> Being contacted several times per day seems totally reasonable for, I think, the vast majority of jobs in existence.
If it's your boss, or one of your critical colleagues, maybe. If it's some idiot in a distal group trying to justify their existence by being vocal, hell no.
And if the chat tool doesn't have a "mute the idiot" feature, that makes the whole thing useless.
If it's your boss, or one of your critical colleagues,
maybe.
I'm surprised a few people pushed back on my assertion that it's okay/normal to have coworkers synchronously contact you several times per day. Are there a lot of engineers who are able and permitted to work for entire days on end, totally "dark" without some realtime pings from coworkers?
If it's some idiot in a distal group trying to
justify their existence by being vocal
I'd certainly agree here. An old manager of mine referred to these sorts of outside-the-group disruptions as "drive-by shootings."
I have always liked that phrase. Those disruptions are definitely a great way to unexpectedly murderer productivity.
You need cross-group pollination, but random productivity-murdering drive-bys are not the way to do it.
If it's your boss, or one of your critical colleagues, maybe. If it's some idiot in a distal group trying to justify their existence by being vocal, hell no.
And if the chat tool doesn't have a "mute the idiot" feature, that makes the whole thing useless.