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My strategy is to just wait a bit and not respond immediately, to see if they get the message that their initial greeting was useless, and then post what they actually have to say.
That must work great with your bosses.
>People who do this are generally trying to be polite by not jumping right into the request, like one would in person or on the phone - and that's great! Different people have different reasons but I notice that many people that do a naked "hi" / "hey" are trying to see if the receiver is present for an immediate reply. In other words, the sender deliberately wants a synchronous instead of asynchronous convo. They do…
Say you have a question for me, but I'm in a meeting (or it's past working hours in my timezone). By the time I respond to your "hi", you might now be in a meeting (or it might be before your working hours, the next day). Finally you ask the question, and I respond the next time I'm available. This could easily cause a question that takes 30 seconds to answer to have 24 hours of latency.
Or I might be busy doing something else or talking to someone else. Waiting for me to respond to "hi" is basically demanding real-time access to my focus. I don't have the capacity to always have live conversations with everyone who wants one. Just posting a (complete, thought-out) question allows me to devote just a short window of focus, and do so only when I have that focus to spare.
* To ensure the other person isn't in a meeting. The sender might not want the text to be broadcast unintentionally.
* To force a synchronous conversation. I think this is pretty rude though. What would be better would be some context and an aim to get a time that suits both people. Something like: "Hi Mark, do you have any time today to get together to discuss the ongoing database issues? I have two potential ideas for the cause."
> People who do this are generally trying to be polite by not jumping right into the request Sometimes it's the opposite and used as a trap to force you into answering something awkward on the spot - when you reply "yes?" in chat, they know if they ask something quickly after you'll feel obligated into replying immediately. Obviously I hate games like this but I've worked with others that complain about e.g. managers…
I am the original author of the document this document was based on. It was an internal Wiki page at Google written when I was an SRE. After I wrote the original page, someone put up an internal shortlink at "go/nohello". After I left Google, someone took the Wiki page content and [illegally, since it was Google confidential, simply from being on the internal Wiki], and put it up on the net at "nohello.com". The link…
My strategy is to just wait a bit and not respond immediately, to see if they get the message that their initial greeting was useless, and then post what they actually have to say.
In some cases, the sender deleted the hello, and then attempted another hello later.
In some cases, the sender would wait a few hours and say hello again, or some just email me instead (they must have assumed I am not available).
In one exceptional case, I waited 2 days before saying "hello" back, and they then immediately continued the conversation as though no abnormal communication gap had occurred.