Telecommuting

[Nicholas Clark]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 11:10:35AM +0000, Dirk Koopman wrote:

> Being constantly interrupted is one of the programmers bugbears. 
> Especially as I argue that this probably wastes even more time than 
> dealing with email. It isn't just the time the interruption takes, but 
> also the time lost whilst one gets back "into" whatever one might have 
> been doing.

I remember the comment of a (now) retired friend of my father.
He said that the tendency with e-mail was to simply add people to the Cc:
list, because it was cheap for the *sender*. Instead of the sender thinking
who actually needed to see the message and keeping it trimmed, save time
and effort by just adding everyone plausible.

Of course, once everyone plays that game...

[I can't remember if he was also the first person to alert me to the thought
that it's also a "cover your back" mechanism for your actions. If you Cc: it
to people, then later you can tell them that they *had* a copy back then, so
it's hard to complain later]

All this leads to the default being a flood of e-mail. Which everyone
(and the organisation as a whole) pays for.

Nicholas Clark