Zoom dooms the developer’s afternoon

If you’re a software developer and you don’t already know of Paul Graham and his wonderful essays, then you’re in for a treat. Graham writes about programming, running startups, and, well, life. As one of the original dotcom success stories and the founder of Y Combinator, Graham knows of what he writes.

My personal favorite essay of his is Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule, wherein he discusses the stark distinction between what motivates schedule making for software developers and what motivates schedule making for those who manage them. 

Managers, of course, tend to thrive on meetings and generally organize them when it suits them. I often hear managers complain about being booked by wall-to-wall meetings.

Software developers, on the other hand, would be delighted to have no meetings at all. If only they could spend all of their time getting into a flow state and actually producing software. A single meeting in the middle of the day could screw all of that up. 

Thus, when remote work became normalized during the pandemic, many a developer rejoiced, thinking “Great, now they can’t interrupt me!” Little did they know.

House of cards

Perhaps the only silver lining of the pandemic was that remote work became commonplace. Remote tooling hit its stride, and all meetings were a Zoom call. Managers wielding Microsoft Outlook could book meetings pretty easily, but Zoom reduced even that friction. With managers able to summon developers with just a few clicks, the frequency of meetings naturally increased. 

The price of being in a meeting was lowered as well. In the pre-pandemic times, you actually had to, you know, walk to a conference room. With Zoom, going to meetings is a simple mouse click. And admit it, Zoom meetings make it a whole lot easier to screw around and not pay attention, or pay minimal attention. Plus it is all too easy to add that extra person who may not really need to be there. 

All of this results in a cultural change that makes the lives of software developers even more difficult. 

Developers know that context-switching is a productivity killer. A single “quick 15 minute meeting” in the middle of the afternoon can blow away a whole afternoon for a software developer. The prospect of working from home and avoiding those interruptions was a relief.

Uninterrupted concentration is the holy grail for developers. The development process is commonly described as “building a house of cards,” and a single interruption can topple what it takes hours to build.  Zoom isn’t evil; it’s just a tool. But all tools have cultural effects, and Zoom makes “meeting culture” even easier. It’s all too easy to summon 10 people to a meeting with no agenda. 

Saving the day

We developers need to gently but firmly push back. We need to let our managers know that large, uninterrupted blocks of time are necessary for success. We should argue that Slack is more often a better solution. Slack allows for asynchronous communication, letting developers participate on their time, not manager time. 

Developers shouldn’t be afraid to block off large chunks of time in their online calendars. Managers should minimize meetings, and if they are absolutely necessary, they should schedule them “at the edges” —first them in the morning or as a day-ending event. They shouldn’t be afraid to declare whole days or weeks as “No meeting zones.”

We all know meetings are frequently a waste of time. We all know that they need to be shorter, involve fewer people, and be more efficient. But software developers know this best of all. Working in a flow state is precious and meetings are a dime a dozen. 

If deep work is a house of cards, then it is too easy for Zoom to be an errant leaf blower.