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Hmm. How about actually building stuff? For most software engineers, thats a very important part of their job/life/happiness. That requires long focus and flow. And in my personal opinion has a great sense of fulfillment attached to it compared to lot of scattered micro impacts. Ultimately you need to learn to balance both otherwise it gets very frustrating.

Yeah, not for me. My experience with building stuff on my own: Very stressful and long winding, a lot of procrastination and unsocial habbits start to creep in after a week, solution is not really valuable to anybody since nobody is familiar with it.

The biggest, most used solutions I helped building usually happened when I cooperated with others. The same discussions that happen in your head, just that part of it is coming from another brain.

Most of this kind of 'collaboration' that I have seen have fallen in the bikeshedding or superficial variety. Not all work is of this kind. Some require building mental constructs and contexts that are easily derailed and painstaking to reconstruct

Do you have to personally write every single line of code or are you happy when the whole team builds the code?

Not the previous poster, but I'd argue that being able to point to something meaningful (doesn't have to be the whole system, but a coherent component) and say "I made that" brings satisfaction that's hard to beat.

This seems tricky to reconcile with the "everything is done by a team" model that's currently in vogue.

Also: http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-...

The above comic strip absolutely perfectly shows what's it about for me. Though I agree there is stuff better done with others (brainstorming, or discussing hard problems where you're stuck; also variants of rubber-duck debugging/designing; I'd say it boosts "breadth" and "lateral thinking"). But for many people there is most certainly also stuff better done alone ("depth" I suppose? often things like analysing interactions between subsystems; or building an algorithm; or reading docs or a paper; researching existing apps/solutions/libs in order to "spreadsheet" their pros & cons; also analysing/designing thread interactions; or debugging, building internal knowledge of a problem - which is also a required step before rubber-ducking, or generally discussing it, is even possible; also arguably maybe reviewing someone else's code).

+1, this comic strip is perfect. It describes the issue precisely, in a way rarely seen even in best comic strips.

Things I have to do fall into two categories - either I immediately know how to approach them, at which point I can code while having conversations and there's little you can do to distract me - or, I don't immediately know how to approach them, at which point I need time alone and in peace to load the whole system into my head and think through appropriate steps, possibly running mental simulations of several solutions in my head. The second kind of work is when I turn into a pretty antisocial person - I don't just avoid conversations, I avoid being in the same room with other people.

And frankly, second kind of work is kind of more important. It doesn't take skill to pump out hundreds of lines of code an hour. It takes skill and concentration to write those and only those lines that move the project forward in a way that's maintainable down the road.

I also have that feeling, but only when coding with other people. The only time I really need to think that complex on my own is when I learn a really new topic. E.g. two weekends ago I really wanted to learn how iptables work because I was so frustrated that most SO/blog answers are not agreeing with each other, they often don't work when just copy&pasting, and nobody really explains why he chose that way and not another. [1] Then I really need to spend like 24h just reading docs and building these complex systems in my head.

With two people these complex systems often also end up in actual diagrams or code, which then can be tested or used for documentation and later lookup.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/43375012/wrapping-ones-he...

Somebody has to do something. If everyone is running around talking to everyone else like a bunch of agitated monkeys, no real work actually gets done.

Well, have you noticed that I argued exactly the opposite?

I did, but I was replying to 'grogenaut in reply to 'nyrulez, by pointing out that while one doesn't have to feel responsible for writing all code, somebody has to feel responsible for writing some code, at least some of the time.

> I usually get this after-disco/cinema low when the amount of people in office starts to slow down

When the office slows down and things get quieter is when I find myself finally able to get completely focused in on things that require all of my attention.

I enjoy meetings, business talk, planning and miscellaneous conversations with coworkers more than (I think) most software developers, but to get any sizable software project done I do best with chunks of a few hours at a time to get into a focused state, get all of the moving parts loaded into my head, then actually write the code/fix the bug etc.

My solution to this–in an office that I share with people who talk on the phone–is to show up in the late morning after they've made their morning calls, and leave in the evening a few hours after they leave. This way we overlap in the afternoon, but I get some time with a quiet office where I can really think.

Just while writing this comment several conversations happened around me that drew my attention away from what I was writing. When I focused my attention back to the comment, I had to skim what I'd just written to 'reload' my thoughts. At least for me, this 'reloading' process takes a long time when it comes to writing software, despite various tricks I've come up with over the years to help speed it up.

Same here. As described in the schedule I posted elsewhere in this thread, I tend to come to office at 12:00 - 13:00[0]. And I like it quite much. Most of the cow-orkers in my room work ~09:00 - ~17:00, so there's 4-5 hours of overlap in the afternoon, followed by 3 hours of peace when I can focus and get something done. There are days when I do actually manage to come as early as 08:00, and those days I really miss being alone in the room.

--

[0] - Had long battles about that with my boss. He gave up after a year, realizing that there's no way to make me come before 10:00 regularly (my sleeping patterns are weird), but I am there when it matters and get the job done.

Yeah that "reloading " process is hard for me as well, which is why I wear headphones. But some people don't respect headphones! They still interrupt with trivial bs, even after you've given them every possible nonverbal clue that you're trying to get shit done!

I actually ditched shitty Bluetooth headphones and bought myself a HyperX Butt set for work just because of noisy cow-orkers. Works wonders for ambient noise and I enjoy the quality of whatever I am listening to, but as you said, some people still don't get the clue.

Yeah, it doesn't matter how good your headphones are when some asshole sneaks up behind you and taps you on the shoulder to ask you some inane question that he could have sent in an email.

Sometimes I wonder if it's assholeness or just complete inability to read nonverbal cues.

> complete inability to read nonverbal cues

Isn't that the default in software departments/companies? However, usually that is considered an "asshole" by the general population, despite actually being a good reason for not reacting to nonverbal communication.

I think it's assholes, for lack of a better term. Instead of respecting your privacy and sending you an email to avoid interrupting you, they think that whatever concern they have is more important and worth interrupting you.

I enjoy helping when people come up to me with legitimate questions, for all the reasons you mention. It feels like half the time, I'm being bugged not for any real reason, but because the person couldn't bother to put some effort in first.

For example, I've become known as "the regex guy" at the office. I know regex really well as well as the ins and outs of the regex engines of languages we use. I don't mind when I get called over to help with a tough regex, or optimizing something. But way too often whatever I get interrupted and cross the building just to replace ".*" with ".+" or something equally simple.

I usually just type the solution and tell them my copy of Mastering Regular Expressions is on the office bookshelf if they'd like to borrow it, the first chapter should cover all the basics. I'm also very happy to explain the basics of regex to someone in my down time, but very few people have taken me up on that offer.

Well of course people are gonna keep calling on you, you're known as the guy who will cross the building to fix their work for them! What incentive does anyone have to borrow your copy of Mastering Regular Expressions when their problems can be fixed with a simple email to you?

Sometimes you really have two NOOP choices:

1. Give them a quick answer and point them to the book but they'll never read it and continue to interrupt even if you told them to not interrupt for trivial matters. On and now you're so much of patronizing dork. Back to square one.

2. Don't give them the answer, and point them to the book. Now you're the smartass jerk that doesn't socialize. Plus they won't read the book and invent some crazy solution to get shit done and later when you have to fix the mess the WTF/min ratio goes through the roof. Back to square one.

Which leaves you with three possible actions: DealWithIt, RageQuit, or RageFix, only one of them being a long term fix but things don't happen in a vacuum and you're not always in a position to do so.

I don't see the problem with choice #2. Being "the smartass jerk that doesn't socialize" means you don't get bothered with stupid questions as much, and having to "fix the mess" means that you get to be the hero when someone else's crap doesn't work, and you can put that in your weekly summary.

Programmer who doesn't know regex is something like a system admin who doesn't know sed.

I do ok.

regex and sed also feels somewhat related. hehe

No surprise, some people prefer other methods of work than others. But it isn't black and white.

Helping others is fun but I've been on both sides. There are plenty of people who always need help and never put effort in, and are extremely distracting and lower morale.

And interactions are not always of the "Hey can you explain this" variety. Sometimes it's your manager worrying about a project and nitpicking every detail and still managing to not know what's going on. Sometimes it's your manager trying to prove he is "technical" despite not being technical at all, and just downplays your work. Yes, I deal with this daily. Sometimes people are just assholes, and HR/management doesn't deal with it because they produce or are too afraid. Something else I deal with daily. And on top of that, sometimes I just don't want to talk to someone about something. I just want to focus and get done what I need to get done.

> What's the actual "engineering work" you are trying to do without interacting with people all the time?

Building systems. Adding features to software. Debugging it. Anything more trivial than generating and wiring classes that someone else designed for you.

I guess a lot depends on the kind of work you're doing. In all of the projects I worked on, 90% of work time would be spend on actually doing it, and only 10% on talking about it (and most of that at the beginning, and then at some critical moments in the project). After the design discussions had been concluded and we've settled on appropriate division of labour (critical aspect: modularity, so that people can work in isolation and have to agree only on interfaces), it was mostly individual work.

Now don't get me wrong, I love helping others and answering their questions, or sitting with them and figuring stuff out. Just not all the time, and not in the very moment I'm trying to do something cognitively demanding (like redesigning half a dozen subsystems, or carefully weaving in new features requested by the client in a way that doesn't disrupt the rest of the application).

Suppose you are taking a math exam. One about advanced calculus that is really hard and taxing. I'm talking about one of those that is five hours long and there are only three problems in total on the test, so you are expected to spend over an hour on each problem.

Would you prefer if a) the environment was quiet and no one was interrupting you. Or b) the environment was noisy and you were constantly interrupted by people talking about how they spent their weekend.

To many developers, productive work is like taking a math exam. Therefore we want the same kind of environment (a distraction free one) to do our best work.

I think most answers can be summarized as "When I'm left alone I get into the flow mode, and that's enjoyable". The same way I mostly get it when working together with a colleague on a problem. Both ways may not always be the most productive, but due to producing a good feeling we prefer these.

I think it's hard to separate the questions of productivity and satisfaction. It's satisfying because you're being productive, but conversely it's easy to dodge the urge to procrastinate because the results are satisfying. So the two go hand in hand.

(And yes, I entirely recognise that for some people the satisfying+productive mode does involve intense, fine-grained collaboration, while for others it doesn't. I've seen both modes work, and don't really see why they shouldn't coexist -- although ideally with walls and doors to keep the noise of the collaborative types at bay!)