Please don't say just hello in chat (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)

#241

Post by leetcrew » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

eganist wrote: post #133

kijin wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although synchronous conversation is often desirable, there are different ways to initiate it. IMO it's more polite to use an async channel first to ask if the other party is available for a phone call, and if not, schedule a phone call for a specific time. Like, I'd love to talk with you about that problem this afternoon, but right now I'm too busy debugging another problem.

Worth noting that the linked site advocates against this: > × "Hello, are you around?" > × "hi sophie - quick question." > × "You got a sec?" I agree with you around scheduling synchronous communications, but the thread itself seems to have devolved into a puristic argument against all sync comms regardless of urgency, ephemerality, confidentiality, etc.

"you got a sec?" and "you got a sec to talk about X?" are worlds apart. whether I have "a sec" can quite reasonably depend on what X is.

Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)

#242

Post by ozim » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #33

>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…

Well there is bunch of situations where:

I can ask something and if someone can answer immediately I am done.

If I send the question and wait for response I waste time.

If I send the question and work on it, I will be halfway done or in some other state then I got stuck so when person answers my request, it might not be a valid question anymore.

If I start working on something else I break my context and sharing screen what else gets harder.

When I ask "Hi are you there.", keep working on thing I am stuck I can ask more specific question when person replies, because then I might have checked two or more things.

Most important thing is, if person does not reply, I am not getting mad or annoyed, she has more important things to do so OK.

Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)

#243

Post by saghm » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

kempbellt wrote: post #192

joshmanders wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't play nicely on a team then maybe a different job is for you? This is a bullshit copout. It's a cultural issue if people cannot be respectful of their co-workers time. It is very common that if something is important to use important modes of communication such as phone calls. My team for example is very asynchronous because that is our culture. Our team is located all over the country and some people i…

No, the bullshit copout is showing that you are available when you are not, to give the illusion that you are working I have nothing but respect for my coworkers personal time. I couldn't care less, personally, if you need to take hours, days, weeks, or even months off of work for whatever reason. Do what you need to do. However, if you are on Slack and suggesting to people you are available when you are not, that is…

> No, the bullshit copout is showing that you are available when you are not, to give the illusion that you are working

I think you're ascribing a bit too much intention to what most people just ignore as the default setting on an application. I've never once touched my slack status settings, and I leave a slack tab open in my browser while I work, so I assume it probably shows me as online all the time when I'm working; I can't imagine I'm the only person like this. It never even occurred to me until reading your comment that this could somehow be interpreted as a signal that I would always be able to respond immediately to a slack message. If people started assuming that I would be able to respond immediately whenever slack showed me as offline, I would probably just configure it to show me as offline 24/7 (even at times when I am online). Keeping a slack tab open is just a way for me to save time from having to reopen it every time I _do_ actually want to check it (the website often takes several seconds to load), not some way to send a signal to my coworkers.

Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)

#244

Post by rvanmil » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

jethro_tell wrote: post #44

jasode wrote: post #33

>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…

For me, it can also be a privacy thing. Sometimes I want to validate that my chat is not going to got onto a presenters screen somewhere.

This is a serious issue with the massive increase in video calls and screen sharing (and people being oblivious to or not caring about this). Not just chat but also email notifications with previews. This has become something I actively consider before communicating by text instead of calling someone. It would be great if teams, zoom etc could automatically and by default prevent any notifications from popping into a shared screen. And then there’s still the people who leave their mail and chat opened and just cmd-tab through them or leave them on screen while sharing... oh well :)

Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)

#245

Post by airstrike » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

eganist wrote: post #230

airstrike wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is those examples don't allow the listener to decide how urgent the matter is. If my boss tells me something is urgent, by definition it is. If anyone tells me it's an emergency , I drop what I'm doing and help—but it better be a real emergency. Now, if Mike from Accounting wants to talk urgently , I may not be available because I have my own list of urgent things to tackle. I will try to carve out tim…

> Now, if Mike from Accounting wants to talk urgently, I may not be available because I have my own list of urgent things to tackle. I will try to carve out time and prioritize his request, but I am in no way committed to his personal sense of urgency. That's fine, and that's for you to decide. But Mike from Accounting may have a reason to withhold the details for a different channel or to mitigate against other pote…

Mike doesn't need to share the details. He just needs to tell me what it's about and ask when I'm free. I'll be happy to carve out time in my schedule and offer up, say, 30 minutes at 2pm. If he needs to talk sooner than that, he can make a counter proposal and say "this is really urgent, can you talk sooner?" and I will weigh it accordingly

Overcommunicating is better than undercommunicating.

Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)

#246

Post by kstrauser » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #33

>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…

Where that breaks down is that I literally never reply to “hey”. It just sits out there, unread, until the sender follows up or we start another conversation.

Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)

#247

Post by kempbellt » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

joshmanders wrote: post #212

kempbellt wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the bullshit copout is showing that you are available when you are not, to give the illusion that you are working I have nothing but respect for my coworkers personal time. I couldn't care less, personally, if you need to take hours, days, weeks, or even months off of work for whatever reason. Do what you need to do. However, if you are on Slack and suggesting to people you are available when you are not, that is…

Online status does not mean I am available, the online status tells my team that I am indeed, in my work day and they can message me and get a response when I'm actually available. Clocking in physically at your job tells your employer you're working, but it doesn't mean you're available immediately for their attention.

If your status is "Online" it gives the impression that you are simply online, sure. If you are "Online" on an team-based instant messenger application, it also gives a certain impression...

Life happens, focus on work happens, bathroom breaks happen... Almost no one is available "immediately" all the time. But if you regularly show yourself as online and cannot respond within a reasonable amount of time (a couple of hours?) to questions/concerns that coworkers send to you, then why are you "Online"?

Is it difficult to close the app, change your status, or simply respond with "Hey, super busy today. I'll get back to you on this tomorrow", simply for the sake of building good team interactions?

> Clocking in physically at your job tells your employer you're working, but it doesn't mean you're available immediately for their attention.

Interesting. I figured that typically when you "clock on" for an employer, it signals that you are now engaged in a contract by which your time is now dedicated to what your employer needs you to do, including giving them your attention. Hence the term "clocking on"

Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)

#248

Post by gonehome » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #228

gonehome wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it harsh to say that the people I know who do this are also just not as sharp generally? I’m not sure if this is unique to me, but there’s a tight correlation between people who send naked initial “hi” messages and people who can be more tedious to work with. I’d also wonder if it’s related to being bad at typing.

I don't think they're any less "sharp" in general; it's just a lazier communication style that offloads (perhaps unintentionally) some of the work onto the other person. to be effective at async communication, you have to not only ask your question, but also anticipate all the context that person will need to give a good answer. then you do your best to condense that into a clear and concise initial message. in synch…

> "to be effective at async communication, you have to not only ask your question, but also anticipate all the context that person will need to give a good answer. then you do your best to condense that into a clear and concise initial message."

I'd argue this skill is also what makes a person good at basically doing anything and the better you are at it, the 'sharper' you'll be. Thinking clearly and accurately modeling surrounding context is a prerequisite for doing it well. I'd guess it aligns with being generally smarter.

I agree with what you're saying, I just think it's even more evidence that it's tied to general sharpness.

Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)

#249

Post by BMorearty » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #27

Gods, but this drives me absolutely nuts at work. Like OK, what?! It tells me nothing about the urgency of the matter, let alone what it relates to. So I can put it to the side and keep working - but it's going to be nagging at me "hmm, what if it's about x?". So now I've got to break focus and waste time just to find out how important it is, and what it even relates to. I much prefer "Hi, I have a question regarding…

Drives me nuts too.

When someone does that to me, I ignore them.

Re: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)

#250

Post by andai » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

benhurmarcel wrote: post #214

shiftpgdn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's not an original idea and trying to keep it locked up in Google's internal wiki system isn't doing anyone any favors. Go look at all the posts on /r/sysadmin where everyone says to just ignore the "hello" slack/teams messages.

I wish you could just configure the app to not notify you for a first "hello" message, unless it's been 5 minutes or something. While I'm at it, it shouldn't send you multiple notifications for messages arriving in short sequence.

> multiple notifications for messages arriving in short sequence

Oh god, I know people who average three words per line, and I just have them permanently muted so my screen doesn't fill up with a giant stack of shit. But then I never hear when they message me, which isn't ideal either, because sometimes it's important.