Comment by apercu
I’ve been saying for years that an interruption costs me _at least_ 15 minutes.
Knowledge work is not the same as physical work. Both are noble in my opinion, but not the same.
I’ve been saying for years that an interruption costs me _at least_ 15 minutes.
Knowledge work is not the same as physical work. Both are noble in my opinion, but not the same.
I think interruptions are similar for both types of work.
Physical work does require some concentration as well, but imagine on top of that having to take off all your gear and walk into some makeshift office on site, deal with whatever bullshit they're bugging you about, and then go back out to your spot and get ready all over again.
Interruptions for any reason other than a true emergency is just poor planning caused by bad management.
Sure, but what if the person moving the tables is in the middle of a larger logistical problem?
Caterers and guests are coming. More interruptions in the form of calls, texts, and emails don't stop and each is also "just 10 seconds".
I think it's pretty rare to find jobs where your role is so clearly defined that all you have to do is move tables. Most work asks that you solve a high level problem nobody else wants to deal with. You probably weren't asked to move tables. You were more likely asked to coordinate a venue for a wedding or something. The people assigned to you who were told they'd only have to move tables end up not finding them. Interrupting them is just as unacceptable because now they have to rush to home depot to buy them at the last minute and they're out of billable hours. They deliver the new tables and now you're the one moving them yourself.
Interruptions suck for everyone because there are always leaky abstractions and messy dependency trees. People incorrectly assume some details are trivial and factoring out the pain points is at least discouraged if not considered insubordination. Bad management and bad planning are everywhere.
> Interruptions suck for everyone because there are always leaky abstractions and messy dependency trees
I think the "dependency trees" is usually the most obvious killer. You're putting tables away... who made sure everyone's even out of the building? Who cleared the stuff off the tables?
Even ignoring that... Even if the job is just purely "move tables", I'd propose a simple thought experiment: We're operating a venue for events. Imagine a church basement. We have 75 tables and a large closet we keep them all in between events.
You can choose one of two people to clean up after an event:
Person A has put these tables away 176 times over that past year.
Person B has put these tables away 3 times over the past year.
(If you're not looking and going "yeah those two things look exactly equal", than intuitively I think you have some sense that even unskilled positions benefit from experience and skill.)
If I'm the venue owner and I'm paying hourly for cleanup, I'd put my full faith in Person A. It's not a "skilled" position or a "knowledge" job, but someone that has done it that many times has likely found the easiest and quickest way to get it done with minimal wasted time. When exceptions come up they know what to do or who to talk to. They've also realized that carrying a rag in their pocket and wiping the table before they put it away costs them 5% extra time now, but saves us overall a bunch of time because the event set up shift no longer needs to run around with paint scrapers to remove dried cheese from half the tables after fondue night.
I think, in general, the idea of "unskilled" labour should be applied more to "the barrier to entry" more than "the people that work in that labour". Many "unskilled labours" _can_ be done by someone with no skill. They are done _well_ by someone with a lot of experience and effort that I think make a lot of "knowledge jobs" look pathetic in comparison.
When I'm doing "physical labour" I find interruptions almost as impactful. (Though I'd accept that I'm the type to just overthink things.)
"Take this pile of stuff and pack it in that moving truck."
I mean, sure, I might just grab the nearest thing, carry it and set it in the first available spot and repeat... But usually I'm putting a little more into it than that. Unless the destination is comically oversized, I need to make sure I'm making good use of the space. Even just packing boxes, putting a 150lb plastic tub full of ammo on top of a bunch of boxes full of dishes is... probably not going to turn out well at the other end.
I started by doing a quick walk through and looking at labels to figure out roughly what I have to deal with. If the boxes are somewhat standard, I've probably found a pattern to how they best fit to minimize wasted space. I may have some piles I'm working on on the side that are "very heavy" or "very light" to try and at least roughly sort them into "heavy on the bottom light on top". That also lets me cut down the number of trips since the "very light" boxes can probably be carried two or three at a time. The boxes stack 6" short of the top of the truck, so I should probably put these bed frame boards aside and once I have solid base of boxes I can slide those right on top...
So I'm walking around with the context of a couple of temporary piles, a couple things to go once I have the right spot for them, the rough shape of the source pile, vaguely what the inside of the truck looks like and what I need next for each stack, the next couple moves to make, and more all floating around in my head. Losing that is not without consequence.
"Get all these pallets off of the loading dock and into the store."
They probably weren't put into the truck and then unloaded based on any sort of knowledge of the layout of the store at all. And each individual stack of pallets was stacked for the lower one supporting the upper one sufficiently to survive a semi ride across the continent. (If you have two pallets of TVs and two pallets of toilet paper, you don't make a stack of each.) I could just grab the next stack, set it down where the first pallet belongs, grab the one on top, drive that to where the next belongs...
Or I could see "Hey there's two stacks here with TVs on the bottom and toilet paper on top. Those are opposite corners of the store. Let me spend a few seconds on the loading dock to restack these, and cut my driving way down."
I _could_ take this one with that one I see back there... but that one way back there is deep into the pile, and I've got limited "scratch" space to drop stuff. In all likelihood, if I don't just take this one now and eat the drive across the store, it's going to just be in my way for the next hour. Screw it.
If someone pulls me on to something else for a bit and I lose all the context, the next few steps I have planned, why I put that pallet to the side for now, etc... yeah, I'm gonna come back and operate less efficiently.
(And if you're thinking "well yeah but you're clearly an insane person" or "that's just bringing a CS background to forklift driving"... I had and have no CS background, and while I picked this stuff up way more intuitively this was something the "lifers", who in some cases had literal brain damage, were teaching to the new guys.)
"Count these recyclables by type and write down the number on this paper."
Okay this one there's no real crazy context to hold in your head, but you definitely get into a flow where your brain is almost checked out besides your hands moving containers and your brain keeping tally marks.
While I _can_ do basic math, there were a number of slightly embarrassing incidents where I'd done things like looked at a paper where I'd written "100", "100", "12" and decided that added up to "112" because I was so deep into "put containers in fingers, put in correct bin, make tally mark" apparently the math part of my brain had fully turned off.
> Knowledge work is not the same as physical work.
I do disagree. I don't mean to give you any shit about it though. If I hadn't started in it when I was 14 years I have no doubt I'd be here emphatically agreeing with you.
I think the main difference between "knowledge work" and "labour" is basically where the floor is to get the job done.
Anyone can move boxes from A to B--a good mover can do it much faster, fit more things in less space and get it to the other end in one piece much better.
Anyone not a complete idiot could be shoved in a backhoe and dig a hole without tipping it over. An experienced operator can do shit that borders on magic. (I mean, go look up some YouTube videos.)
Anyone can grab a tub of drywall mud and a can of paint and patch and repaint a room. A good drywaller/painter can take your wavy wall full of holes and turn it into a piece of glass.
Anyone can glue two pipes together. A good plumber can look and get a picture of the entire plumbing _system_ the house and figure out how the gurgle in that drain means there's an air lock and the plumbing vent on your roof is blocked. Or figure out that the reason your reverse osmosis system's pump keeps cycling on and off is because the transformer supplying it power has failed. (Yeah, I had a plumber pull out a bench power supply to fix my water system...)
Anyone can drive a forklift around. Someone with a minimal amount of sense and training can do it safely. An experienced operator is trying their best to optimize for some sort of traveling salesman problem involving the locations being queued in multiple stacks on a 2D plane with imperfect knowledge.
Someone at the floor of these roles... yeah, they haven't put enough thought into it for an interruption to matter. But if you ever deal with a "really good" mover, equipment operator, tradesperson, or anything else... that shit makes a difference.
The difference between a knowledge worker and a labourer is that no one's asking their forklift driver making $35k/yr how to make their job more efficient. They're asking their MBA making $150k/yr and software engineer making $300k/yr to create a program to design software to give the driver a more efficient route.
>I mean, sure, I might just grab the nearest thing, carry it and set it in the first available spot and repeat... But usually I'm putting a little more into it than that. Unless the destination is comically oversized, I need to make sure I'm making good use of the space. Even just packing boxes, putting a 150lb plastic tub full of ammo on top of a bunch of boxes full of dishes is... probably not going to turn out well at the other end.
I think I get the gist here, and tell me if I'm right. The way I would put it, is that as you are working, you're also planning, simultaneously. In the process of carrying out the plan, you're also refining the plan. It's like working and planning at the same time, and you lose both when you're taken away from the task. (I think I relate to that because it's how my brain works, at least.)
The second half, if I'm following, is that there's a lot of important contextual knowledge and problem solving, and there's a degree of craft that cashes out as a difference in the quality of work between a novice and someone more experienced, and interruptions can have an impact on that higher quality work that's similar to interruptions to "knowledge work". Normally big walls of text on hn are, stylistically, taboo and associated with low quality but this is very strong all around imo.
Knowledge and physical work is not the right distinction. It's fine for two broad categories, but within knowledge work there is — at the very least — the manager vs. maker schedule.