We use Pragli, and I feel like it's the opposite. Rather than a Slack back and forth to see if someone is available, setting up a video conference, connecting, etc, you can pop in and say "hey, you have a minute?". They can say "no" or "can you come back in 10?". It's like stopping by someone's desk. If they really wanted to be heads down they can be in do not disturb mode. They can still show as online (so their presence can be "felt"), but have a status that says "Focusing" and block "calls". I think it's great.

>They can say "no" or "can you come back in 10?"

By then, the damage to concentration has already been made. Yes, you can set your status to "do not disturb". But you have to remember to do that.

Sure, it's still an interruption, but I don't think it's completely derailing. That's why I compared it to stopping by someone's desk. It still requires both parties to be responsible and aware.

Stopping by someone's desk is derailing, FWIW. I frequently find myself losing 30+ minutes before getting flow back from a 2 minute interruption.

One interruption an hour is enough to result in me not being able to get anything done for the whole day...

Actually, I'm starting to think I lost ability to concentrate because of that.

You've clearly not got a clue how a software engineer works if you think its not derailing.

I am not sure you really know how concentration works.

For example:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-28923-001

"We found that cellular phone notifications alone significantly disrupted performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants did not directly interact with a mobile device during the task."

Imagine then what damage random people's voices asking you things while working would do to your concentration.

Did you read the Pragli article at all? It specifically addressss this.

I did. I see no mention of special do not disturb handling, instead high value placed on others being able to start voice communication without waiting for you to accept - the only thing that is opt-in is answering them, by the time your attention is already wrecked.

> no mention of special do not disturb handling

There's a section on setting manual statuses, including one specific example of "focussing - do not disturb". The animated screengrab below suggests that if someone wants to contact you with such a status set they will get a window informing them and the option to bother you anyway. Not sure how special you would want your handling, but something is definitely there. Though it isn't really clear to me if the example in the screengrab is based on a status or on a calendar entry.

I do agree that this isn't something I would want to work with, and as I wrote elsewhere, if my company had this I would set it to perpetual DND or just not run the software at all.

The resigned me would accept that DND mode because somehow it would be made hard to work without this software, possibly with HR involved. The naive me would think there's going to be something better or that people would actually respect that. The cynical experienced me wants a progressively higher level of pain delivered before you can call someone in DND mode.

They also mention that what finally made it feel nice is automatically setting DND mode when there is a calendar event (including any “focus time” blocks you create).

A big problem is that many people will ultimately ignore DND anyway.

The caller cannot ignore it, it will simply cause audio to not be accepted automatically.

From the HN guidelines: Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

Problem is most people are socially inclined to say yes. It’s just human nature. They are more willing to break the flow than to break the social norms.

I really feel like this part is something you could automate.

Give me a choice box of now, snooze bar, or several other options culminating in “take it to email, my hair is on fire.”

Before I retired, I avoided getting a cell phone because of this. Where I was working, I could see that my co-workers were using their cell phones as a company intercom. I didn't want any part of that.

You can also include a camera in your face and screenshare all the time...

I think the approach from some remote companies, which involved dedicated display with a camera that was _usually_ on (but could be _switched off_, just like closing doors to your office!) would be better than this "walkie-talkie"

Take a look at the section "Solving Distraction: Presence + Statuses + Calendar" in the article - I dive into our attempt to solve this problem.

I e always found it funny how HN seems to put remote work on such a pedestal... some people cant concentrate remotely. Kids are a huge distraction, as are many other comforts of the home.

It's funny how you make a generalisation and then are very specific. Not everyone decided to have children. I have designed my own living situation to be quiet and to minimize distractions. Even if your home is a very distracting place, working remotely doesn't have to mean working from home. You still get all the other benefits of openness and communication and you can rent your own small office with a door that closes.

I find it challenging to concentrate in an open floor plan office that is full of people. I find it absurd that it has become the status quo for software development.

Point taken.

The open office layout is a scam - pushed based on the build-out costs of new office space in a very rapidly expanding market in Silicon valley over the last two decades.

Companies needed lots of office space very fast. Companies also dies fast.

Building out office space is expensive and the push for open office layouts as a "culture" bit was just as much marketing as anything else...

It’s definitely possible to concentrate in an open office, it’s just an acquired/cultivated skill. Besides that, if someone on your team interrupts you and they’re not just being inconsiderate, they are actually enabling you to concentrate on the thing you need to be, which is this other person’s question.

But there's no way for the interruptor to know the priority of their issue relative to the your priorities.

This creates a major time management issue. If you have time blocked off for important, high value tasks, you can be easily distracted by someone else's lower level tasks.

Task switching, especially to focus on low level tasks, is highly inefficient in both the short and long term and should be avoided at most costs.

Sure, but isn’t that true in the remote world as well? I can’t imagine it’s very good form to just reject a call or ignore it when you’re busy doing something else, you have to provide a reply to the person about why you can’t talk, and then that’s just as good as having done the same thing to a person physically in your office.

I had a job where I telecommuted one day a week. On the days between, I helped people with problems, went to meetings, planned, etc. I could get a little code in every day, but any deep work would often have to be queued. I’d plot, scheme, research bug fixes and workarounds. Then on my remote day I would code like hell, all the stuff I’d planned out in the previous week.

On average, I got almost half of my code for the week done on that one day.

In my experience, ignoring someone stopping by your desk is very different from not answering the phone. A phone call doesn't have the same degree of immediacy nor the same expectations of a response

How is a phone call not the highest form of immediacy? Short of an actual pager event implying downtime and process, what could be higher priority to someone working out of office?

A voicemail. I frequently get calls, some of it may be a high priority, some of it not, no way to know, but I am not going to answer every call. If someone goes through the effort of leaving a voicemail I will interrupt my work and listen to it and decide whether or not it is more important than what I am currently doing.

I think it really depends on related context though. If I am working in an operational capacity then I may need to answer the phone every time it rings. If I am doing project work requiring a great degree of creative problem solving I am going to block off my calendar most of the day and prioritize a lack of distraction. My phone will be on "do not disturb" and I won't be looking at it. Impatience and interruption are the killers of creativity.

If you treat every inbound phone call as your highest/immediate priority, you have ceded all control of your priorities to other people. Unless you’re working in a call-center type of role, I can’t see how that could possibly be optimal.