As eng manager, you so frequently get request to drop what you are doing
I think the thread is actually quite accurate, but with crucial detail missing - the person who gets to decide whether or not the 'urgent' work is really more or less urgent than what the team is working on is the engineering manager. You can't complain that people interrupt you with things when it's <i>your</i> job to decide whether or not they should have interrupted you.<p>The alternative is to have people decide for themselves when things are urgent. This leads to four scenarios;<p>- Really good - they don't interrupt you with a non-urgent thing.<p>- Good - they interrupt you with an urgent thing.<p>- Bad - they interrupt you with a non-urgent thing.<p>- <i>Catastrophically Bad</i> - they don't interrupt you when there's an urgent thing.<p>Accepting the bad interruptions in order to avoid the catastrophically bad non-interruptions is worth the pain. If you can't handle that then you shouldn't be an engineering manager.