Distracting software engineers is more harmful than most managers think

workweave.dev

31 points·AntonZ234··9 comments

At this point it feels like an acceptable trade-off for companies.

What's the big upside that offsets the downside? Knowing what people are working on?

there is no upside to inhibiting the means and methods of production.

Given the decades of information about how bad open offices are for programmers I think the upside is similar to the upside making supermarket cashiers stand when they request chairs...

>Distracting software engineers is more harmful than most managers think

It cuts both ways ;)

As a manager, people interrupting me with their confusing tech can be such distracting software engineers that I have trouble getting anything done. Worst of all, right when I'm in the middle of preparing for another pointless meeting :(

If you get distracted "in the middle of preparing for another pointless meeting" the damage is zero.

I personally have never really experienced distractions as negative for my productivity. Of course it is annoying to be interrupted in the middle of something, but usually getting back to the task takes a few minutes at most. I never understood how people on the Internet tend to be so upset about it.

Experiences vary wildly. Do you have daily standup from 9am-10am, followed by a short call at 11:30, planning/sync with another team at 13:30, maybe a 1:1 at 16:00? And don’t miss our community event at 17:00! Plus minor interruptions during the rest of the day. How does that sound? This is what average days at a lot of big tech companies look like.

we deployed AI so it could stay on task without pause.

we kept the engineers because we could break the focus and reassign task.

we had it horribly backwards, but the prospectus insisted otherwise.

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