'm ADHD. I don't want lingering tasks floating around giving me anxiety when they can be done quickly. I'm going to forget it exists until 10 minutes before when it pops up on my notifications, then I'll have to context switch over to that situation. One of my biggest coping mechanisms is as soon as something pops into my mind I do it RIGHT NOW. If I walk by the laundry basket and think of doing laundry I grab it and do it RIGHT now. Or I'll just walk by it for a week completely oblivious to it.
        greenie_beans 3y ago
JohnBooty 3y ago
I'd much rather just get an interruption out of the blue than have someone schedule a meeting to talk to me After 15+ years of exploring my own ADHD and learning about others' experiences, I'm still constantly wowed by how differently we all react to this stuff. For me, out-of-the-blue interruptions are a worst case scenario for my ADHD. It's very hard for me to get into the "flow" if I know that I might be interrupted at any moment. I prefer scheduled meetings as a less-evil alternative. But many many feel similarly to you.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  In my experience scheduled meetings tend to be longer and involve more people than necessarily. Also, somewhat contraintuitively, I often avoid starting some new work e. g. 30 minutes before a scheduled meeting, meanwhile without it I just start, and if interruption happens,... it just happens.
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    Also, somewhat contraintuitively, I often avoid starting some new work e. g. 30 minutes before a scheduled meeting No, I think that makes sense and is pretty common. It's hard for me to get into the zone if I know I've got a hard stop in 30 minutes. Two workarounds for me. One is that I tell myself I'll spend the final 5 minutes jotting down todo's so I can pick back up relatively close to where I left off. I normally work in 20-30 min bursts anyway. This is actually not super successful for me but better than nothing. Slightly more effective for me is using those 30 minutes to bang out some smaller tasks. Review a small pull request. Pay a bill or two. Apply some software updates. Gotta be done eventually so I get them out of the way now, in service of more focus time later.

by flir 3y ago

swozey 3y ago

I don't understand it. My company is fully remote but they are absolutely horrendous at async comms. I was trying to walk someone through adding a docker build process to their CI and.... he just couldn't communicate/understand it through slack and he wanted to schedule a meeting. Great, now instead of being able to respond while working on other things I have to cut out an entire hour of my day just for you. Thanks. Beyond that I refuse to do daily standups. I'll quit a company if they won't let me do async or communicate through slack. I'm not logging in and the start of my day being a meeting every single day. Absolutely not. I've been there before.

flir 3y ago
Interesting. I like the daily meeting - gives me an anchor for my day that works with the meds. But like most ADHD people when unmedicated I get more productive at night, so I can see why you'd hate the daily checkin.
- swozey 3y ago
  I'm about 20 years in and the first 10 years of my career as a SWE I had absolutely horrendous managers and daily checkins felt more like proving to someone that you had done any work the day prior, shaming you if you didn't produce enough. I have a hugely negative connotation to them even today, vs feeling that they're a positive team-collab sort of scenario. At two companies the actual CEO and CTO were in every single one of our standups (startups of course).
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    It's funny how good (or shitty) experiences shape things. I like peer reviews and regular 1:1s with management. I've had good experiences with them, and have sorely missed them at jobs where they didn't happen. But I know good engineers (who are also good communicators) that loathe them with a great passion.
tayo42 3y ago
Idk if that has to do with async working. People pull that kind of stuff in office too. "Hey I don't get this, can we schedule some time so we can /you just do this for me " then you sit at a conference table or at their desk for an hour lol
greenie_beans 3y ago
that's unfortunate, you have 20 years of experience but don't want to pair program or help out other developers.
- swozey 3y ago
  I'm a Staff SRE. I literally mentor an entire SRE team every single day. I didn't say a single thing about paired programming. Christ. Did I say that the dev wanted to pair program? No, I didn't. I would have happily hopped in a huddle with him as OPPOSED to scheduling a meeting 3 days later. I am sick of meetings and people who are incapable of working async, especially when we're in different timezones, which is exactly what this thread I'm responding to is about.
  - greenie_beans 3y ago
    > I was trying to walk someone through adding a docker build process to their CI and.... he just couldn't communicate/understand it through slack and he wanted to schedule a meeting. this sounds like pair programming imo. > Great, now instead of being able to respond while working on other things I have to cut out an entire hour of my day just for you. this reads as a bad attitude towards mentorship. sorry for that assumption.
    - swozey 3y ago
      Nope, I love mentoring. My frustration is not knocking this out over 10 slack messages right now and having to round back to it days later. I want it done and off my plate. I'm ADHD. I don't want lingering tasks floating around giving me anxiety when they can be done quickly. I'm going to forget it exists until 10 minutes before when it pops up on my notifications, then I'll have to context switch over to that situation. One of my biggest coping mechanisms is as soon as something pops into my mind I do it RIGHT NOW. If I walk by the laundry basket and think of doing laundry I grab it and do it RIGHT now. Or I'll just walk by it for a week completely oblivious to it.
      - greenie_beans 3y ago

JohnBooty 3y ago

I'd much rather just get an interruption out of the blue than have someone schedule a meeting to talk to me After 15+ years of exploring my own ADHD and learning about others' experiences, I'm still constantly wowed by how differently we all react to this stuff. For me, out-of-the-blue interruptions are a worst case scenario for my ADHD. It's very hard for me to get into the "flow" if I know that I might be interrupted at any moment. I prefer scheduled meetings as a less-evil alternative. But many many feel similarly to you.

The_Colonel 3y ago
In my experience scheduled meetings tend to be longer and involve more people than necessarily. Also, somewhat contraintuitively, I often avoid starting some new work e. g. 30 minutes before a scheduled meeting, meanwhile without it I just start, and if interruption happens,... it just happens.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  Also, somewhat contraintuitively, I often avoid starting some new work e. g. 30 minutes before a scheduled meeting No, I think that makes sense and is pretty common. It's hard for me to get into the zone if I know I've got a hard stop in 30 minutes. Two workarounds for me. One is that I tell myself I'll spend the final 5 minutes jotting down todo's so I can pick back up relatively close to where I left off. I normally work in 20-30 min bursts anyway. This is actually not super successful for me but better than nothing. Slightly more effective for me is using those 30 minutes to bang out some smaller tasks. Review a small pull request. Pay a bill or two. Apply some software updates. Gotta be done eventually so I get them out of the way now, in service of more focus time later.