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IMO this is the worst kind. It means I can be interrupted at a moments notice. Unfortunately, even the act of asking "hey are you free?" means I am sometimes br

IMO this is the worst kind. It means I can be interrupted at a moments notice. Unfortunately, even the act of asking "hey are you free?" means I am sometimes broken from very deep concentration. Remote Work lets me silence the things I don't need to deal with right away while those that truly need my attention I can prioritize ahead of time or there are ways to "break through" the silence because its urgent enough to warrant it. I hated not having that level of autonomony in the office. Mostly, so did everyone else once they realized how this wasn't as nice as it seemed

scottLobster 3y ago
Unpopular opinion, but this seems more like an issue of developer comfort than actual productivity, similar to how taking adderall can make you feel more productive than you actually are. If the product quality depends on you maintaining a flow state for extended periods, then you're either working in a research lab or it's a poorly designed product. I say this as a dev who also gets annoyed when my deep focus is interrupted, but so long as the interruption is actually warranted (and with my company's culture it usually is) I swallow my annoyance, task-switch and get the job done anyway. I'm already earning a higher salary than than most people in the world with good benefits and flexible hours. I can be mildly annoyed at work sometimes if it helps get the job done.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  I disagree. I can move through quite alot, quite well, when I can work in a deep flow. 2-4 hours of deep work can be incredibly productive end to end and we follow TDD pretty strictly, which lends itself well to really thinking about problems and their solutions in my experience thus far, but it requires the ability to really walk through a problem space. Our code quality here has improved significantly around this, and we are shipping faster than ever. That isn't to say I'm unavailable (or anyone else) its that there is an acceptance that not all things are urgent, and if they are, its warranted to break through any focus periods.
  - scottLobster 3y ago
    Doesn't sound like we disagree that much. You are actually available, but not all things are urgent. I'd say the difference at my workplace is that pieces of the product are extremely old, developed under different architectures with different technologies under multiple management regimes of varying quality. There's a lot of tribal knowledge, so everything is kind of urgent by default as someone new to a specific piece of code can't move forward efficiently without picking the relevant SME's brain. Forbidding interruptions would be akin to mandating "only the SMEs can work, and the rest of you need to waste money twiddling your thumbs or banging your head against obscure legacy code until they feel like helping you". Most of the time when I'm interrupted it's because someone's blocked and I have the knowledge to unblock them, or I can at least point them to who does, so my loss of flow state is their gaining the ability to move forward at all, and everyone benefits. By contrast it sounds like you guys designed your product around maximizing the impact of flow states and minimizing the need for interruption. I bet you have good documentation too. I'm honestly jealous, it would take tens of millions and years of re-writes to do the same here, and our prime customer wouldn't be willing to accept the delay even if we had the funding.
    - diracs_stache 3y ago
      It may not be that "only SMEs can work" but that "SMEs don't have 5 tickets this sprint but 3 high level deliveries over the next quarter" thus they are allowed work uninterrupted from the daily churn and focus intensely (contributing to their already high base knowledge). Whereas other engineers are constantly distracted and stay surface level trying to stay afloat.
  - prox 3y ago
    I completely agree with this way of working, and we have the same “protocol” as it were. I check my comms once every one or two hours to see if there is any pressing matters. So little is actually urgent, unless you have some business critical infrastructure you have to maintain, but that sounds like a different role entirely.
- naasking 3y ago
  > If the product quality depends on you maintaining a flow state for extended periods I think you've conflated quality and productivity; you started talking about one then switched to the other. They are related but not the same. Certain dev tasks require deep flow for good results/quality. Robust refactorings, abstraction design and prototyping. Basically anything where you have to preserve invariants under code transformations. This isn't all dev work, and isn't necessarily frequent either, but when flow state is required it's usually important work that's core to a program's operation, so product quality definitely depends on flow. If you're working on such a task, an interruption requires a return to that flow state to ensure good quality, and that takes time and will definitely impact productivity. Other tasks do not require going very deep though and so achieving comparable quality doesn't require much depth in your flow. Interruptions won't affect productivity much in such cases. My two cents.
  - scottLobster 3y ago
    I think the key point of the line you quoted was "for extended periods". Obviously flow states are useful, perhaps even required in some contexts, but to demand a full day of uninterrupted flow-state engineering bliss is IMO unrealistic and very often counterproductive. Software development at the company level is a team sport, and being actively hostile to necessary communication simply because it "interrupts your flow state" is the act of a prima donna or "rock star" developer. I've refactored a lot of code/been doing deep design work and been interrupted during said work. Did it make my personal task take substantially longer to complete due to the task-switching/getting my flow state back? Sure, but the interruption was for a good reason and my help was actually needed. On balance the interruption saved the company money and time because the drop in efficiency of execution for my slice of the pie was less impactful than what my help was needed for. Now if you're getting constantly pinged for stupid shit that anyone could Google, then perhaps you should politely confront the person(s) doing so and make your expectations clear rather than declaring a pox on all interruptions.
    - naasking 3y ago
      > Sure, but the interruption was for a good reason and my help was actually needed. Wouldn't this be true of just about everyone complaining about such interruptions though? I can't imagine anyone would mind being interrupted if the building were on fire. People just differ on what they consider to be good reasons. I'm sure there are unreasonable people on all sides, both those asking for unreasonable conditions to interrupt them and those not respecting reasonable conditions for interruptions, but I don't think it's the majority of the people complaining about it. I've been in this situation a few times, and lots of people just don't have good impulse control and so don't even think twice about interrupting you if it's more convenient for them.
jayd16 3y ago
Did you notice that the grand parent is promoting instant interruptions with remote meetings? You're talking about being able to ignore your coworkers requests easier. Seems pretty contradictory, no? I also do wonder what the real value of it ignoring live requests is. You personally get to stay on task but what about what's lost? If you block two or more people isn't it worse overall?
- no_wizard 3y ago
  Work should be structured to be as non blocking as possible in the first place. If its not, there is either an issue in planning, resources, or in (unlikely) cases, truly it has to be serial, in which case it should be planned accordingly I'd also argue, that 2 people being blocked because of X should warrant breaking through any focus period, as thats clear indication of an issue that needs more attention. If you're talking about 2 people being blocked simply because they don't know what to do, thats why companies should have proper mentorship programs in the first place, it was a need hidden because being in-office made this less visible of a need, but it was always there, and dedicated mentorships are better than ad-hoc problem solving in these types of cases. Not every senior needs to be in the "deep work" pool (we do mentorship on rotation where I work)
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Work should be structured to be as non blocking as possible Which works if the work is predictable. If you’re in a dynamic environment, that’s not possible. Hence, agility. To take an absurd example, military command shouldn’t be RO.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  Noobs mostly do the interrupting and want to be able to interrupt. On the other hand, the experts are just getting interrupted with noob questions, and end up helping several people with their tasks in a day and their own task is still there undone. Noob get promoted and expert doesn't. Expert hates the noob. Clear enough?
helen___keller 3y ago
This is exactly the tradeoff, right? By definition this is more efficient communication when you can ping someone irl, interrupt their flow, and get an immediate response. And yes, it’s significantly worse for deep work. In exchange for losing deep work, you no longer have to write a detailed thought to your PM, wait 5 hours for them to ping back “sounds good to me”, then begin working on it the next business day not feeling sure if they even read what you wrote.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  That sounds more of a planning / culture issue than something thats unavoidable. At the beginning of the pandemic, this happended alot, where I had to wait for PM input or what have you, but eventually, culture molded to be more async and we were given more trust to do things we felt were right. We re-structured meetings to be more productive, for example: PMs are required to write all the requirements in advance of a refinement session so everyone can read them first, and you are expected to have read them. This opens up for async discussion (via Jira messages) and come refinement meetings, a way to ask and discuss directly. In the last 2 years since thats taken place, I have not had another instance of waiting on a PM for a response. In cases where we need something more urgent, there are always ways to get a PM on the line ASAP, we have protocols for that (seldom used, but they exist)
  - helen___keller 3y ago
    Yes, there exist company cultures and management styles that greatly assist remote teams
- commandlinefan 3y ago
  > This is exactly the tradeoff, right? But you're also expected to meet your weekly "commitments" in JIRA - which means you're going to be working nights and weekends to do the work you're supposed to be doing since you were interrupted all day to do the work other people were supposed to be doing. But you're right, this _is_ the tradeoff, and it's by design, since you're "exempt".
OfficeChad 3y ago
If you want to work in silence - become a monk.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
Feels like and environment problem. One workplace I had was an open office, but it also had a few dozen "focus rooms". Very tiny booth sort of room with A desk and outlets. Someone in a focus room clearly shouldn't be disturbed, but in the open space you're generally a bit more open.

scottLobster 3y ago

Unpopular opinion, but this seems more like an issue of developer comfort than actual productivity, similar to how taking adderall can make you feel more productive than you actually are. If the product quality depends on you maintaining a flow state for extended periods, then you're either working in a research lab or it's a poorly designed product. I say this as a dev who also gets annoyed when my deep focus is interrupted, but so long as the interruption is actually warranted (and with my company's culture it usually is) I swallow my annoyance, task-switch and get the job done anyway. I'm already earning a higher salary than than most people in the world with good benefits and flexible hours. I can be mildly annoyed at work sometimes if it helps get the job done.

no_wizard 3y ago
I disagree. I can move through quite alot, quite well, when I can work in a deep flow. 2-4 hours of deep work can be incredibly productive end to end and we follow TDD pretty strictly, which lends itself well to really thinking about problems and their solutions in my experience thus far, but it requires the ability to really walk through a problem space. Our code quality here has improved significantly around this, and we are shipping faster than ever. That isn't to say I'm unavailable (or anyone else) its that there is an acceptance that not all things are urgent, and if they are, its warranted to break through any focus periods.
- scottLobster 3y ago
  Doesn't sound like we disagree that much. You are actually available, but not all things are urgent. I'd say the difference at my workplace is that pieces of the product are extremely old, developed under different architectures with different technologies under multiple management regimes of varying quality. There's a lot of tribal knowledge, so everything is kind of urgent by default as someone new to a specific piece of code can't move forward efficiently without picking the relevant SME's brain. Forbidding interruptions would be akin to mandating "only the SMEs can work, and the rest of you need to waste money twiddling your thumbs or banging your head against obscure legacy code until they feel like helping you". Most of the time when I'm interrupted it's because someone's blocked and I have the knowledge to unblock them, or I can at least point them to who does, so my loss of flow state is their gaining the ability to move forward at all, and everyone benefits. By contrast it sounds like you guys designed your product around maximizing the impact of flow states and minimizing the need for interruption. I bet you have good documentation too. I'm honestly jealous, it would take tens of millions and years of re-writes to do the same here, and our prime customer wouldn't be willing to accept the delay even if we had the funding.
  - diracs_stache 3y ago
    It may not be that "only SMEs can work" but that "SMEs don't have 5 tickets this sprint but 3 high level deliveries over the next quarter" thus they are allowed work uninterrupted from the daily churn and focus intensely (contributing to their already high base knowledge). Whereas other engineers are constantly distracted and stay surface level trying to stay afloat.
- prox 3y ago
  I completely agree with this way of working, and we have the same “protocol” as it were. I check my comms once every one or two hours to see if there is any pressing matters. So little is actually urgent, unless you have some business critical infrastructure you have to maintain, but that sounds like a different role entirely.
naasking 3y ago
> If the product quality depends on you maintaining a flow state for extended periods I think you've conflated quality and productivity; you started talking about one then switched to the other. They are related but not the same. Certain dev tasks require deep flow for good results/quality. Robust refactorings, abstraction design and prototyping. Basically anything where you have to preserve invariants under code transformations. This isn't all dev work, and isn't necessarily frequent either, but when flow state is required it's usually important work that's core to a program's operation, so product quality definitely depends on flow. If you're working on such a task, an interruption requires a return to that flow state to ensure good quality, and that takes time and will definitely impact productivity. Other tasks do not require going very deep though and so achieving comparable quality doesn't require much depth in your flow. Interruptions won't affect productivity much in such cases. My two cents.
- scottLobster 3y ago
  I think the key point of the line you quoted was "for extended periods". Obviously flow states are useful, perhaps even required in some contexts, but to demand a full day of uninterrupted flow-state engineering bliss is IMO unrealistic and very often counterproductive. Software development at the company level is a team sport, and being actively hostile to necessary communication simply because it "interrupts your flow state" is the act of a prima donna or "rock star" developer. I've refactored a lot of code/been doing deep design work and been interrupted during said work. Did it make my personal task take substantially longer to complete due to the task-switching/getting my flow state back? Sure, but the interruption was for a good reason and my help was actually needed. On balance the interruption saved the company money and time because the drop in efficiency of execution for my slice of the pie was less impactful than what my help was needed for. Now if you're getting constantly pinged for stupid shit that anyone could Google, then perhaps you should politely confront the person(s) doing so and make your expectations clear rather than declaring a pox on all interruptions.
  - naasking 3y ago
    > Sure, but the interruption was for a good reason and my help was actually needed. Wouldn't this be true of just about everyone complaining about such interruptions though? I can't imagine anyone would mind being interrupted if the building were on fire. People just differ on what they consider to be good reasons. I'm sure there are unreasonable people on all sides, both those asking for unreasonable conditions to interrupt them and those not respecting reasonable conditions for interruptions, but I don't think it's the majority of the people complaining about it. I've been in this situation a few times, and lots of people just don't have good impulse control and so don't even think twice about interrupting you if it's more convenient for them.

jayd16 3y ago

Did you notice that the grand parent is promoting instant interruptions with remote meetings? You're talking about being able to ignore your coworkers requests easier. Seems pretty contradictory, no? I also do wonder what the real value of it ignoring live requests is. You personally get to stay on task but what about what's lost? If you block two or more people isn't it worse overall?

no_wizard 3y ago
Work should be structured to be as non blocking as possible in the first place. If its not, there is either an issue in planning, resources, or in (unlikely) cases, truly it has to be serial, in which case it should be planned accordingly I'd also argue, that 2 people being blocked because of X should warrant breaking through any focus period, as thats clear indication of an issue that needs more attention. If you're talking about 2 people being blocked simply because they don't know what to do, thats why companies should have proper mentorship programs in the first place, it was a need hidden because being in-office made this less visible of a need, but it was always there, and dedicated mentorships are better than ad-hoc problem solving in these types of cases. Not every senior needs to be in the "deep work" pool (we do mentorship on rotation where I work)
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Work should be structured to be as non blocking as possible Which works if the work is predictable. If you’re in a dynamic environment, that’s not possible. Hence, agility. To take an absurd example, military command shouldn’t be RO.
LtWorf 3y ago
Noobs mostly do the interrupting and want to be able to interrupt. On the other hand, the experts are just getting interrupted with noob questions, and end up helping several people with their tasks in a day and their own task is still there undone. Noob get promoted and expert doesn't. Expert hates the noob. Clear enough?

helen___keller 3y ago

This is exactly the tradeoff, right? By definition this is more efficient communication when you can ping someone irl, interrupt their flow, and get an immediate response. And yes, it’s significantly worse for deep work. In exchange for losing deep work, you no longer have to write a detailed thought to your PM, wait 5 hours for them to ping back “sounds good to me”, then begin working on it the next business day not feeling sure if they even read what you wrote.

no_wizard 3y ago
That sounds more of a planning / culture issue than something thats unavoidable. At the beginning of the pandemic, this happended alot, where I had to wait for PM input or what have you, but eventually, culture molded to be more async and we were given more trust to do things we felt were right. We re-structured meetings to be more productive, for example: PMs are required to write all the requirements in advance of a refinement session so everyone can read them first, and you are expected to have read them. This opens up for async discussion (via Jira messages) and come refinement meetings, a way to ask and discuss directly. In the last 2 years since thats taken place, I have not had another instance of waiting on a PM for a response. In cases where we need something more urgent, there are always ways to get a PM on the line ASAP, we have protocols for that (seldom used, but they exist)
- helen___keller 3y ago
  Yes, there exist company cultures and management styles that greatly assist remote teams
commandlinefan 3y ago
> This is exactly the tradeoff, right? But you're also expected to meet your weekly "commitments" in JIRA - which means you're going to be working nights and weekends to do the work you're supposed to be doing since you were interrupted all day to do the work other people were supposed to be doing. But you're right, this _is_ the tradeoff, and it's by design, since you're "exempt".

OfficeChad 3y ago

If you want to work in silence - become a monk.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

Feels like and environment problem. One workplace I had was an open office, but it also had a few dozen "focus rooms". Very tiny booth sort of room with A desk and outlets. Someone in a focus room clearly shouldn't be disturbed, but in the open space you're generally a bit more open.