> This blog is not about how Jira is too complex and over-engineered with features I don’t need.
This blogpost is a microcosm of engineer arrogance (it's also an ad for their product, so all of this is basically a strawman to drive sign-ups. Great content marketing, to bash on a tool people love to hate).
The world is not all about engineers. Jira is a tool for whole companies, which have lots of other departments than Engineering, which are also important, also trying to reach their goals.
I'm so sorry that you got pulled out of your "deep flow" state because an executive is trying to figure out if a project is at risk. You know, she might have a really good reason to worry about that, maybe including information you don't have, like a potential customer who is at risk if the feature doesn't ship.
So suck it up and help out your colleagues.
And if you don't want to be interrupted, then maybe keep your tickets up-to-date, or proactively communicate risks, or sign out of Slack for a few hours, or get your manager to do their job better and be a buffer to protect you from interruptions. None of this is Jira's fault.
Can Jira be a PITA to use - sure, but that's probably because of how your company set it up. You can make Jira streamlined if you try, but it takes active administration, and the people who work in Jira need to be empowered to work on Jira. If you can't get your Jira project to work the way you need, then that sucks, but that's probably Jira being a microcosm of your company's org/power structure, which is a different thing.
Or sign-up for their product, that's really the goal of this post.
Edit: I did not intend to claim that all, or even most, engineers are arrogant people. They certainly are not, at least in my experience. If you are an engineer (I am one, too) please don't read this as me attacking you personally! I am aiming at this kind of blog post, which displays a me-first attitude that I think is unhealthy.