Strange that that happens to me is, every time I take out my Airpods and put them in their case, I get a Find My alert on my phone saying I left them behind even though they're in my pocket.
I have a QNAP NAS device with a bunch of storage. PPoE gigabit switch. A few ReoLink hardwired cameras pointed at all the entrances to my house. My QNAP device has a free NVR app that detects the cameras on the network and saves the recordings to the NAS. It's pretty simple and I don't have to worry about shady cloud-based devices.
Sounds like you need a buffer. A person who's job it is to keep everyone away from you while that person records what everyone needs and presents it to you at specific times.
That, and proper internal documentation. And if that exists, encourage people to use it.
Usually when a single person is swamped with questions by co-workers, this will be because the information isn't properly documented in some sort of internal repository.
Wouldn't be the first time I've heard it argued that this takes too much time to implement.
I'd argue that it takes far less time than fielding all those questions manually.
That's actually a really good point. Internal documentation is severely lacking. Encouraging people to submit more questions by mail/chat would probably make it easier to build up an internal knowledge base (in the sense that I can copy/paste those questions & answers as a starting point).
FWIW to expand: I am that person in my company. My title is "Technical Lead" and my job as I eventually discovered is just to be "chief enabler" for the team of engineers under me, and a "crap umbrella" - to keep crap from coming down on my team directly.
My company originally wanted me to micromanage and direct everything, but I've found that real leadership is when you can give smart engineers autonomy and entrust them to build and execute a plan. I am there when they need me and can jump in as needed if they get in over their heads.
Well put. I'm also a tech lead and have been through a similar journey. I felt like I was a bad leader as I wasn't micro-managing (deliberately of course!). In my company there are a few senior people who seem to think the best leaders need to have big egos and make the decisions, micro-manage and keep tabs on people but the results and team happiness when leading without ego and being an enabler says otherwise!
It's called a project manager. One of the tasks of a PM is to make sure that the devs have time to do their work and manage any incoming information before relaying it to them.
Is this an emergency? Interrupt them.
Is this a minor inconvenience? Could this be talked about in the daily tomorrow morning? Is it something that someone else should actually know about? Block the information from the devs and deal with it in the chosen way.
Sometimes PMs don't do that and don't chastise the dev for not getting work done because they understand they're being interrupted. Then the dev is in a poor position where they want to do focused work but can't.
An assistant/secretary is what a project manager is supposed to be. The title is wrong in that it makes everybody think they are supposed to be a manager, a source of many problems in our line of work.
Edit: to answer your question about affording one, it seems around 5 developers can share one secretary, and split the cost. Incidentally, this is a usual setup with a PM as well, but again, they often seem to think their job is to manage the developers, not the project (which they also often don't do).
