131–140 of 253 posts
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I got so tired of defending my time at a previous job that I just started saying “Is that what our producers needs me to do?” Shuts them up every time. Generally, the people that interrupted me were people that had no authority to ask me to do anything: marketers, ad agents, sales.
I can't even imagine the hell of working with someone who responds to every request with "Is that what $THIRD_PARTY needs me to do?"
I've been tempted to hack together a web based game. It will be some simple puzzles requiring working memory, like that addition of numbers example. It could even be word problems with multiple choice answers, but the questions has to be relatively wordy with several data points to consider. Periodically it will get interrupted, by several things, but mainly a face with a speech bubble, asking various questions like…
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Could you please not post in the flamewar style to HN, cross into personal attack, or call names in arguments here? The site guidelines ask you not to do any of that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting, we'd be grateful.
The submitted article is a flame war against non-developers and promotes the same attitude in the workplace. Other people have jobs too. It's condescends : "Your non-techie peers just don’t get it, no matter how many times you try to make them understand." Demeans : "Tell him that you bet him lunch he can’t get it done in five minutes, only getting one shot at getting the answer right. Maybe he’ll stop laughing and g…
Perhaps you don't the article author (or whoever the other person may be) any better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
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Interruptions are annoying but I think people are going a little overboard with this vitriol. I would wager that we are all just as guilty of doing the same to our team members who are deep in thought on something. "Did you merge that git branch?", "Is the staging server down for you?", "Can you take a look at this query and see if you notice anything?"; things like this are batted around between co-workers without t…
At least on the teams I have been on, we didn't physically interrupt people. We sent Slack and Teams messages for all of that stuff about merges and staging.
The example I like to use is sudoku. Often, after a day of programming, it takes me a while to "come out of it" and I explain that to my SO as if she'd been doing hours of sudoku and then had to jump into a social situation. Similarly, if you are interrupted in the middle of a "solve" it may be difficult to jump back in - especially if the puzzle hasn't been created correctly and you are trying to "debug" which numbe…
To add to this, there’s a lot of neurodiversity in the programming world. A lot of people have brilliant brains that just don’t work well with interaction. I had a discussion with other people on my team recently and realized I was the only extroverted person on the team. I think it’s also worth saying I personally think I’m one of the worst developers on the team but being able to context switch is unfairly rewarded…
> I had a discussion with other people on my team recently and realized I was the only extroverted person on the team. > I wish respecting communication preferences was more respected. Asynchronous and non intrusive messaging seems so much better for the majority of my coworkers I'm interested in this second point. You've provided an interpretation of what respecting your coworkers' communication preferences might me…
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Which, interestingly shines a light on just now reductive the original comment was. Parent comment’s take was actually more charitable to the GP by at least leaving room for the possibility that managers do real work (they do, and hopefully this isn’t controversial). And I’d go a step further and argue that even within the managerial role, there are tasks that demand focus and deep work.
> the possibility that managers do real work (they do, and hopefully this isn't controversial). I mean, I'd hope it's uncontroversial that any general statement about people has exceptions, but I assumed it was clear that we were talking about typical managers and salesdroids, not making blanket universalisms. If it wasn't I apologize for the confusion.
If you’re just talking about managers that are bad at their jobs, call that out. If you’re advocating for a change in the actual management structure itself, call that out.
Maybe “typical” narrows the net ever so slightly, but the definition of typical is “having the distinctive qualities of a particular type of person or thing”.
Either “typical” is applied to managers broadly and then the negative characteristics you find fault with are inherent to the management role itself (and not necessarily the manager)…
Or “typical” is used to describe a specific type of manager, either characterized by certain common negative traits, job duties assigned to the manager, etc.
In either case, there’s something critically missing from a dismissal of “typical” managers without proper classification of “typical”.
To add to this, there’s a lot of neurodiversity in the programming world. A lot of people have brilliant brains that just don’t work well with interaction. I had a discussion with other people on my team recently and realized I was the only extroverted person on the team. I think it’s also worth saying I personally think I’m one of the worst developers on the team but being able to context switch is unfairly rewarded…
>I’m one of the worst developers on the team but being able to context switch is unfairly rewarded and gives business people the impression I’m way more competent than I am Why do you say you're being unfairly rewarded? Your communication skills are a genuinely useful skill to have.