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1366 points aleksi | 3 comments | 14 Oct 24 15:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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rgrmrts ◴[15 Oct 24 13:06 UTC] No.41848167[source]▶
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).
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gosub100 ◴[15 Oct 24 14:27 UTC] No.41848994[source]▶
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.
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1. ggiesen ◴[15 Oct 24 14:49 UTC] No.41849206[source]▶
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.

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2. gosub100 ◴[15 Oct 24 21:01 UTC] No.41853070[source]▶
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
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3. rgrmrts ◴[15 Oct 24 23:15 UTC] No.41854097[source]▶
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.