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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

The other day I missed my 1:1 with my direct manager because I was in Zoom, sharing my screen with a colleague and Zoom dutifully suppressed alerts, from the calendar, and the increasingly frustrated messages from him on Slack, while I was "presenting".

Thank you, Zoom.

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I've seen very unfortunate things happening when someone doesn't have notifications disabled when giving a presentation so I don't think this is a bad default.

I quit all noisy apps before doing presentations. It's a healthy habit.

It's actually a good argument for integration between screen-sharing apps and instant messaging/status - your status really should go to "Presenting" when you are presenting and for incoming alerts to automatically be hidden.

That's a great idea!

It's how Microsoft Teams works, not my idea!

That's how Teams works and if I remember rightly even Skype for business/Lync had this way back.

Yes, that was the default behavior in Lync/SfB, but could be changed to not go into "Do Not Disturb" status when sharing your screen or presenting slides.

Don’t all apps nowadays send you notifications even if they are not running?

I believe such a horrible misfeature would require support from desktop environment. I mostly use XFCE and believe it doesn't have that feature. I'm not so sure, but believe that Windows is also mostly fine: note that an app minimized to tray is still running, "Quit" is distinct from "Close". Did I miss something in popular desktop environments?

If your job (as I've seen recently) is to give real time support it looks pretty nuts. Traditional landline telephones just ring loud and long enough to just work. In 2020 the laptop needs to be kept awake, the mail client has to be active, the wifi has to be connected. Woah, Reboot? just like that? I might get fired!

Then, in the middle of the daily 8 hour tech paranoia she went to the toilet and the mail notifier was loud- but not long enough. It got flushed pretty much. I had to tell her she got an email. "WOAH? Really??" :rolleyes:

The false alarms are also comical. Things like separate notification settings for different mail accounts is still a puzzle while it should be a simple filter settings. We got volume control in software but we didn't get to adjust it on a per feature-basis.

I guess we are back at: 'Jack of all trades, master of none'

One of the most annoying and bad-taste shocking developments in OS X was when they changed the Messages app so that it still gives you notifications even if its not running, unless you deliberately enable Do Not Disturb.

It's really really glaring and galling how bad that choice is. It's Microsoftian.

The notifications aren't coming from the Messages app anymore, they are push notifications that are delivered over APNS.

Maybe the issue isn't with the default notification behaviour in a teleconference program, but with the expectation that someone should always be instantly accessible via zoom/slack/what have you during work hours.

(I mean, yeah, the meeting was presumably scheduled but the manager could have phoned or texed.)

In some places they even push the expectation of being accessible immediately at any time ("being on call"), and it’s not paid hours. Crazy times we live in.

who doesn't pay "on call" though?

Management is never paid for being on call in my experience. It's just expected that you can be called any time for any reason.

I've never been paid extra for 'on call', always been salaried and had it added as an expectation after the fact.

I'll admit I've quit over it.

I am an underpaid (for my area, experience, title, coworkers, etc) software developer who has occasional on call shifts and once a year holiday shifts with no extra pay or benefits

Your argument seems to be that he should be instantly available on his telephone but not on zoom or slack? Seems like you're just shuffling the problem around.

I think that's pretty reasonable. Most people at the end of the day are available whenever via a phone call. But if you use it for something trivial, they will be pissed. Seems like a decent system to me.

In this age of mobile phones, a phone call is the gold standard for realtime business communication. It's pretty reasonable to expect someone to answer their phone if their direct supervisor calls during work hours. Text messages are more fuzzy with the implied expectation of response time. Online messages (IMO anyway) shouldn't be considered a realtime channel.

It was entirely my fault to be over reliant on notifications.

A coworker had his work Macbook synced up to his iPhone messages app, and was getting blown up during a meeting by his friends in a group chat ranting about Trump.

It could have been way worse. I've never understood why people sync their personal messages/emails to their work computers. It can and does get watched - gods help you if your friends have a borderline taste in memes and send you something offensive while you're presenting.

I dunno, I'd generally think of this as probably the better failure mode for this particular feature! It's popular enough that there are dedicated apps to help with it (https://muzzleapp.com – which if I'm honest I'm just sharing because the website is that good).

Now I wish there was a prank app generating those kind of notifications when someone shares a screen. Would be great to install on any friend/coworker who forgets to lock his laptop before stepping out.

I have little to no interest in the app, but that website is in fact that good.

> increasingly frustrated messages from him on Slack

I always say to people "if it's urgent then phone me".

Software has too many ways to fail to notify you. I miss text messages because my phone is charging in the other room, I miss Slack notifications because I reinstalled Windows on one machine and relied on the Slack web UI rather than the desktop app. There's so may ways to misconfigure notification services. My phone ringing is hard to ignore.

Also - I forget to act on SMS and WhatApp messages all the time because they conflate "read" with "done". I have a second rule - "if you want me to remember it then email me."

I think Zoom is doing its job there. It can't know about other stuff you have planned, and suppressing alerts when screen sharing is a good idea.

Let's not blame too much on tech

Windows 10 is a bucket of shit, it doesn't show me any notifications (I think it thinks I'm connected to a projector instead of a second monitor so it helpfully switches to "presentation mode"), but a few hours later it would flood me with the suppressed notifications from the whole day. Yay!

It also likes to fuck with my keyboard layout settings: the PCs at work come with German, French and Italian layouts (guess the country!), and that's the default for the "system", which is the configuration Windows uses at the login/lock screen, but I just use German and added English. Very often, Windows would decide that my keypresses should now be interpreted as French instead of English, despite the language icon saying "ENG"...

The "ENG" just means the user interface is in English, not the keyboard language, if you use a default height taskbar it will show, "ENG" with "US" below for the layout which you can change using multiple hotkeys one is Windows Key + Space another is alt + shift I think

> The "ENG" just means the user interface is in English, not the keyboard language,

Nope, this is incorrect.

The default hotkey for switching input languages is Alt+Shift and there's no UI feedback when you trigger it.

Depending on settings/version of Windows, the input method is actually tracked per-window so it's really easy to end up with weird/annoying behaviour.

If you haven't already I'd suggest disabling that hotkey. You may find the weirdness partially resolves itself.

Nah... the problem is, I would remove the French layout from my user configuration, but Windows would randomly decide to re-add (and use) it. If I go to the languages menu in Control Panel, French would not be listed there. I'd have to add French, and then remove it again. But a few hours later the same bug would hit me again and I'm outputting accented letters all over the place.

You can keep notifications disabled on desktop but enabled on phone, and keep your phone in front of you while presenting. Ignore single dings and notifications with silent / vibrate. But you should notice multiple slack dings this way and can react. Also can see calendar notifications pretty easily.

With the expectation being that people should be reachable via phone?

I mean, I guess I gave in too, with Slack notifications now showing up on my phone, which feels like a defeat, but this expectation of reachability seems wrong to me, at least if it’s not a dedicated work phone.

My own private phone should ideally not receive any work-related notifications.

> increasingly frustrated messages

Dude, your manager should never get frustrated with you because you didn't come or are late for your 1on1.

Your 1on1 with your manager is YOUR time. It's not THEIR time.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24525026

I present a LOT -- not with Zoom, EVER, because why trust them, but with other tools -- and I definitely have my OS's "do not disturb" on when I do that.

But I also have 2nd and sometimes 3rd devices rolling so I can keep an eye on email and IMs during those times. Doesn't everyone do that?

I don't have a work phone and don't install work software on my phone.

Ok?

I mean, that puts you at precisely the disadvantage your outlined, but if you don't trust your employer than that's where you are.

I don't have any "work software" on my phone, but I can still see my work email there.

It's not that I don't trust my employer, I just don't have a reason to install stuff. If I miss a notification, then whatever.

Disabling distracting notifications during a presentation is a good feature. Presumably you were going over actual work with your colleague. Your manager sounds like a nightmare control freak, if you're not over-stating their frustration.

Edit: more charitably, I don't know anything about your manager. But if you did accurately represent their frustration and they're normally a good manager who can take feedback, feel free to share that they came across as a nightmare control freak in this situation.

> missed my 1:1 ... increasingly frustrated messages

>> nightmare control freak

I don't know why you jumped to that, seems like a totally normal reaction to me. I think your judgement is a little harsh or at least making a lot of assumptions.

I disagree that it's a normal reaction to missing a virtual 1:1. An appropriate reaction would perhaps involve at most 2 messages, one a prompt for the meeting, and if not responded to, a followup asking to reschedule when they're available. If I finished a collaboration with a colleague that ran over time, and came back to "increasingly frustrated messages" from my manager, I would take that as a rather large red flag.

"ready to go"

"you there?"

"still waiting... ETA??"

What a nightmare control freak, huge red flag, jeez...

Yes, that is a nightmare. You know how many messages you need to send over chat in situations like this?

ONE. Not at least. AT MOST.

This isn't like yelling across the hallway and being unsure if your friend heard you.

This isn't like coming to your spouse's room to tell them dinner is ready, them not coming in 5 minutes, and you coming back to get them again.

Work chat systems show read receipts. YOu know if the person got the message. And there will be a permanent record for them to see it.

If they're not responding there are two possibilities: A) They saw the notification/you message B) They didn't.

If it's B, more messages won't help notifications appear.

If it's A....don't you maybe have some trust in your coworkers (presuming this isn't a 15 year old on their first job at MacDonalds) that they know how to prioritize and if they're not responding to another human being it's probably because they have some reason not to?

They might be mid conversation. They might be dealing with a production issue. They might have a screaming baby in the room next to them.

And in all these cases, if you give them a minute, they'll arrive, apologize profusely for missed the 1on1 or keeping you waiting, and either proceed or reschedule.

Meanwhile, you've already blocked this time off for the meeting. So go and reply to some emails, or work on a promo doc, or hell if you work too hard already, take a break, and click around on hacker news for a few minutes.

It'll be fine.

I would absolutely without hesitation would not work for, and would quit working for a manager who treated me with three messages like you just described.

Let's agree to disagree and leave it at that.

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