It occurred to us that CrowdStrike is an absolutely terrible name. It sounds like a terrorist attack. Of course, it felt like one on Friday.

When I first heard about what was going on, I assumed that “CrowdStrike” was not the name of the software/company, but rather some sort of advanced DDOS-like attack where they used systems they’d previously hacked and had them all do the same thing at once to another target.

I’ve had this happen to me, and even said to the person, “No nevermind! My train of thought is already derailed. Say whatever you were going to say now.”

I’ve got one engineer, only one in the two teams of like ten each that I work with, who doesn’t understand the concept of sending out a short email or IM to ask, “Hey, I’d like to give you a call about XYZ. When would be a good time for you?”

I mean, email is by far the best. It doesn’t demand real time attention and ALSO gives a body of text and attachments to refer back to whenever.

IM also offers these but not as easily organized and searchable.

Phone is worst: there’s no lasting record, no attachments, and you have to drop what you’re doing to participate.

Most of my team realizes these things and prefers email. There are a few who still rely on calls but they at least set up a time for calls.

Only this one guy (a young guy too) thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to call without any announcement or warning, then take up 30-90 minutes of your time with a call to convey information that could have been in a short email or taken care of in literally 5-10 minutes.

He always wants to chat about random shit before getting to the point, then give you a bunch of extra info you don’t even need.

Thus, I’ve started just ignoring his calls when it’s not a good time for me.

If he feels it’s okay to just randomly interrupt, I feel I’m just as justified in refusing to allow said interruption.