The Cost of Context Switching | Hacker News Reader

The Cost of Context Switching

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11 pointspenaazv5 comments

Spolsky wrote about this 23 years ago.

>The other trouble is that it’s so easy to get knocked out of the zone. Noise, phone calls, going out for lunch, having to drive 5 minutes to Starbucks for coffee, and interruptions by coworkers — especially interruptions by coworkers — all knock you out of the zone. If a coworker asks you a question, causing a 1 minute interruption, but this knocks you out of the zone badly enough that it takes you half an hour to get productive again, your overall productivity is in serious trouble. If you’re in a noisy bullpen environment like the type that caffeinated dotcoms love to create, with marketing guys screaming on the phone next to programmers, your productivity will plunge as knowledge workers get interrupted time after time and never get into the zone.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...

Others have known since the 60s or 70s - it's touched upon in Brooks' 1975 The Mythical Man Month

On the positive side, lower productivity boosts employment. It has always been well understood that a few good programmers, properly motivated, can potentially outperform a team of 100. It is perhaps a good thing that companies continue to ignore this truth else millions would be unemployed. Of course, AI is poised to upset the apple cart and millions will end up begging anyway.

>always been well understood that a few good programmers, properly motivated, can potentially outperform a team of 100

But it's NOT because of the mythical "10x programmer" (another Spolskyism)

It's because of communication overhead - in general, the smaller the team, the faster the solution

I don't know about that. I have a few successes under my belt where I've outperformed a team. For example, delivering a solution in two months compared to a team of four failing to deliver anything at all in a year. Then there are the well known geniuses who delivered Doom and Quake in a spectacularly short time frame. There are many other examples. I do agree, however, that 10x programmers are few and far between.

sure - I've rolled-out stuff in timeframes that made the team look bad ... and then had another project where, had I been working on it, we'd still be working on it

doesn't make me a "10x engineer"

nor does it make anyone else a "10x engineer"

it makes us better at certain tasks than others - which is what you would expect among any population: there are people very good at riding bikes long distances (they try to win the Tour de France), there are others good at explaining obscure topics in a way anyone can feel good about learning them (they usually have YouTube channels or are history professors)

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