[dec0dedab0de]

I was recently told that I could ask permission to concentrate for up to four hours in a row, but not every day. When I said that wasn't enough I was told it works for everyone else. I have been on leave and in therapy since. I still don't know if they're being unreasonable, or if it is just affecting me because of my mental health issues.

[brailsafe]

Pretty sure it's them. My manager once inquired why a refactor I was working on was taking so long, and articulated it as "I don't understand what's taking so long, by comparison, Brendan Eich created javascript in two weeks". I was taken aback in the moment, because it had to be easily one of the most petulant, absurd, and frankly idiotic comments I've ever received from a manager. I said "ok" and left a gap of silence for him to fill, then explained the complexity of the nature of getting this particular thing working perfectly (which was what was demanded despite apparently being "agile"), to which he subsequently ignored, as he did with numerous pleas for space to focus and deal with my own mental health issues while still serving my duties. I ended up getting laid off, and I'm much happier, fuck that guy.

[lozenge]

Wow, imagine where we would be now if Brendan Eich had taken another two weeks to really make javascript better.

[TeMPOraL]

Then maybe it would be what it was supposed to be - a Lisp.

AFAIR, JS looks the way it does, because the business side wanted to ride on the hype Java was generating.

[grugagag]

No, its affecting everyone. Productivity has dropped all over. Sometimes it feels as if there’s some hidden ploy to set money on fire

[TeMPOraL]

Plot twist: it's our own doing.

My pet hypothesis is that most of the "productivity improvements" companies achieved thanks to office / business-side software was really accounting trickery, even if unintentional one. A lot of the distracting bullshit we - and everyone else with an office job - has to do regularly, used to be someone's actual job. The flip side of software making a task so easy everyone could do it themselves, is that... everyone has to do it themselves. What used to be done by specialists is now spread evenly across the company, tacked onto the job description or just plain assumed. I called this an accounting trick, because the salaries no longer paid are legible on the balance sheet, while general productivity drop all across the board is not.

[grugagag]

Yes, sounds very reasonable. But what to do about it?

[TeMPOraL]

Despair. Resist creating, promoting or buying technologies that eliminate jobs not by automating them away, but by offloading the work to a much greater population, thereby diluting it until it's seemingly gone. Favor dealing with people over self-service processes. Or, at the very least, understand this failure mode of economic metrics and don't accept claims of productivity gains at face value.

[shortcake27]

Everyone has different tolerances for interruptions and context switching, and I’m really not sure this is something you can change. Sadly, few companies listen/adapt to their employee’s strengths/weaknesses. I would suggest looking for another job which is more suited to you.