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Comment by fardo | Hacker News Reader

>Don’t blame the email

I blame the unspoken expectations that come with email. Email is, in my experience, a political problem rather than a productivity bug.

Requests for support on active bugs comes through email. Your manager will request features, or ask questions about your code and status, through email. Coworkers on different teams collaborate through email.

To not answer these emails immediately probably would not lead to readily apparent punishment, nor would my manager say “he insisted” I respond that quickly, but other coworkers who prioritize these active issues, are ultimately more visible, promote faster, and get bigger bonuses.

By choosing not to play the email game, in many cases, you won’t be punished, but you won’t be rewarded either.

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> Requests for support on active bugs comes through email. Your manager will request features, or ask questions about your code and status, through email. Coworkers on different teams collaborate through email.

I'd love if that was always the case. As it is, I see more and more people send those kinds of requests through Slack or other IMs. E-mail at least is searchable, storable forever and easy to forward around. Slack, not very much.

Yes, I've been bitten by it this week, which lead to me triggering a team-wide discussion that we no longer have any clue what's the actual work to be done on a particular feature, as all the updates of the requirements were made partially on the issue tracker, partially on videocalls, and partially on the IM between management and individual developers. Similarly, back when I was more involved in running a local Hackerspace, I very strongly pushed for the rule that nothing said on IRC is official, and the only binding decisions are those made on our mailing group.

> but other coworkers who prioritize these active issues, are ultimately more visible, promote faster, and get bigger bonuses.

That's an opportunity. Your company doesn't have a structured process for determining bonus sizes, but apparently hand them out half-blind on vague notions of visibility. This is a very "hackable" situation.

Since you're significantly more productive than your colleagues, you have some "wins" of an entirely different kind of substance than them, all you need to do is to figure out how to make your work and the business outcomes it enables a little more visible.

You should be rewarded since your productivity on assigned tasks will theoretically be significantly higher than your coworkers who are prioritizing e-mail and being constantly interrupted.

If those coworkers are able to achieve the same level of productivity while also prioritizing and addressing active issues, then they are arguably more valuable and don't they deserve the larger bonus?

> You should be rewarded since your productivity on assigned tasks will theoretically be significantly higher than your coworkers who are prioritizing e-mail and being constantly interrupted.

Sure, but lots of things _should_ be that are not. The reality is that the appearance of productivity (for example, habitually timely replies to emails) will impact your promotion/compensation more than your actual worth in many, many organizations.

Nah, it's that your definition of productivity differs from your organization's. This frequently happens with a lot of other concepts too, like "quality", "maintainability" and "security."

Part of being employed is simply compromising with the organization on these things.

> Part of being employed is simply compromising with the organization on these things.

Since my definition is different from my employers, you say I should adopt their definition, and call this "compromise"? That's an interesting way to use that word.

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