E-mail free Fridays at Intel

Wow! At first glance, what a wonderful idea! As a technical support engineer at a major EDA software firm I spend 80% of my time on mail. I feel that all my life's going down the drain on reading e-mail. However, are the alternatives better? It's me who choses what mail to answer and what to immediately delete. Would I want to every 5 minutes to have someone creep over my shoulder with one or other question? I think that a no-mail Friday is a good step toward a no-working Friday, the feature that I most envy France, the country we all recognize as a beacon of exceptional productivity, low unemployement and rising standards of living. Send me by e-mail your thoughts ...

Great idea.

This is a good idea. When we are facing some issues, we should hold a meeting and discuss about it. E-mail is time consuming and sometime, reader will find it hard to interpret the content of the mail. Things can get worst if it is a pure technical issue. So, I prefer to have a face-to-face interaction / phone calls / conference call.

True story This comes as a joke especially for Intel where the work productivity is not great. Most of their engineers are even hardly at work claiming "working from home" with limited productivity. Therefore, no more of jokes like these. I have worked in Intel - Asia where productivity is no doubt great but in bay area vice versa.

iwonder why EDN articles attract little or no comments

I prefer to get up from my desk and walk to see a colleague rather than type an email or IM for most things. I might follow up with an email to create a written record. Email can also be a good way to record the "minutes" of conversations with several people. Plus it is easy to ignore an email. If you take the time to go see someone, they also take you more seriously because you made the effort. Carries more weight if you will.

See attached document....