For me the worst part is how "let me check that email again for context" becomes a 2-minute exercise in 2FA juggling, at the end of which I've already forgotten what I opened my email for and need a coffee break just to calm my nerves.
Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)
221–230 of 271 posts
Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)
#222For me the worst part is how "let me check that email again for context" becomes a 2-minute exercise in 2FA juggling, at the end of which I've already forgotten what I opened my email for and need a coffee break just to calm my nerves.
To login to anything now really feels like 5 factor.
Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> no slack, no zooms, no one tapping your shoulder, no conversations about the weekend distracting you on the periphery My teen jobs were in stores, restaurants, and manufacturing. In those contexts, everybody understands that when you're working, you're actually working. Even managers understand that even small discussions need to be fit neatly into the flow of the work, and actual meetings require careful planning…
Similar raising. At one point I was ASE certified, at another I was a landscaper. The first thing I noticed about white collar work was how gossipy and lazy everyone was. We didn't have time for that in blue collar work. I had no idea how these people were useful to work or society. It seems so bizarre to me, even today, that most white collar jobs make more money. It's like they took the people who couldn't work phy…
Aye, same. The level at which my time was structured and accounted for on the blue collar level would astound the white collar folks. Entirely directed vs. entirely self-directed.
> It's like they took the people who couldn't work physically, made them feel superior, and for some reason paid them unreasonable wages.
Easy killer, you're projecting.
I could go back to being a bartender today, and could do 90% of the job (I'd have to refresh my memory how to mix a few drinks, but most of em are still there). I could probably go back to Private Investigator, or food truck work too.
But it took a whole lotta learning to get to the point where I can do my current white collar job. No one I bartended with could stay sober 4+ days a week or avoid DUIs; no way in hell I'd trust them with a production GCP cluster.
Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)
#224Since several years ago I was starting to have health issues that if I sat still for too long my eyes/arms/legs/waist would feel pain, sometimes fiercely. So I set a timer to remind me to stop staring at the monitor and stand up to do some light exercise, at first the timer was 40 minutes and in recent years it became 20 minutes as my body wears. So now my work is interrupted every 20 minutes, at first the timer was…
People are different. I can usually even answer a question on Slack without breaking concentration but if someone is talking to me everything's gone. Same as going to fetch a glass of water. In the office? Locking the computer and walking kinda far, maybe even locking/unlocking a door, meeting people? A real interruption. At home, 3m to the tap? Not losing a thought. But I do know other people who can talk between writing code and not be interrupted but if they have to answer on Slack they have the same problem.
Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)
#225Context switching is a skill you can and will improve as you get interrupted throughout your career.
Agreed. I work at a hedge fund and we are constantly interrupted from programming, but we still manage to make a product that consistently generates profit. I feel like people are being a bit too dramatic, here. Is it hard? Yes, very, but it’s just a matter of discipline and determination, in my opinion.
I'd say it mostly depends on what you work on, and that is not "a field" or "a job". I've had jobs where yes, I could easily be on phone support during the tasks and I've had projects that were usually hours long deep thinking where you had to have a huge system + 10 classes in your head at the same time, but most jobs and projects were a mix. And then you simply may have a bad day and need deep thinking mode for relatively modest work, but yo won't notice the other way round if you build something great and bug free and it seemed easy.
I kinda don't believe the people who say they 100% have this job, all the time - but you also don't know beforehand when you need your interrupt-free time. Some days are just cursed and you get nothing done, even if they only interrupted you 3 times, but it was the important 15min block. And I've had those jobs as well. If someone (different people) interrupts you every 15min, when the day is cluttered up with 3 meetings anyway... I think it scales exponentially.
Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then you're finally fed up with all this and go full remote, if the company allows it. Congrats, now you lost access to 80% of what is going on and fell out of the loop for anything important, and you're now guaranteed to lose in any power struggle that could happen. In one of the companies I worked for, it was comfortable in the beginning - there were offices, 2-3 programmers in each, not too crowded, but close…
> I asked the CTO who I've know for quite some time - WTF man? He said that he likes it, because he can see at a glance that everybody is working. I was reminded of storehouses with special elevated rooms that had a view on all that happens on the floor. This kind of panopticon is how prisons are often organized. I can be lying on a couch working hard. How does the CTO see that? The typing part is just the tip of the…
> I can be lying on a couch working hard. How does the CTO see that? The typing part is just the tip of the iceberg.
It is amazing that most knowledge worker management does not understand how knowledge workers work. Most of our hardest work does not involve hands on a keyboard.
I've been full remove for a decade. There's no way I could work in an office where "butts in chairs" was the way. I guess I would just have a notepad and a pencil and just sort of move my hand back and forth on it while I was in my head solving the real problems.
Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having tmux sessions for each open task is a life-saver, especially in an environment where I do all my work on a remote server. Now I can close the laptop lid and never lose work. Simply reopen the ssh connection and keep going.
Do you exclusively work on remote servers? I love tmux, but I have the issue that I also use it locally, and to my knowledge, you can't have local and remote sessions in one tmux daemon. So I either have to open tmux in tmux, or open it in a separate terminal window. You mentioned your editor on the remote server. Does everyone have their own account with their own settings on all remote servers? We're still at a poi…
(Random tmux user commenting here...)
I always run tmux locally. If you want to connect from a different computer, just ssh in and then "tmux attach".
Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)
#228Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
> All it did was change the nature of the job It also created SQL injection vulnerabilities, so there's that.
No, that’s something bad programming languages did. SQL is purely declarative.
All but one sublanguages of SQL are imperative... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_manipulation_language
Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)
#230One of the perks of growing up in a huge family is that you learn how to work in an noisy environment while being constantly interrupted. Never occurred to me one day I will count that as a skill.
That would be an interesting study. Cross referencing self described irritation at interruptions to size of the family you grew up in.