Yep. Frankly, these articles are just keyboard warrior antics from introverts that are feeling on top of the world with the wave of WFH. Conflating “what’ll get me back to my IDE faster” and “how can I make all communication so structured that I never have to genuinely interact with anyone at work on a human level” with an actual increase in productivity is just a sign of immense naivety.
Thankfully these people tend to be quite vocal about these views online so I can appropriately take it as a soft red flag when hiring.
Or, these articles are written by people who deal with so many "quick calls" and a continuous stream of meeting invites without clear agendas that it actually does stop them from performing what is their actual job description.
This would also apply to people working in offices where someone stops by their desk every five minutes. If you are constantly being disrupted in your work, have to shift focus, rinse, repeat, it makes sense to start setting boundaries.
Question, do your job openings by default include one of these phrases?
- Thrives in high-stress environments
- Excels in demanding situations
- Delivers outstanding results in challenging circumstances
It's a welcome change from the extroverted era to be honest. There's a middle ground somewhere though, including but not limited to cutting through the bullshit, posturing and rituals and getting to the point.
I'm the furthest thing from an introvert and I still despise having managers pulling me into unprompted random bullshit calls that could've been a slack message, usually because they don't read the status messages posted by the people doing the actual work.
The large, overwhelming majority of impromptu meetings I've ever been in that didn't have a fellow engineer on the other end of the call have been nothing but massive time wasters. And usually if it's another engineer a few messages is more than enough, anyways.
Thankfully these people tend to be quite vocal about these views online so I can appropriately take it as a soft red flag when hiring.