Ask HN: Do you have voicemail turned on?

Disabled. I like having a little more time to answer my phone, and do not like incurring costs to the other party when I do not answer (voicemail counts as a connected call).

Assuming you already have a Google Voice account, go to Settings > Voicemail > Get voicemail via email

And have your mobile number forward to your Google Voice number if you don't answer.

Voicemail is just another tool for communication. It allows for one way communication towards you, which might be useless in most cases but indispensable in some.

If you are someone who conducts a lot of business over the phone, voicemail is a must. If someone "important" is trying to call you / get hold of you and you are unavailable, your default goal should be to "reduce friction" for the other person to get the message to you! ("important" usually means they are really busy and they value their time a lot, and you should too.... Clients, Board, Investors, Counsel, Accountant, your managers, doctor, etc... ). Having voicemail disabled and requiring people to text you or email you after having tried to call you (which usually means it's time sensitive / important-ish) is adding more friction/resistance in the communications line. It also comes off as very unprofessional. What if you don't have their number saved on your phone or they call from an unknown number and you don't know who the miss call is from...adds a lot of lag in the communication pipeline.

Voicemail also allows you to take your time in getting back to someone if you don't want to / can't have a conversation right away, but you want to know what they might want to talk about. You can then prepare for the topic and call back.

My iPhone does a decent job at converting voicemail-to-text (at&t visual voicemail). I can quickly scroll through my voicemails, delete stuff from marketers/advertisements and call back important ones after reading/listening to the message. Voicemail has definitely help me prepare for important call-back more than a few times (especially while dealing with general counsel).

I would never disable my voicemail or let my inbox get full (voicemail inboxes filling up might be a "thing of the past" very soon!)

Yes, but I almost never answer the phone unless I recognize the number, and I rarely check my v/m, meaning 3/4's of the time my mailbox is full and you can't leave me a message anyway. But I've been pretty cavalier about sharing my phone number over the years, so I get a lot of robo-call crap / marketing spam, etc., and it's pretty rare that I miss anything genuinely important.

At some point I'll get a new phone number and retire this one and when I do that, I'll probably A. be more guarded about sharing the number, and B. care more about voicemail. Maybe.