If you’re a Software Engineer getting bombarded with “just a quick question” and “need a small fix”, this post is for you.

It’s your responsibility to handle incoming requests from humans, to say “no” or at least “later” when appropriate. Humans learn, they just need feedback.

If you know such people who get multiple interruptions every hour or you are one of them, please use the email template below and send it to others in your organization. They will respect it, and hopefully with enough cat gifs/emoji included, they might even laugh a bit.

TITLE: Help a programmer stay focused, please 👩‍💻👨‍💻.

BODY:

Heya!

In order to be effective and feel “in the flow” while working on cognitively demanding tasks (e.g. writing code), I have to be able to focus without distraction.

This is where you can help me, simply by being more careful in these situations.

If you need my attention:

If it is urgent (i.e. production problem) – please let me know immediately, face to face. If I’m not at the office, send me a Whatsapp or give me a call. I’m not always available via Slack.

Otherwise –

• If you need an answer in a hour or two, please send me a direct Slack message.
• If it can wait till the next day, please send me the question or request via email. I review emails at least once a day.
• If you need me to review a Pull Request or review a Technical Design – please set a time on my calendar. Try to send that calendar invite when you start working on the feature, choosing the estimated time that you think you’ll ready for my input. Don’t wait until you’re finished to approach me and my calendar because by then I might not have flexibility to add something new into my day. Preparing the way in advance means I won’t block you when you’re done and eager to deploy — either I’ll have the time to review it carefully, or you’ll have time to find another reviewer if I’m not going to be available.

I also have a daily time blocked for “helping others” from 1:30PM to 2:30PM. This is when I’ll be available to help with debugging, answer some questions or solve small problems.

🎧 Extra-focus time: if I am wearing my headphones or my hat, I am trying to focus on something important. Please don’t interrupt me unless production is on fire and no one else can handle it except me.

Lastly, this photo is a good reminder of why you should never interrupt a programmer. Yes, this is based on real story. From today. Seriously.

Thanks a lot,
Your wanna-be-effective programmer.

Big round of 👏 to David Shimon for writing the initial version and actually implementing back-pressure for humans on his day job. At least he tries to.