I used to feel this was true for me, and to a large degree still do. But lately I’ve been wondering to what extent this is a self-limiting belief, and how much I can train myself to remain productive in the face of interruptions. My life is more complicated now than when my career started, and the interruption causers seem to be multiplying, so I’m seeing it as something I need to learn to deal with if I’m going to be able to stay in the field.

I will tell you what. When I joined this field (decades ago) an entry level engineer would (after rampup) do more than whole teams do today.

This is not because people were somewhat better back at that point in time.

We had trust, respect for people's time and overall everyone was at least directionally pulling in the same direction.

Today we have a low trust, hustle and micromanagement culture. I am shocked every time people with experience simply don't help grow a junior engineer (because fuck em and they're gonna find a better job if they grow, amiright?). I am shocked whenever we throw people at a problem while it was shown over and over again the approach does not work for that problem. Shocked when trivial improvements are hailed as the ultimate engineering feat and impressive engineering feats are met with meh. I am shocked when people do not think (at all, zero, nada) about the performance and maintainability of the code they bang out.

People just started giving zero fucks. The future is bright.

> Today we have a low trust, hustle and micromanagement culture. I am shocked every time people with experience simply don't help grow a junior engineer (because fuck em and they're gonna find a better job if they grow, amiright?). I am shocked whenever we throw people at a problem while it was shown over and over again the approach does not work for that problem. Shocked when trivial improvements are hailed as the ultimate engineering feat and impressive engineering feats are met with meh. I am shocked when people do not think (at all, zero, nada) about the performance and maintainability of the code they bang out.

Do you work at my company?

This is basically what every company is like nowadays.

I think we can thank the MBA-ification of the workplace for that.

I'm "secretly" pondering a formula where a group of employees share an assistant rather than a manager.

In stead of a layer of management above the people manager the assistants also share an assistant.

With a small salary comes a rigid job description without free styling.

1-4 times per year you bring in a consultant/freelancer to read the reports (AI generated abstractions) and twiddle the knobs for however long it takes. Say 1-2 weeks with nothing but meetings. It should probably involve a hotel, resort or boat trip.

How do you manage hiring and firing from the team?

That's ultimately why Managers wind up "on top", they can make choices about who to bring on, and who to let go.

And since they are "on top", they say they deserve more money and more control, etc.

You're half joking probably but this is what a manager should be. Someone who enables you, not someone who makes your job hard.

Since having kids I’m a lot more able to get in the zone for 1-2h at a time since I rarely get a whole day free (also due to a more senior position). I think it’s largely procrastination. But I also try to batch and minimize the meetings the engineers on my team have to take

+1 and even worse: at 10:55am the sync meeting gets postponed to 12:15pm because the organizer is "stuck in some other important meeting"

At 12:20 the meeting gets cancelled and "we'll sync offline"

> then I'm done work for the day

That is a bit of a you-problem though. Pointless interruptions are bad of course, but if you not being responsive blocks other people, that is a problem too. You write that you also have an issue with synchronous meetings, which would be the alternative to get input from you in a plannable way. Doing all communication asynchronously is not acceptable if you are at all involved in team work.

I'm not saying I'm blocked or blocking someone, I'm saying I'm tapping out. At 4pm-something I'm not going to spend the next half hour reloading the context in my head and getting back to where I had been before the 2-minute (i.e. 15-minute) call, not because I can't, but because I'm tired and don't want to.

If I were working at a hospital and debugging a medical device that somebody needed to have online that evening, then you can be darn certain I'd reload that context in my head over and over until the work was done.

But for shipping widgets back and forth, there's no point in making myself tired and resentful. I can pick it up the next day.

Jfc. I'm going to slap the next person that claims they're blocked.

Blocked means that you've tried solving the problem and that you've tried in multiple ways. Also you can be blocked because production is burning down or "blocked" since you give 0 fucks and have zero incentives to try.

If you claim you're blocked and I get a blank stare when I ask you what the problem is, what have you tried and what is your current hypothesis on why thigs are not working I am going to slap you so hars that you'll be back to using RCS for source control.

You must really be a hot shot to afford this attitude, or you are one of these passive aggressive types that express it in subtle ways that do not get you fired. Let me explain something from the employers perspective. If you expect people to spend hours trying to figure out something that is not obvious, that could reasonably be cleared up with a five minute conversation with the expert (you, presumably) then you are wasting my money. I am paying both of you. I expect you to cooperate. I do not accept a toxic communication environment. Minimizing communication may increase productivity, but massively raises the risk of producing the wrong thing.

Let me explain something to you: if every time you don't know something you start bitching about it and ask everyone around you until you wear them down to ELI5 you are dragging everyone down.

This is not about that one instance where 5 minutes saves you days of struggling. This is about becoming and being self sufficient to the point you are an asset to the business, not your liability. In your convoluted example: how do you know who the expert is?

I agree with all of this. With the caveat that "resolved with a 5-minute meeting" isn't "my inbox is full of garbage so I'm too overwhelmed to read your 4-sentence email answering my question, therefore I'm phoning you to reiterate the problem you already fully understand and have dealt with, just to remind myself of what was in my email to you, before asking you to read to me verbally what you wrote in your email."

Hypothetically.