[Kirby]

Paul Graham can be hit or miss, IMO, but this one is a direct hit. I don't mind meetings per se - in a good company, they have merit - but their effect on the work day can be disastrous. If you don't work somewhere that understand that programmers need large uninterrupted chunks of time, well, you're not at a developer friendly place. There's few worse problems. And non-makers often don't have any idea that it's not just the standard 'coders are cranky' going on. (We, as a group, _are_ cranky, mind you.)

[Periodic]

I work an odd job. It is approximately equal parts system administration, programming, and tech support. Can you guess which part I dread most?

I relish the days I can lock myself in a basement laboratory and hide out with my code. Some days I just give up on getting non-support work done because I'm getting interrupted every hour with a 5-minute fix or to reboot a fax machine. I've toyed with the idea of shifting my schedule to only overlap with the rest of the office half the day. There is no way I can really schedule much active work (as opposed to reactive tech support) in a chunk less than about three hours.

I'll move on when I can, but right now I've got one perk I don't want to trade for anything.

[jac_no_k]

I have a similar job + management duties. I've found the guidelines in the book Time Management for System Administrators ( http://my.safaribooksonline.com/0596007833 ) pretty good.

The strategy where you have a fellow team member act as your shield is effective. Every other day you rotate the role of shield, aka as the secretary.

[donaldc]

What's the perk? It must be pretty good if you're willing to put up with constant interruption for it...