

Don't Wake Up the Programmer - markbnine
http://alexthunder.livejournal.com/309815.html

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noonat
This is a great way to explain it. My wife used to suggest that I work on a
side project of mine when I had a few free minutes here or there. I had a hard
time explaining why it wasn't really worth the effort unless I could work on
it for at _least_ an hour. She trusts me on that, even if I didn't do a great
job explaining why, but it seems like this explanation would make the reasons
easier to convey.

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hcarvalhoalves
I've quit a job once because of that. The company wanted to have an in-house
developer, but failed at understanding what it involves and providing an
appropriate environment.

One-half of the office was open plan with people talking on the phone all day,
the other was a room full of editors talking to each other every 5 minutes.
When I explained I needed a quiet place to work, they either thought I was not
a "team-player", or that I was cheating on them to surf Facebook all day. It's
really hard to explain when the company's core is not software development.

They also wanted me to develop new features, but no one had 30 min to set
aside to talk and gather requisites. Worst job I've had.

Nowadays I work from my home office. Not only I'm more productive, I've cut a
3 hours/day commute. Best career decision I've made.

~~~
csbrooks
It drives me crazy when people say "just wear headphones". Would you take the
SAT while wearing headphones? Because there are plenty of programming problems
that are as hard as anything on the SAT.

(I know I read that analogy somewhere, probably on HN.)

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gasda
Wow I started to read this, then started thinking oh just another "leave me
alone while I program" post from 5 years ago. After reading the comments here
I went back and read the complete post. Glad I did. That was a great way to
describe how interruptions kill the processes.

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mdf
Reminded me of this:

[http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-
interrupt-...](http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-a-
programmer/)

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Terr_
Reminds me of this productivity/time graph:

[http://imgur.com/fN2WL5k](http://imgur.com/fN2WL5k)

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jasdeepsingh
this was brilliant, I'm going to send a link to your post to my fiance and
have her read this to make her understand how I work.

