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The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

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Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#201

Post by tanjtanjtanj »

erikerikson wrote: post #183
TeMPOraL wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may not be paid by the hour, but they're being graded by the hour. It may be beneficial to the company to save overall "company time" at expense of wasting time for many individual employees, but I don't think this analysis accounts for the costs of people leaving or being fired. Both of those are very costly, but they're step changes and hard to attribute to any specific cause.

I've been evaluated half yearly or annually, never hourly that I've known. Do you work in HR?

The above poster was fairly obviously using a figure of speech, they did not mean that there was a specific formal evaluation like a mid-year review every hour.

Think about what the average salaried person (especially outside of tech) might get dinged on either explicitly or implicitly. Come in at 10:00 every day? Not being "seen" enough in your seat or around the office? Not replying quickly enough in Teams/slack? Jira/Github statistics? These are not things that do not reflect a salaried worker's output but you're still getting evaluated by them on an minute by minute, hour by hour, day by ay basis.

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#204

Post by erikerikson »

tanjtanjtanj wrote: post #201
erikerikson wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been evaluated half yearly or annually, never hourly that I've known. Do you work in HR?

The above poster was fairly obviously using a figure of speech, they did not mean that there was a specific formal evaluation like a mid-year review every hour. Think about what the average salaried person (especially outside of tech) might get dinged on either explicitly or implicitly. Come in at 10:00 every day? Not being "seen" enough in your seat or around the office? Not replying quickly enough in Teams/slack? J…

This has sincerely not been my experience, even as my role has blended into management adjacency over the years.

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#205

Post by TeMPOraL »

erikerikson wrote: post #204
tanjtanjtanj wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above poster was fairly obviously using a figure of speech, they did not mean that there was a specific formal evaluation like a mid-year review every hour. Think about what the average salaried person (especially outside of tech) might get dinged on either explicitly or implicitly. Come in at 10:00 every day? Not being "seen" enough in your seat or around the office? Not replying quickly enough in Teams/slack? J…

This has sincerely not been my experience, even as my role has blended into management adjacency over the years.

But surely you experienced the fact that being paid a salary is a matter of contract, while being evaluated (formally and informally) for productivity is not independent of time. The company may find it valuable on the net to waste your time with distractions and bad process, but your manager may not know it and think you're just lazy.

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#206

Post by erikerikson »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #205
erikerikson wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has sincerely not been my experience, even as my role has blended into management adjacency over the years.

But surely you experienced the fact that being paid a salary is a matter of contract, while being evaluated (formally and informally) for productivity is not independent of time. The company may find it valuable on the net to waste your time with distractions and bad process, but your manager may not know it and think you're just lazy.

I have certainly experienced management that took many actions which reduced productivity.

I think the biggest blind spot is management's negative emotional externalities which cost far more than anything else. Many of us got into this because we love it, let's us sincerely do our job well, please!

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#207

Post by asdf6969 »

AbstractH24 wrote: post #133
roland35 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also had a fun experience in an open office, but the key element of it was that the office was only about 15-20 people and we were all on the same project and team. When I visited the Big Tech office (as a remote employee), it was an entire floor with rows of unrelated people all together. My team was together but it felt much different, more distracting, and hard to have a conversation without feeling like you are…

I’m part of the minority of folks who think the value of in office outweighs the cost. Particularly amongst those who aren’t in management. But only if you are working in close proximity to those working on the same projects and leadership going up at least two levels. (leadership, not management) Why large companies with globally distributed teams see value in having employees in office sitting side by side in isola…

> the value of in office outweighs the cost

For who? Your employer keeps all the value and only employees pay the cost. Why would I want this as an employee?

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#208

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #137
mr_toad wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pretty sure that Teams has tanked productivity in some offices. It used to be that arranging a meeting required finding a physical space. Now some people are spending their days in back-to-back teams meetings and never get any actual work done.

The counter to this is that you can actually have a 5 or 10 minute teams call which was all that was needed to resolve the issue / answer the question / or whatever the meeting was about. Whereas, if it was a physical meeting in a booked room then it would easily expand to fill 30 or 60min or whatever time the room was booked for. I see this myself. I get a teams call with a manager and a few others, get something so…

But then Teams will only let you book calls that start and end at the hour and half hour, making everything either back-to-back or with gaps too long for breaks and too short for focus work.

Teams goes out of its way to create colossal amounts of waste by design. Cui bono?

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#209

Post by DLion »

So did they just discover pair programming? :D

Also, I'm reading lots of comments that are pointing out that they don't like doing pair programming because they do it wrongly.

In the past I wrote an article about it: https://domenicoluciani.com/2022/07/22/misleading-pair-progr..., I hope it helps to clarify some concepts behind this way of working

Re: The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done

#210

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

jvanderbot wrote: post #136
goda90 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My employer was very quick to force return to office after covid lockdowns. Like they were willing to pour millions into subdividing offices into closets so people could isolate at work even, but the county health department gave them a stern look and they ended up scraping that and waiting another year to force RTO. But they actually put their money where their mouth is. Ad-hoc conversations in the hallway, going to…

I would love an offline only work environment. Just a small cadre of tech obsessed smart folks working in a room and talking when they need to. In grad school we did this. Everyone was heads down, except when they were stumped they'd go to the whiteboard, which was open invitation to discuss a problem, if you had time. That kind of "opt in" / volunteering help was way more trust building and low pressure than pulling…

Are these jobs at all attainable by people of unremarkable intelligence and aptitude?

In principle I don’t see why less clever people like myself can’t get together and solve less challenging problems in the same way.

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