[dvtrn]

Answering a question in person likely breaks your concentration for a few minutes.

I'm going to argue that their concentration is already broken because there's a problem, needing remediation and help from a colleague on to the point of bothering to ask in the first place. And if you're sitting three feet away from me, I'm sorry but I'd much rather just flip around, ask if you have a minute, answer the question, and drive closer to the desired team outcome.

Change my mind.

[outime]

The other person then has to either interrupt everything to help you (so now you’re both distracted for a while) or say no (while maintaining a mental task queue to remember to get back to you later, which is mentally taxing). Overall, it feels a bit selfish to interrupt someone to get your trouble solved when there are more subtle ways of doing it.

[dvtrn]

Overall, it feels a bit selfish to interrupt someone to get your trouble solved when there are more subtle ways of doing it.

I'm a bit confused by this. It is selfish, in the workplace to ask a colleague for help who sits an arm's length away?

Be it via Slack or shoulder tap, you're breaking their concentration regardless. Whatever task they were doing, is now being stopped because of the ask for help.

Maybe I'm looking at this from too high of a vantage point. Help me out here.

[sbov]

Slack, email, or IM don't break my concentration because I ignore them when I don't have time to answer questions. It's not as easy to ignore someone physically tapping on your shoulder.

There's a very simple way to not interrupt someone working: try to catch their eye. If you can't, they're probably busy. Write down your question and move onto another aspect of what you're working on. You might even realize the answer to your own question while working. Maybe you will collect multiple questions, and you can ask them all at once rather than interrupting someone multiple times.

I've certainly had days where I got nothing done because people asked me a question every 10-20 minutes.

[iamdave]

It feels weird jumping to someone's defense here, but it's been equally weird watching so many people completely mischaracterize what the grandparent (great-grandparent, I think?) comment said:

S/he is not the one asking for help. He is the one being asked for help. Their attention and focus is the one being interrupted (or at least that's what their first comment said, that they receive numerous requests from help from someone who sits directly behind them via chat). And on that note, I actually find myself taking his or her side on this. They are being asked for help by someone who sits close enough away that they can quickly provide an answer verbally and return to their chores/duties.

That seems more efficient than hammering at the keyboard given the recipient can very likely hear the sound of one's voice with the response to the inquiry for assistance.

Why are so many comments to this problem being presented as if this person is the one who needs their behavior rectified, when they are not the source of the interruption, but the recipient of?

[sbov]

I know what the original comment asked, which is why I did not answer that original comment. But this most recent comment did not ask that:

> I'm a bit confused by this. It is selfish, in the workplace to ask a colleague for help who sits an arm's length away?

> Be it via Slack or shoulder tap, you're breaking their concentration regardless. Whatever task they were doing, is now being stopped because of the ask for help.

I was responding to this. They are now asking from the point of view of the person doing the interrupting. The statement about Slack vs shoulder tap is not true for me, and I would guess it is not true for a lot of people. Someone asking a question via Slack does not break my concentration.

[outime]

I’ll quote (and ignore the strawman):

>It is selfish, in the workplace to ask a colleague for help who sits an arm's length away-Slack or shoulder tap, you're breaking their concentration regardless

Not really, because you can disable notifications and check when you have free time. A physical interruption is abrupt and for sure will distract.

[dvtrn]

I haven't removed a single point of order from my post, beyond to edit a grammatical error; and to what strawman are you pointing? I quoted a direct line from your post and explained why I disagreed with it.

If this is how you're about to start discussing this, then I'll just bow out right now.

[outime]

The strawman is:

>It is selfish, in the workplace to ask a colleague for help who sits an arm's length away?

Because I haven’t said that, at all. I’ll bow out myself.

[iamdave]

This entire comment thread began because the person you're replying presented a situation where they are the person sitting arms length away from the messenger. At least, that was my impression, having sat back and watched this thread balloon so quickly, seems like a lot of people missed that and thought dvtrn was the one asking for help, when he's the one being asked and interrupted.

dvtrn have I misunderstood your posts? Sorry to put words in your mouth if I have.

[mlthoughts2018]

Why do you think Slack is just as interruptive as a shoulder tap? When I have to focus on my work and I’m in a state where I cannot answer someone else’s question for a while, I minimize Slack and email, usually for several hours.

You can still send me a message on Slack, and I’ll respond in a few hours when I can.

But if you speak verbally directly to me at my desk or tap me on the shoulder, then I have to break my concentration, engage in social norms about hearing out your question. Even if I instantly tell you I can’t help right now, I’ll lose 5-15 minutes getting back to concentration every time you do this.

You have a very unusual and incorrect understanding about how much more severely distracting itbis to receive a verbal / shoulder tap interruption for a question than something asynchronous like Slack or email.

[nine_k]

This is exactly what I'm saying. In the case of a quick question, in-person communication is more efficient for both sides. Doing the same thing async has a noticeably higher overhead.

[silverbax88]

There is almost no scenario where interrupting a developer in person is better than sending them an IM that they can respond to later.

The only reason would be actual urgency (not the pretend emergencies that businesses claim, either).

[dvtrn]

As an individual, what you say your ratio is of "Sure I can help now" to "I'll help you later" when a colleague asks for help?

Merely curious.

[mlthoughts2018]

I think the point is that you should assume most engineers need large uninterrupted blocks most of the time most days. It’s not about a ratio of one to the other, it’s about needing 5-hour segments of time in which nobody asks you anything at all and you don’t have to say “sure I can help now” or “I’ll help you later” because you don’t need to say anything when you’re not interrupted.

Saying “I’ll help you later” usually comes with 5-15 minutes of lost productivity while you try to get your concentration back for what you were just doing.

Also, it’s often better to bundle questions together, usually at the end of the day, and document them like with an internal Q&A board, to reduce future needs to interrupt over that same question.

But, to put some number on this, I’d say later in the afternoon, if I’m not busy for a deadline, I’ll jump up and help on all questions.

Between 7 am and lunch, I will not help you unless it’s an absolute emergency. I simply can’t afford to if I am going to do my job. Between lunch and 4pm, say, it’s a crapshoot based on what I’m doing, but generally I would say I respond with “I’ll help you later” to 90% of interrupting questions.

Interestingly, on my year end reviews one of the most consistent pieces of positive feedback I’ve gotten across several different employers, is that I am extremely helpful and generous with explaining things, and that my explanations are usually exceptionally clear and offer insight that quickly clears up confusion and leaves impressive documentation behind for people to reference later.

It’s about communicating smart, not communicating constantly. I defer about 90% of the questions I’m asked, yet people look to me as “the guy who always answers everybody’s questions.”