[esafak]

> The inability to tap on someone's shoulder reduces group productivity, regardless of what those who don't want to be interrupted think.

If you know a person does not like being interrupted don't be selfish and write a message. Why does your productivity matter more than mine?

[Larrikin]

In my experience working with people who didn't like to help people or people who helped people whenever they felt like it, they became managers or already were managers (because of course you can be super productive when you only help people when you feel like it) and then had revolts of people they managed when everyone got sick of having to waste hours because the other person didn't want to give a few minutes. People showing up late, missed deadlines, and just a general not caring about the company after so much disrespect. If you don't care about the company and just your career, you can continue to be hated and selfish, but it will come back to you if you ever start a company or want to advance past that level.

I was a naive intern at my first paid software gig, so I towed the line, but I watched as a startup went from hiring some very smart people to the engineers realizing they could come in at 11 hungover and leave at 4 because they were all smart, management was treating them like crap and they couldn't just fire everyone. There were other issues, but power tripping over personal productivity and not giving engineers time for help or questions about the business was a huge issue at that job.

This is not a promotion of the anti-WFH control busy body managers, but just know if your coworkers are asking you questions so they can do their job you should be mentoring them so they need to ask less questions. If you're the type to answer a slack message hours later, people are slowly growing to hate you and will eventually sabotage you.

[lanstin]

I love helping people, but don’t fucking tap me on the shoulder if I am concentrating on something. Don’t touch anyone at work. If even you stand around looking needy, and I can tell I will suffer a full loss of concentration, at least let me wrap up my current thought and do something to mark what I was thinking about and then ask if I can help, that would be better.

[nostrebored]

Because 10 minutes of your time might save hours of someone else’s. Why is your productivity more important than your entire teams?

I feel like people don’t treat achieving business goals as part of their job in dev. I’ve never had people treat this as a problem across other job roles.

[norir]

Constant interruptions are the biggest enemy of top performers. Everyone should have the right to at least a few hours of freedom for interruption except in the case of genuine emergency. There is a problem in the organization if people cannot work for a few hours on their own without asking for help or if there is too much unwritten organizational knowledge so that people can't help themselves.

Of course people should make themselves available and not be jerks but I strongly believe that a culture that encourages unrestricted interruptions will achieve worse business outcomes in the long run.

[esafak]

If ten minutes of my time is worth hours of yours and you are coming to me, I must know what I'm doing and you ought to respect my concentration. You will still get your help, but respectful of my schedule. Tell me how urgently you need an answer, and I will triage it. If there is an incident, that is different.

I do believe that there is room for better tools in this area, and I'm working on it. Tools that help users solve their problems collaboratively without imposing undue burden on their coworkers.