Ask HN: Productivity

I worked 3 years for a startup remotely. The major con was the lack of social interaction, while the pro was the ability to completely immerse myself in coding and solving problems on a deeper level. For the past year, I've worked onsite at a great startup with a great culture, but an open floor plan. Things that are perfect with this setup: ad hoc meetings, fixing the build, grooming sessions, small/medium size stories with relatively simple scopes, responding to slack, doing code review. Things that are terrible with this setup (in my opinion): any sort of truly deep coding/thinking/tinkering.

When I honestly evaluate my last year, almost all of what I consider my best work was done at home at nights or on the weekends. I've also noticed that a really good senior engineer on the team almost always comes in with his best new/gamechanging code when he took a Friday off and hacked over the weekend. There's something about the hustle of people constantly talking around me, having impromptu meetings, etc that triggers a part of my brain that keeps it in a very shallow mode (which is sometimes appropriate).

Btw, I'm not even antisocial or anything, I could sit around and hang out all day in the office, but I'm trying to get to that 'deep work' (to quote Cal Newport). Does anyone have any advice on this?