Comment by pixelrevision | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pixelrevision | Hacker News Reader

Slack it really great for getting info but it definitely can become a firehose and a distraction. Many of those fire and forget posts are from people equally as exhausted with it as you are trying to keep up. I have also talked with plenty of people who feel the same way as you do about inflection. Some people need this more than others (myself included).

I don’t know your role or the expectations at a FAANG but chances are all these messages you are trying to keep up on are keeping you from doing something else that would be more valuable to both your mental health and the company.

If you can set boundaries I would do so. Some things that have helped me:

- Asked my boss what was absolutely important for real time communication and turned off notifications for everything else.

- Aggressively using my status for work. I block my calendar between 8am-12pm and put “programming” in my status with notifications turned off. If there’s a real fire slack lets you “send anyway”.

- I try to put time aside in my day to dedicate to paperwork type stuff. This includes slack, email, hr stuff and so on. This really helps me because I’m not constantly context shifting and can give the appropriate time towards anything being asked of me. It also helps with perceived tone as I don’t read the message feeling resentful.

This sort of stuff is easier said than done and you have to figure out what works best for your situation. At the end of the day most things can wait a bit and actually work out better when there’s a bit of time to process and think about them. A lot of people have just forgotten.

> Block my calendar between 8am-12pm and put "programming" in my status with notifications turned off.

This is the way. I'm not always in a position to be able to do this, but especially if you have a lot of people relying on you, because you manage others or are generally the focal point of a lot of organizational needs, people are simply going to be pinging you constantly. Especially when those are DMs, each individual who reaches out has no idea that you're responding to multiple messages at once. So the only way is to block it out on your calendar and only be available for emergencies. A side benefit of this that I've experienced is that others who are looking for guidance or mentorship, like with programming tasks or whatever, end up being a lot more discriminating in what they reach out and bother you for. That's a benefit not only to you, but to them as well because it forces them to question whether they've been as resourceful and diligent as they could be. Oftentimes, they are able to find the answers on their own, but if you're too easily reached, they may rely on you as a crutch. (It's for this reason that I tell my direct reports that I'm almost always happy to help them work through a problem, but they need first 1) identify what they know and don't know 2) identify what they've tried and haven't 3) be able to articulate the context very clearly and 4) generally take pride in communicating what they need assistance with in a very concise and clear matter. Holding people to that standard helps them because just dotting the i's and crossing the t's often clarifies what the problem is and very often leads them to be able to find a solution themselves)

I have found that people are generally very receptive to and respectful of the time blocking. I've never experienced anyone thinking it is off-putting or otherwise out of bounds. They simply know when you're heads down and only reachable for emergencies and when they can more freely reach out to chat or get help.

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