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by iateanapple 2214 days ago
> It is, you are putting your own issue in higher regard just because you don't know someone else’s situation.

Most of the time the communication is within the team and we do know the other team members situations (work wise).

And we have decided it is important enough to interrupt them.

And we are mostly knowledge workers who understand the cost of interruptions.

Yes, there are bad eggs who waste everyone’s time, but they are in the small minority.

What I find happens a lot is devs focus on their personal productivity ahead of the teams productivity.
2 comments
DevKoala 2214 days ago
You don’t prioritize your personal focus, you prioritize an objective. Most often these objectives are very clear to the rest of the team.

Also I can’t believe you “know” something is “important enough to interrupt them”. I work for a place in which the most “junior” dev is worth a quarter of a million dollars a year. I am not going to tell some dude who is probably figuring out a new way to pack data to save us thousands of dollars a day, to take a minute to listen to me. It better be a fire.

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iateanapple 2214 days ago
> Most often these objectives are very clear to the rest of the team.

> Also I can’t believe you “know” something is “important enough to interrupt them”

> “junior” dev is worth a quarter of a million dollars a year

So the objectives of what you are working on are very clear and yet your very highly paid colleagues aren’t responsible or sensible enough to understand when it’s appropriate to interrupt you?

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DevKoala 2214 days ago
When the objectives are clear, we understand our priorities, and there is very little reason for interruption. Today for example, outside of meetings, I don’t think I communicated with a single coworker. I had a few 1-1’s for pair programming, and those were scheduled during standup. Is your organization aware of studies on interruption? It seems nobody understand the problem.

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/190891/programmer_int...

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matthewowen 2214 days ago
the bad eggs can be in the minority as members of the population, but still provide the majority of interruptions: the good eggs know to be judicious about it, but the bad eggs just interrupt and interrupt and interrupt.
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iateanapple 2214 days ago
Agreed - so why not deal with the bad eggs individually?

Because at the end of the day most managers aren’t really concerned with productivity - it’s far easier and less emotionally draining to just proscribe blanket bans.

That’s one of the main reasons remote working hasn’t taken off more.

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