The "all hands" idea sounds terrible. Asking a developer is asked to answer 5 customer emails daily, each one needing a variable length of time to respond to, t

The "all hands" idea sounds terrible. Asking a developer is asked to answer 5 customer emails daily, each one needing a variable length of time to respond to, threatens to poison the well and become a burden. My understanding is that a developer would either try to answer the emails at the very beginning or at the very end of the day to keep distractions at a minimum. I've seen this sort of setup work very well. It's something I've done myself (while wearing a dev hat) and found it very useful. I'd happily do it again. Yes - being interrupted at any time would be a pain - but... 1) There are normally enough natural pauses during the day where knocking off a few customer support issues is doable. It can actually be quite a nice change of pace. It uses a separate bit of your head and you come back to that problem that just stumped you fresh after the break. 2) It's can be a mistake to worry about the productivity of individuals and neglect the productivity of the company as a whole. Slowing me down individually can make the company as a whole run faster. 3) It gets you direct contact with actual customers on a regular basis. This is pure fking gold. Lost count of the number of times this has produced insights about how the ongoing development should work. That minor annoyance that three folk mention in a row that's sounds tricky but is a 2m fix.