Chat is not email. It's perfectly normal to do a handshake (syn? Syn ack. Syn ack.) in this medium, as it's fine to say "hello" or "mushi-mushi" at the beginning of the phone convo. Please don't push your lack of social skills on others.
Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
141–150 of 362 posts
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#142>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…
Yup, if you want synchronous communication with me it better be an emergency or you better be an important person in my life, otherwise, you get async communication.
A lot of things are better handled asynchronously and timing is often abused and exploited in synchronous communication by the person initiating it. They want to pressure you on the spot to make a decision or choice you otherwise would rather think about. They want to use well planned out strategies and game you with social or culture pressures to manipulate you into doing something you otherwise wouldn't.
I limit synchronous communication to those I either have to or those I enjoy to be around and aren't there to try and exploit me for some reason. If you're new, you get some leeway but quickly progress one direction or the other as I decide which list you get chucked into.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#143I just say my request with the urgency:
"Hey, how do i do X with a microservice? Not urgent, take your time."
Or
"Hey, my service is crashing and I'm not sure why, can you look at it in the next few minutes and see if you can help? If not, I'll ask X or Y, no worries, thanks."
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#144I 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…
This was a thing in IRC long before Google existed.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#145This is a practically a motto in my org at AWS.
During any point in the day, I'm usually:
1.) Doing my actual job 2.) Chatting with a work friend 3.) Helping 1-3 other engineers with their jobs
If you just say 'Hi [name]', you're going right to the bottom of the priority list. I got things to do right now. Just tell me what you need from me so we can get down to business.
When things are less busy we can chop it up and chat. But if I don't know you, I'm not going out of my way to see what you want from me. Especially since I got 3-4 other balls I'm juggling at the same time.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#146>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…
Oh I have one friend like this. He's lurking there and typing occasionally "Hi" when he feels I might be there. I know that if I answer immediately, I'll lose half an hour of my life. So after seeing the message I deliberately wait a few hours, and then answer "hi" and immediately log out.
I consider it rude to demand someone's attention for an extended period of time without asking for it first. At the beginning of synchronous communication I always ask "Can I take N minutes of your time?" - this allows the interlocutor to evaluate the situation and make an informed decision.
At the same time I feel we should develop the culture "it is perfectly fine to be a nice and well-behaved person and not to answer phone calls at all, only returning them when possible".
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#147My 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.
A lot of people at DayJob do the "Hi" thing, waiting for a response. Like you, I just don't respond.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#148>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…
> many people that do a naked "hi" / "hey" are trying to see if the receiver is present
The metaphorical "You up?"
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#149The offshore people on one of my big corporate jobs used to do this with such ubiquity they must have been coached to do it.
Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wanting a synchronous conversation is a pretty arrogant grab of someone else's time. This is also why phoning me is bad and please use texts like a civilised person.
> Wanting a synchronous conversation is a pretty arrogant grab of someone else's time. This is an assumption, and not always a valid one. There are plenty of circumstances where synchronous comms are warranted, such as when matters are urgent for all parties or when the respondent has a reputation for losing track of async comms. Editing to add: I agree that "hey" and "hi" etc. are terrible openings. However, opening…
Absolutely, but it's still polite to schedule the synchronous call via async.
"hey, need to talk urgently about x, are you available at 2?" or "...can you call me ASAP?"
There's very few situations that warrant getting someone else to unexpectedly drop whatever they're doing and pay attention to you, right now.
On the other hand, I'd actually go further and say there's lots of situations where sync communications is significantly more efficient. The most obvious example is when both sides are exchanging information in the "discovery" phase of a discussion where most of the back and forth is one-liner questions or statements - essentially where two parties are trying to sync up and get on a level playing field. Similarly, brainstorming over sync can save paragraphs of wasted keystrokes.
Often what can take days over async can take minutes if done synchronously. The key is synchronous communications should be scheduled or solicited - even if done only a few minutes in advance.