> Let me guess: that 1 person will of course not be you, right? Because if it is you, I bet you will complain even more.
I don't mind it being me, as a matter of fact, it's often me, as I am in a more senior position and have a lot of historic context. However, a lot of time has been spent on documenting most things, so often I am just going over the docs with the new onboarder, which is okay, as long as it's done in a structural manner.
> You don't have normal boundaries. Grown-ups at work know that they will interact with other people. You inventing that people should not interact with you, or interact only in your own terms even when it is inconvenient for them.
I don't mind interacting at all, nor do I mind onboarding. I do mind, however, being interrupted all the time, on information, that could easily have been condensed in an onboarding package if the company gave people the space, time and initiative to create such a package.
What I am pointing out is that the OP experienced bad onboarding and thought the solution to that is being in-person in the office. I would argue what they simply had was a badly planned onboarding, with randomly shared responsibility across the team, and an ad-hoc learning plan. If the OP's company uses that lesson and makes a better onboarding process, that'd be great and they might even reconsider the need to be there in person.
> you are complaining about doing your job: working with colleagues and sharing information so that they can progress.
I would love share the information, but I want to do it in a structured manner, and not in chunks and without disruptions.
That's why schools and unis have classes, and classes have predictable and scheduled time frames. It's not just a building with teachers, and random children entering ad hoc and asking whatever question came to their head, then leaving, and coming back 5 min later.
And what's wrong with wanting lots of this information to be self-service? That's the whole idea of knowledge bases, of onboarding docs, of developer handbooks. What does it have to with people being in person or not? I'd argue if the OP's company spent the effort in actually putting all that knowledge in writing, they will have an easier and less disruptive onboarding to the team, with reduced bus factor, and clearly documented steps.
Everybody thinks their question is simple and quick, then it takes 30 minutes of time at minimum. I dunno why you are getting so much push back, must be a bunch of managers. Developers need to be left alone.
The push back is because it's extreme and one-sided. If you have some information that unblocks a team member, or another part of the business, say to make a sale, yes you should be interrupted. Your salary comes from somewhere, and your delivery is as a team, not an individual.
Because, you bring up sales, I am assuming that is your area of expertise. If a big sale can be unblocked by asking some specific employee an important question now, do it. If that happens five times a day, those sales are neither big nor are these very specific questions. Developers are most productive when in deep working mode. A simple question like "What time is it?" can be answered in 5 s, but it may cost a developer 30 min when in deep working mode. Because of the lost focus. On the other hand, many questions (not onboarding questions) could be answered by the colleagues themselves, if they would spend a bit more time on them. Thereby, they would learn more than just by getting the answer.
> Because, you bring up sales, I am assuming that is your area of expertise
I'm not in sales at all. Having an overview of the different bits of the business isn't a sales attribute. It's just an example of "what your job is" - which might range from weeks of uninterrupted detailed technical work at Microsoft Research, to presenting to clients, to running teams, to making technical decisions and getting agreement, to writing code.
Thinking every engineer's job is "writing code" and anyone who thinks wider is wrong is what the pushback in this thread is all about.
> We all have access to the exact same information.
We might have the same access, but rather than dig through 20 medical textbooks, I'll go ask a doctor. Access is a really poor way of thinking about things.
> But 90% of the time someone taps on my shoulder, they want me to think for them. You can do that by yourself. Just send an email.
Why send an email when they're thinking for themselves?
Because an email allows me to field it when I am not working on high-focus tasks.
It also
1) forces (or at least encourages) laying the whole thing out in a coherent order
2) leaves a record of both the question and the answer, so that the asker can refer back to it if they forget
3) leaves a record so that if the asker is asking obvious questions, or repeatedly asking the same questions, or failing to formulate their questions in a sane and coherent manner, there is documentation to take to their supervisor, not only to prove it, but to show exactly the shape of the problem, and have a possibility of getting them the kind of help they need
You get an appointment. Here noone is against appointments, here people discuss the notion of going to ask a doctor in the middle of a surgery a "quick question".
> Why send an email when they're thinking for themselves?
Because, the act of writing down a question --- with the necessary details to state the question precisely --- is often enough to find the answer yourself. Unless it is simple matter of a missing fact. But that is rarely the case in my line of work.
I think assuming everyone's situation is the same as yours, or your imagined stereotype of what people must be like if they don't agree with you, constitutes a lot of the content that's being pushed back on.
Some businesses have huge depths of technical content to understand that can't all the memorised in a training session. Nothing difficult can. Even knowing who to talk to about an issue is going to be found out via a question.
If I am a doctor in this situation, then you can create a JIRA ticket and I will see it .. eventually. Do you have instant access to all of your doctors?
But why would you see it if we have access to the same information? That's the point you made that I'm disagreeing with. Are you now saying that yes, even though I and my doctor might have access to the same information, that doesn't mean I should never ask my doctor things?
If we have the same access, we are both developers? You can ask things, just.. asynchronously. If it takes a long time for me to respond, you probably could have found the information yourself in that time.
Need help? Send an email or make an appointment and he will respond with help.
How is it your assumption that the team member asking the question can’t possibly be delayed 30-45min for them to be available. Seriously? Are they in an active shooter situation and need to phone a friend or something. Lives on the line?
> I don't mind it being me, as a matter of fact, it's often me, as I am in a more senior position and have a lot of historic context. However, a lot of time has been spent on documenting most things, so often I am just going over the docs with the new onboarder, which is okay, as long as it's done in a structural manner.
So, according to you, no one would ever need to ask you a question. So, obviously, GP will never ask you a question (they will ask other people if they want to).
So why are you calling them "toddler"?
> I do mind, however, being interrupted all the time, on information, that could easily have been condensed in an onboarding package if the company gave people the space, time and initiative to create such a package.
This is not at all what OP was presenting. You realize that?
> What I am pointing out is that the OP experienced bad onboarding and thought the solution to that is being in-person in the office.
That is not true. Plenty of people are having a very good onboarding and still like to fine-tune their understanding of the situation, which is arguably a very good way to reach good software.
> would love share the information, but I want to do it in a structured manner, and not in chunks and without disruptions.
But that is exactly the point of my initial comment about workflow. When your colleague Johnny needs the quick and simple information X to allow him to finish his code (for example "I've read what ath3nd has written in the doc, but it is ambiguous because sometimes it is, obviously ath3nd is not a god who can read mind and think of all the interpretation of their comment, especially when ath3nd is also not expected to not introduce a bug in the code from time to time"), you are asking him to break his flow, write some kind of ticket, wait for it to be triaged and come to you and wait for you to answer.
Your initial point is that you need to not be interrupted when you are in your flow, and you are now arguing that we should use a very flow interrupting process for the other participants.
> That's why schools and unis have classes ...
Are you seriously pretending that GP that just said "asking quick questions and getting an instant answer" is in fact in favor of not having any structure at all?
In fact, guess what, in a lot of classes, students are allowed to ask questions during some part of the lecture, even during exercises. Yes, incredible, right: some students are concentrating on solving the exercises while others _talk_! They _talk_! In the same room! Instead of writing a written letter to the teacher and wait for the post return so they can proceed with the exercise they have a question about.
> And what's wrong with wanting lots of this information to be self-service?
No one here is arguing against that. Simply, you can have as much self-service you want, it will never make a quick and simple question not the most efficient way to go.
It is just incredible that some people are so self-centered that they cannot understand that asking simple and quick questions is just, SOMETIMES, a super pragmatical and efficient way of progressing.
You sound extremely self-centered yourself. Its fine if you thrive in a collaborative open office environment, and noise-cancelling headphones are all you need. But that's not true for everybody else.
Your argument that you need to maintain your flow by actively interrupting other people is incredibly selfish and frankly just ridiculous. Also, flow is overrated. If you are in flow-mode, you are probably not doing the hard parts of your job. Not having to context-switch is different from flow, but more important, I would say, but you are forcing that on your fellow developers. If they don't mind, that's fine! If they do, you should respect that.
I think you did not got my point. My point is not that it is self-centered to "break the flow" (or whatever you call the reason that makes asking a question disruptive).
My point is that we had a situation where at least one person is going to adapt. The person self-centered is the one saying "the good solution is to have the other person adapt".
I'm NOT saying that the good solution is to have the other person adapt, I'm saying "why are you saying that having the other person adapt is the best solution? That's self-centered".
You answer me by saying "you are asking me to adapt to you, so, you are self-centered".
But I don't ask that. I don't force anyone. I'm just saying "why are you upset that this guy is forcing you to adapt to him but think that you forcing him to adapt to you is not self-centered".
I see the situation as very very symmetrical:
Some people needs A to be efficient, some people needs non-A to be efficient.
One aspect of the problem is that some people say "I like A, so let me just do A, and I let you non-A". But in reality, they don't let them do non-A. If you are a team of 2, and that you like not receiving questions but that your coworker like to ask question, there is no situation where we satisfy both.
The only solution is to act like adult and accept that I will do less A than I would have liked, but my coworker will do less non-A that they would have liked.
But here, some are saying "no! I want to do all A and it's to my coworker to adapt fully".
I'd say two people like that shouldn't be on the same team, at least not on their own. If it is possible to find some sort of compromise, that's great, but it might not be. You are going to make each other extremely unhappy, and why would anyone want to put up with that?
I don't mind it being me, as a matter of fact, it's often me, as I am in a more senior position and have a lot of historic context. However, a lot of time has been spent on documenting most things, so often I am just going over the docs with the new onboarder, which is okay, as long as it's done in a structural manner.
> You don't have normal boundaries. Grown-ups at work know that they will interact with other people. You inventing that people should not interact with you, or interact only in your own terms even when it is inconvenient for them.
I don't mind interacting at all, nor do I mind onboarding. I do mind, however, being interrupted all the time, on information, that could easily have been condensed in an onboarding package if the company gave people the space, time and initiative to create such a package.
What I am pointing out is that the OP experienced bad onboarding and thought the solution to that is being in-person in the office. I would argue what they simply had was a badly planned onboarding, with randomly shared responsibility across the team, and an ad-hoc learning plan. If the OP's company uses that lesson and makes a better onboarding process, that'd be great and they might even reconsider the need to be there in person.
> you are complaining about doing your job: working with colleagues and sharing information so that they can progress.
I would love share the information, but I want to do it in a structured manner, and not in chunks and without disruptions.
That's why schools and unis have classes, and classes have predictable and scheduled time frames. It's not just a building with teachers, and random children entering ad hoc and asking whatever question came to their head, then leaving, and coming back 5 min later.
And what's wrong with wanting lots of this information to be self-service? That's the whole idea of knowledge bases, of onboarding docs, of developer handbooks. What does it have to with people being in person or not? I'd argue if the OP's company spent the effort in actually putting all that knowledge in writing, they will have an easier and less disruptive onboarding to the team, with reduced bus factor, and clearly documented steps.