Hacker News Reader

Comment by in_me_i_trust | Hacker News Reader

"I.E. coming over knocking on your desk asking a question, or pulling you in for a meeting."

I'm curious whether you find hipchat / slack to actually be less intrusive. In my experience, working from home can result in protracted text conversations causing me to stay less focused for longer periods of time. In the office, I can usually stop, take off the headphones, resolve their problem, refill my coffee and then get back to work in less time.

View on HN

I "solved" this by running Slack on a second computer (even being on the same one with the same notification feed was no good). I occasionally look at it, but try to avoid doing so unless I'm at the start of a pomodoro period (because Slack is work, it gets a work period).

Yes and no, it goes to the culture. My current team, where that quote is apt, has slack. But it's rarely used.

On a prior role when we had discussions exceed the HipChat/Slack medium we did a quick google hangout/skype session. Doing face to face, and with a screen share. I can't really think of a time where we didn't get something resolved in under an hour, more likely I would say under 30 minutes.

Face to face can resolve slightly quicker, but with the amount of interruptions it provides. I'll take the bit of extra time resolving something via HipChat/Slack -> Video conference for more uninterrupted work time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com