Taking back Mondays and Tuesdays (2019)
Focus is woefully undervalued, I think.  I haven't had a single job as a software engineer that didn't have a constant background of distractions and interruption that prevented work from getting done.  My current job is great, but its biggest issue is the sheer amount of interruption and poor organization of information that makes it difficult to get work done in a timely way.  When I have to switch contexts frequently, for lack of a less cliche term, it takes even more time for me to get back up to speed with where I'd left off.  Some people are clearly better at this than others, but I'd bet that those who can handle context switching well would still do even better under a system that valued focus.  I don't think this really has much to do with introversion(which everyone has a different definition of and, in my experience, everyone claims they are, making the term worthless IMO).<p>This last weekend I did something that I normally refuse to do, which was to catch up on work.  I still dedicated most of my time towards non-work, yet being able to work without interruption was not only a breath of fresh air but seemed to allow me to get more done in the same amount of time.<p>My guess as to why organizations don't care about focus is that they value the perception of "getting things done"; when engineers that need focus are frequently interrupted by the process, they'll shift to getting smaller tasks done first so that management will know that they're working on something.  Organizations will tend to tolerate a more complex task taking longer than estimated, but in my experience are less tolerant of engineers not pushing lines of code for days because they're taking time to implement said complex task in a good way.  In essence, it's a spin on "butts in seats", except it creates the illusion of productivity when in reality it could mean counter-productivity.<p>I'm not exactly sure that having the process wall people off from interrupting each other is necessarily a good thing.  What would be better is a good planning process that limits unnecessary change combined with a working culture that values focus.<p>EDIT: I'm <i>not</i> talking about legitimate interruptions like when someone needs help or wants to pair program.  I'm talking about interruptions that are either environment related or are a result of process failure(e.g. new tasks and course corrections frequently added to the pile because of poor planning).  Although I can imagine some would want to limit "good interruptions" to a window, if possible.