Busy Status Bar

This is a neat idea (and good looking product), but unfortunately the issue is the people who tend to interrupt you in the office ignore all explicit signals in my experience. Wearing noise cancelling headphones is an accepted sign of “in the flow, pls don’t interrupt” yet some folks feel like it doesn’t apply to them. Or they’d just stand next to your desk waiting for your attention. I’m pretty jaded (and probably still recovering from burnout) but these types of people made work unbearable. Usually an executive walking up to ask for the status of something even though there are other ways they can look at the status of something (JIRA, standup, slack updates).

I don't think you have the right to tell your coworkers to leave you alone. Part of working means collaboration and if you're unwilling to do that, you don't belong on a team. You're not doing brain surgery that will permanently alter the life of some helpless patient. you're not meticulously stacking the last card on top of a 10 ft house of cards exhibit where tens of hours of work will be completely lost if your concentration strays to show your face to another human being and utter a few words.

There is a special place in hell for PMs who can't wait for daily standup to get your status update.

There is an even more special place in hell for PMs who schedule an additional regular status update meeting.

It depends on the office culture. The last time I worked in an office, I used a red/green busy signal like this, and people would generally respect it.

The general issue with people that don't care is, well, they don't care. The problem with being a reasonable person (or at least being the reasonable person in a certain situation) is that reason stops if the other party is not playing. It rarely helps to keep throwing subtle hints at somebody who just isn't going to cooperate or respect boundaries. It's the juggernaut in human relationships, especially when there's a power imbalance or differing incentives.

You absolutely do. Many coworkers will bug you to ask instead of doing their own research, bug you to chitchat, etc.

They can always book time with you, send an email/IM, etc if there's something they can't resolve on their own.

You have your own deliverables and being interrupted every 10 minutes with inane questions that a web search or a look at the internal wiki/KB would have resolved is not a productive use of anyone's time.

Also, forcing them to wait produces better quality, better researched questions as hopefully they should make some attempt to resolve things on their own.

Wait, I thought PMs were explicitly not allowed in standups, and that standups are explicitly not status meetings.

It really does depend on office culture. Some people might be more reasonable if you communicate directly. I don't think it would go down well everywhere if you state "Hey! No talking to me if Mr. Smurf is on the table!"... Mr Smurf might have an unfortunate accident sooner rather than later.

It's about politeness. If somebody took care to produce a sign asking to avoid interruptions, I will think twice whether my inquiry is both urgent and important. If it is not, I will postpone it. If it is, I'll beg for pardon but interrupt.

But no, a context switch required for uttering a few words can absolutely topple the tower of concentration somebody has spent last half an hour building. Certain occupations, engineering among them, require ingesting a large amount of context and making sense of it before productive work can start. My lack of patience with a question which I could answer with 10 minutes of research (or asking someone else) may cost my colleague an hour of lost productivity. Being mindful of this helps everyone, including yourself when the roles are swapped.

And poker planning is just a tool that is used internally in the team to fill in the sprint, and not promises to sales

You should tell my PM and manager this.

Also, what else are standups even for? Everything I've read or seen IRL is some bullshit about using them for teams to "align" or "sync up" or "share progress" or nine other euphemisms for status updates. Let's call a spade a spade.

I hope you're not a manager, because this is horrible guidance. For starters, there are some neurodivergent people who really get thrown off by interruptions, especially if they are really focused on the task at hand. It is entirely unreasonable for you to expect that your coworkers should be available at your beck and call. And you are totally ignoring the fact the countless studies showing that workplace interruptions cost companies money.

Oh. Sounds like you're referring to Agile and Standup with capital letters. In my experience people talk about agile-with-a-capital-A and standup-with-a-capital-S and those two don't really match what actually happens in the real world, at least in my experience.

> You're not meticulously stacking the last card on top of a 10 ft house of cards exhibit where tens of hours of work will be completely lost if your concentration strays to show your face to another human being and utter a few words.

You have no idea.

Thank god we have this WFH thing now. I can build this house of cards without anyone interrupting me saying I'm not building a house of cards.

But really, as a software engineer you should not be building a house of cards, right? Surely you should not boldly insist that you never be subjected to collaboration from other members of your team because you are intent on building a system that is in constant danger of collapse.

I don't want to disagree with your general statement, because it's correct, but I would like to point out that wearing noise cancelling headphones is not a good signal of ``in the flow, pls don’t interrupt.'' The only thing it's a good signal of is ``I'm listening to something.''

Some people wear headphones simply because they want to listen to music or a podcast while they send/check email. Some people only put them on when they're in a meeting. And yes, some people wear them because they want to be left alone.

There are as many reasons to wear noise cancelling headphones as there are people wearing noise cancelling headphones, and assuming that everyone around you should know what it means to you is as insane as walking up to someone wearing noise cancelling headphones and asking for an update.

I don't think the suggestion is to "never" be subjected to collaboration, but certainly there should be a balance between collaboration and deep work that shouldn't be interrupted if possible.

With my experience now..

I fully accept that programming is purely a mental task. I choose to think with others and then code in my own time. The tasks are now so short that there is literally no space for someone to interrupt.

Everything else is productivity theater.

> Wearing noise cancelling headphones is an accepted sign of “in the flow, pls don’t interrupt”

Well, someone could always say, sorry I thought those were just regular headphones. :)

Anyway, my philosophy is that I'm being paid by my employer not only to do work, but to help others do their job as well. I WANT to be the person that my co-workers are comfortable walking up to and asking questions even if I am in the middle of something. (Because I'm ALWAYS in the middle of something anyway.) It doesn't take many interactions like this before they start to associate you with the word "indispensable." Which is a good for job security and peer testimonials. And of course making friends.

Some people also wear them the entire day.

The flip side is it’s bad for actually getting focused work done.

If a worker needs disability accommodations they can get them from management. We're not all going to walk on eggshells because someone might be neurodivergent. If they are present in the office they are part of a team and that requires interaction.

All of this entirely depends on your company culture. And for every choice you make (conscious or not) there are consequences.

Perhaps the culture within the company / department / team is to allow interruptions in the name of "collaboration". Hopefully the increased value gained by "collaborating" that way is worth the cost. Some of that cost is time (productivity), some is people literally quitting. Eventually you're left with a company full of people who don't mind being interrupted and I would assume are interrupters themselves, and I'd assume this effect is exponential, causing lower and lower productivity.

As a manager, you can't have this culture and then also complain about the lack of productivity, missed estimates, etc. (Well, you can, but that in turn will increase stress levels and unhappiness and cause more people to quit.)

Your competitor who sees collaboration is possible with planning, proper async communication channels, and some specific culture choices will have a nicer environment and happily hire away your most talented and knowledgeable people.

> where tens of hours of work will be completely lost if your concentration strays to show your face to another human being and utter a few words.

After being interrupted, it takes on average over 23 minutes [1] to get back on track. The average time lost is almost 3 hours per day, or 60 hours per month [2].

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/944128/worker-interrupted-cost-t...

[2] https://www.talkboxbooth.com/post/shocking-cost-workplace-di...

Walk on eggshells? Schedule a designated time to talk. It's not that difficult. Are you that disorganized that you need to share your thoughts the second they occur to you? Even for neurotypicals, it takes some time to refocus after interruption. Your approach has been proven to lower productivity and its costs companies serious money.

Tell the person who is trying to talk that you're busy and you'll get back to them later. It's part of the interpersonal skill of learning to say no.

That would require them to be interrupted, which would subsequently require them to refocus. Your time is not more important than your coworker's time.

Each interruption is a drain on productivity, which costs the company money. What part about this do you not understand?

In my experience, the house of cards is usually debugging, not building. I've had to do some pretty crazy debugging, stepping through deep call stacks frame by frame, keeping track of big data structures as they change along the way. This can take a huge amount of focus that would absolutely be ruined by even a 5 second conversation.

You had to ask people things when you learned. It's not different now that you're the one with the knowledge. And sometimes people not using the docs means your documentation sucks or needs updating

It's not a lack of understanding, it's a difference in belief. I believe you are self-aggrandizing by pretending that you're some rain man whose superhuman skills, not found anywhere else or under any conditions other than pretentious "focus mode" - will evaporate if you're forced to be held to standard of common decency. Sorry dude, nothing you work on is that important.

Your belief is based on a misunderstanding. If you have not worked in a context where holding large amounts of details and their relationships in your head does not lead to "losing the picture" when interrupted, you have had a luxury not everyone gets to experience.

Getting "into the flow", or loading/reloading the details into your head typically takes 15 to 30 minutes for sufficiently intricate task or dataset. In such a context, a mere, "Hey, you got a minute?" is costly — more so, if i happens repeatedly during the day.

Treasure your freedom from such difficulties.

Displaying a "Busy" signal is a way of implementing "No.". Another part of personal skills is learning when to not interrupt. Implementing an unambiguous signal can help. Learning to not ignore the signal helps. As long as the signal isn't abused or isn't "always on".

The importance of my work is determined by the people paying me, not some dipshit on hacker news. And fortunately they value my time enough to allow for deep work hours. It's not that difficult.

Allowing for constant interruptions under the guise of "collaboration" costs companies money. If you're in a management situation, you should know that your attitude will lead to waste.

Standups nearly always involve reporting status. At MPOW they involve short discussions on what may be blocking and who / what could help.

The problem isn’t people or colleagues asking for help, the problem is feeling entitled to your time exactly when they want it. No one would get any work done if no one had schedules and respected meetings at pre-arranged times.

Also, no one I collaborated with or on my team was ever the issue (except that one time at my first job when someone lied their way into a role, and constantly asked me to do their job). If my team member ever wanted to chat or distract me I had no issue.

It’s the fucking CEO who hasn’t bothered to talk to you for a month and ignore every email walking up to your desk, literally knocking on your table to get you to take your headphones off and give them your attention and saying “hey, when is this new feature gonna be done” when the project management software shows very clearly that everything is on track to ship at X date.

Really this isn’t about collaboration, it’s about people being entitled.

"Don't make me tap the sign"