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Comment by lawn | Hacker News Reader

> its literally 10 minutes

Even if the meeting itself was instant it would take more than 10 minutes. You would have to stop whatever you're working on, even if you're in the middle of a valuable flow state. Then after the meeting you have to get back into whatever it was, which alone can take you more than 10 minutes depending on the depth of your work.

If that's not bad enough then what you talked about in the meeting can also linger. You'll think of problems others have had and it causes your mind to lose focus, now you have thoughts about your problem mixed with other problems. These meetings also tend to happen during the mornings, smack in the middle of the most productive hours of the day.

No, a daily standup takes much more time than 10 minutes.

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Your job is more than just code. Your job is other people too. Live in a box all you like but you're completely discounting the value of ensuring other members of the team know what's going on with you over your current work item.

FWIW, imagine how a greenhorn might feel working on a team with you. If you feel like giving them some time of your day is a waste or that listening to their problems is a waste they're not going to feel enthused working on your team. Sure, that doesn't necessarily influence your current work item but it might contribute to overwork later if they leave for a team that actually makes them feel like they matter.

There's a big leap between never interacting with other people and my claim that standups in fact takes longer than 10 minutes.

Breaking my state of flow is also something I don’t like about stand ups. And yes, they tend to be in the morning when I have my most productive hours.

One solution I found is to write a quick status in the chat and excuse myself from the stand up.

Sometimes I finish 20 minutes before the stand up and think about what to do next. I usually won’t go into deep work but plan something, write my todo list on paper or review some PR to make use of the amount of time that’s to small to get into flow.

You should be able to figure out a good daily time for your team that doesn't involve breaking out of the middle of a flow state. Maybe when everyone is expected to be in the office, or even right after lunch?

There is never such a time, if you allow any kind of flexibility or self-direction in scheduling. Moreover, if you are customer-driven, you will wind up with having calls here, there, and everywhere, that some subset of your people will be on that clash with any potential standup time.

The risk is always there. Say you schedule it at 8 in the morning? Then you might interrupt the people who come in earlier. Schedule it before or after lunch? Unfortunately people eat lunch at different times too. Schedule it at the end of the day? Then the daily standup loses it's effectiveness (while you risk interrupting people who flow later in the day).

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