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Re: Busy Status Bar

#511

Post by gosub100 »

farts_mckensy wrote: post #486
gosub100 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you have the right to tell your coworkers to leave you alone. Part of working means collaboration and if you're unwilling to do that, you don't belong on a team. You're not doing brain surgery that will permanently alter the life of some helpless patient. you're not meticulously stacking the last card on top of a 10 ft house of cards exhibit where tens of hours of work will be completely lost if your co…

I hope you're not a manager, because this is horrible guidance. For starters, there are some neurodivergent people who really get thrown off by interruptions, especially if they are really focused on the task at hand. It is entirely unreasonable for you to expect that your coworkers should be available at your beck and call. And you are totally ignoring the fact the countless studies showing that workplace interrupti…

If a worker needs disability accommodations they can get them from management. We're not all going to walk on eggshells because someone might be neurodivergent. If they are present in the office they are part of a team and that requires interaction.

Re: Busy Status Bar

#512

Post by gregmac »

gosub100 wrote: post #473
rgrmrts wrote: post #459

This is a neat idea (and good looking product), but unfortunately the issue is the people who tend to interrupt you in the office ignore all explicit signals in my experience. Wearing noise cancelling headphones is an accepted sign of “in the flow, pls don’t interrupt” yet some folks feel like it doesn’t apply to them. Or they’d just stand next to your desk waiting for your attention. I’m pretty jaded (and probably s…

I don't think you have the right to tell your coworkers to leave you alone. Part of working means collaboration and if you're unwilling to do that, you don't belong on a team. You're not doing brain surgery that will permanently alter the life of some helpless patient. you're not meticulously stacking the last card on top of a 10 ft house of cards exhibit where tens of hours of work will be completely lost if your co…

All of this entirely depends on your company culture. And for every choice you make (conscious or not) there are consequences.

Perhaps the culture within the company / department / team is to allow interruptions in the name of "collaboration". Hopefully the increased value gained by "collaborating" that way is worth the cost. Some of that cost is time (productivity), some is people literally quitting. Eventually you're left with a company full of people who don't mind being interrupted and I would assume are interrupters themselves, and I'd assume this effect is exponential, causing lower and lower productivity.

As a manager, you can't have this culture and then also complain about the lack of productivity, missed estimates, etc. (Well, you can, but that in turn will increase stress levels and unhappiness and cause more people to quit.)

Your competitor who sees collaboration is possible with planning, proper async communication channels, and some specific culture choices will have a nicer environment and happily hire away your most talented and knowledgeable people.

> where tens of hours of work will be completely lost if your concentration strays to show your face to another human being and utter a few words.

After being interrupted, it takes on average over 23 minutes [1] to get back on track. The average time lost is almost 3 hours per day, or 60 hours per month [2].

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/944128/worker-interrupted-cost-t...

[2] https://www.talkboxbooth.com/post/shocking-cost-workplace-di...

Re: Busy Status Bar

#513

Post by CobrastanJorji »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #272
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say that $200 seemed awfully expensive for a programmable kitchen timer. I've had a project idea for a while that would require a bit more juice. In short, I want to make a music practice timer for ADHD kids that avoid actually playing music during practice time. I want it to be beefy enough to run some simple ML for detecting instruments being played, and I only want the timer to count down while the…

Hate to burst your bubble, but as an amateur musician I fear this would backfire, or at least fail to result in any improvement in playing ability. Silence and time are absolutely critical to playing music. By analogy, measuring 'time spent drawing bow across strings' would be as useful to a violin student as 'time spent pressing foot on accelerator' would be to a driving student! From my own experience learning to p…

It's a great point. For a contemplative learner deeply focused on what they're doing, this is definitely a bad idea. I'm aiming at sort of the opposite kind of learner.

Re: Busy Status Bar

#514

Post by farts_mckensy »

gosub100 wrote: post #511
farts_mckensy wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you're not a manager, because this is horrible guidance. For starters, there are some neurodivergent people who really get thrown off by interruptions, especially if they are really focused on the task at hand. It is entirely unreasonable for you to expect that your coworkers should be available at your beck and call. And you are totally ignoring the fact the countless studies showing that workplace interrupti…

If a worker needs disability accommodations they can get them from management. We're not all going to walk on eggshells because someone might be neurodivergent. If they are present in the office they are part of a team and that requires interaction.

Walk on eggshells? Schedule a designated time to talk. It's not that difficult. Are you that disorganized that you need to share your thoughts the second they occur to you? Even for neurotypicals, it takes some time to refocus after interruption. Your approach has been proven to lower productivity and its costs companies serious money.

Re: Busy Status Bar

#515

Post by ndndjdjdn »

refulgentis wrote: post #504
ndndjdjdn wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be doing the famous "just use ftp" to dropbox. But I highly doubt it for this product.

You're thinking grandiosely. It's pretty simple situation thats different from that one. No one's trying to lay claim to if this individual product "becomes Dropbox", and you're not saying you can build it in a weekend, which is the comment you're referring to. I think you may be swapping in a bailey of "oh we're arguing about whether this will be "successful"" because the motte of "what is this for, it can't work!?"…

The original ftp dropbox comment was about usefulness rather than success IMO. They were saying why is this needed.

With the conraption here. It is not useless, sure, but that is not a high enough bar to use resources to manufacture it or for there to be a market for it. Other than someone mentioned geek consumerism.

Re: Busy Status Bar

#516

Post by gosub100 »

farts_mckensy wrote: post #514
gosub100 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a worker needs disability accommodations they can get them from management. We're not all going to walk on eggshells because someone might be neurodivergent. If they are present in the office they are part of a team and that requires interaction.

Walk on eggshells? Schedule a designated time to talk. It's not that difficult. Are you that disorganized that you need to share your thoughts the second they occur to you? Even for neurotypicals, it takes some time to refocus after interruption. Your approach has been proven to lower productivity and its costs companies serious money.

Tell the person who is trying to talk that you're busy and you'll get back to them later. It's part of the interpersonal skill of learning to say no.

Re: Busy Status Bar

#517

Post by farts_mckensy »

gosub100 wrote: post #516
farts_mckensy wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walk on eggshells? Schedule a designated time to talk. It's not that difficult. Are you that disorganized that you need to share your thoughts the second they occur to you? Even for neurotypicals, it takes some time to refocus after interruption. Your approach has been proven to lower productivity and its costs companies serious money.

Tell the person who is trying to talk that you're busy and you'll get back to them later. It's part of the interpersonal skill of learning to say no.

That would require them to be interrupted, which would subsequently require them to refocus. Your time is not more important than your coworker's time.

Each interruption is a drain on productivity, which costs the company money. What part about this do you not understand?

Re: Busy Status Bar

#518

Post by bloppe »

tshaddox wrote: post #492
yard2010 wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're not meticulously stacking the last card on top of a 10 ft house of cards exhibit where tens of hours of work will be completely lost if your concentration strays to show your face to another human being and utter a few words. You have no idea. Thank god we have this WFH thing now. I can build this house of cards without anyone interrupting me saying I'm not building a house of cards.

But really, as a software engineer you should not be building a house of cards, right? Surely you should not boldly insist that you never be subjected to collaboration from other members of your team because you are intent on building a system that is in constant danger of collapse.

In my experience, the house of cards is usually debugging, not building. I've had to do some pretty crazy debugging, stepping through deep call stacks frame by frame, keeping track of big data structures as they change along the way. This can take a huge amount of focus that would absolutely be ruined by even a 5 second conversation.

Re: Busy Status Bar

#519

Post by velcrovan »

vdfs wrote: post #452
Corrado wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh... I wish Keybase had taken off and not been gobbled up by Zoom. It had so much promise with things like this.

Hi, I am the CEO of Keybase and i can assure you we are working on features that will make this a reality

LOL

Re: Busy Status Bar

#520

Post by gosub100 »

ggiesen wrote: post #479
gosub100 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you have the right to tell your coworkers to leave you alone. Part of working means collaboration and if you're unwilling to do that, you don't belong on a team. You're not doing brain surgery that will permanently alter the life of some helpless patient. you're not meticulously stacking the last card on top of a 10 ft house of cards exhibit where tens of hours of work will be completely lost if your co…

You absolutely do. Many coworkers will bug you to ask instead of doing their own research, bug you to chitchat, etc. They can always book time with you, send an email/IM, etc if there's something they can't resolve on their own. You have your own deliverables and being interrupted every 10 minutes with inane questions that a web search or a look at the internal wiki/KB would have resolved is not a productive use of a…

You had to ask people things when you learned. It's not different now that you're the one with the knowledge. And sometimes people not using the docs means your documentation sucks or needs updating
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