I estimate twenty minutes as the average cost of answering a question. I'm only obligated to help co-workers if it costs me less time than it saves them. if a manager in your tree asks you a dumb question, they are squandering their own resources. I'm not obligated to stop them.
to be clear, I only use the twenty minute rule deliberately on people who consistently ask low effort questions. usually I just finish whatever subtask I'm working on, then think of a response. fortunately I don't have many people like this where I work, but they do exist.
> I'm only obligated to help co-workers if it costs me less time than it saves them. if a manager in your tree asks you a dumb question, they are squandering their own resources. I'm not obligated to stop them.
Wow such a team player! You must be a joy to work with. Helping your team is an “obligation” but only if a certain math equation is a positive number..
When my manager asks a question, I don’t treat it with hostility. It isn’t a “dumb” question, because for some reason that’s what he needed to know. I could bet that you have asked a few dumb questions in your day.
And with other teammates, why the contempt? You are a team. It isn’t all about “your productivity,” it’s about the team accomplishing the goal. You probably aren’t a Nobel winning physicist sitting around dreaming up theories that change the earth, but it certainly seems like it.
Be helpful and compassionate with your team. If you really can’t be bothered, activate Do Not Disturb. If you actually think your boss is asking dumb questions, perhaps you should ask them why. Or perhaps you should ask to be the boss. Or perhaps you should just be helpful and friendly and not such an entitled grump. Or perhaps get better at your job so interruptions aren’t so horrible for you. Perhaps your hatred of interruption is due to insecurity or anxiety about your abilities. If that’s the case, work on boosting your capabilities.
But don’t treat your teammates like some kind of fungus that need avoidance.
> Wow such a team player! You must be a joy to work with.
Sarcasm, insult.
> Helping your team is an “obligation” but only if a certain math equation is a positive number..
Deliberate negative misrepresentation of a reasonable position (some things are more important than others).
> When my manager asks a question, I don’t treat it with hostility.
Boasting, posturing of superiority.
> It isn’t a “dumb” question, because for some reason that’s what he needed to know.
Claim that you know their life better than they do, and you are a better judge of what they are being asked than they are.
> I could bet that you have asked a few dumb questions in your day.
Irrelevant putdown/insult, which wouldn't change the current situation whether it was true or false.
> You are a team. It isn’t all about “your productivity,”
Dismissive putdown, with quotes implying their productivity isn't important, i.e. that they overvalue their own work and that you can value it better than they can.
> it’s about the team accomplishing the goal
Dismissive of the fact that for a team to accomplish a goal, people in the team must be able to do their work towards said goal.
> You probably aren’t a Nobel winning physicist sitting around dreaming up theories that change the earth, but it certainly seems like it
Irrelevant insult and putdown, implying their work is unimportant. Tag-on bit at the end insults their own judgement of the worth of their work and implicitly claims you are a better judge of its importance than they are.
> perhaps you should just be helpful and friendly and not such an entitled grump
Another insult, accusation of overblown status.
> Or perhaps get better at your job
Another insult.
> Perhaps your hatred of interruption is due to insecurity or anxiety about your abilities.
Another insult.
> Be helpful and compassionate
The jaw-dropping, tone-deaf, blind-to-what-you-are-saying sentence which causes me to post this comment.
the original post contained a small disclaimer that annoying, low effort questions do exist (with a strategy for dealing with them), followed by several examples of questions that are important to answer promptly. I even said most of the questions my coworkers ask are in this category, and I mentioned it again in the followup response. the main thrust of the post is to get people to consider how allowing themselves to be distracted by high-quality questions is worth the hit to their individual productivity. I really don't see how you can read all this negativity into my posts without totally ignoring the overall context.
I will double down on my point that you don't have to prioritize questions that cost more time than they save. if I spend more time helping you than it would have taken you to figure it out yourself, this hurts the overall productivity of the team.
to be clear, I only use the twenty minute rule deliberately on people who consistently ask low effort questions. usually I just finish whatever subtask I'm working on, then think of a response. fortunately I don't have many people like this where I work, but they do exist.