Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nohello.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 362 posts

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

#311

Post by gkop »

stefan_ wrote: post #144
dfboyd wrote: post #39

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…

This was a thing in IRC long before Google existed.

My impression is that the hello messages developed into an unfortunate part of Google’s culture. I entered the industry in 2010 and didn’t run into this practice until 2015, when I began working closely with someone who was recently ex-Google (specifically, “you there?”/“yt?”). She was a super smart and kind person, and it was easy for me to coach her out of it, hence my thinking that she learned the bad habit at Google, and that it was in no way a manifestation of her personality (contrary to the suggestion of some comments in this thread that read more deeply into the behavior).

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

#312

Post by qw »

plandis wrote: post #115

Saying “hello” with no immediate follow up is just as useless as saying “I have a problem” without context. It provides no useful/actionable information and just shows how little the person saying hello values your time because it forces your attention and prevents you from prioritizing an answer efficiently.

Adding context will also makes it possible for you to actually prepare for the answer. In a busy workplace this can be a huge time saver.

Another thing I hate is the people who just say "Hello" and then disappear for some reason. Even if I say "Hi" back after 20 seconds, they don't answer for several minutes. Then I just waste time staring at the screen...

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

#313

Post by djur »

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…

I'm kind of surprised about how much pushback you're getting on this. If I was working in person, someone coming up to me and asking "do you have a sec?" would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Even if I worked in a private office, someone knocking on the door would deserve enough attention to explain their situation. I don't think I've ever worked at a place where I could get away with telling my colleagues "don't come talk to me unless we have an appointment". Being available to help is part of the job.

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

#314

Post by ogre_codes »

kempbellt wrote: post #134
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…

This is a common theme in my workplace. Especially with everyone working remote and odd hours these days. We use both email and Slack, but most conversations tend to be asynchronous regardless and I frequently wonder why we even have an instant messenger. That said, I find that even if a message is asynchronous, it is much easier to track conversation flow via slack than email. Reply chains and indentations get messy…

> "If Slack says you are available, we can expect you to respond relatively quickly"

This means I am expected to manage my Slack status on a regular basis or deal with interruptions.

Do I turn off Slack when I'm coding? If you expect relatively quick responses, that's unlikely when I'm in the zone. Should I turn off Slack and turn it back on when g You'll have about 2 minutes to catch me about once every 20 minutes.

Usually I'm quite responsive, but sometimes I might be head down for an hour. Toggling my Slack status on and off 5-10 times per hour for that doesn't make sense.

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

#315

Post by djur »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #146
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…

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…

If I felt that talking to a person for a half hour amounted to "losing" that time, I would not use the word "friend" to describe our relationship.

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

#316

Post by hamburglar »

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…

My workplace has developed the "nohello" culture to the point where I've noticed a new evolution of "Hi," which is "Hi. Do you know ?" Then they jump into a much more time-consuming question/argument/issue when they know they've got you in a sync conversation. Boom, you've been StealthHello'd. :D

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

#317

Post by dorkwood »

tene wrote: post #221
dorkwood wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't want to type out a bunch of words for a question if the reply isn't going to happen for a few hours. I'm trying really hard to understand this mindset. What sort of question either needs to be answered immediately or not at all?

Personally, I always try to give people all the details up-front, but here are some rough situations where I'm likely to give people a very short summary instead of a full verbose request for reasons like you asked about: If they respond immediately they can save me 30 minutes of work, but if not I'll be done doing it the slow way by the time they get back to me. I'm making slow progress on a tricky problem. If I wri…

Thanks for your response. I suppose the biggest problem I have with this approach is that its goal appears to be saving as much time as possible for the message sender, with little regard for the time of the message receiver.

Several of the message recipients will eventually need to be told "never mind, I fixed it". By employing this strategy, you need to accept that you will be interrupting at least some people for no reason, every single time, and I don't think that's fair.

A problem that could potentially be solved by three people feels like it would be better suited for a public channel. Why is pinging three different people with a "hello" message better than posting "does anyone with experience in X or Y have time to help me with Z" in the developer channel?

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

#318

Post by ganzolo »

Yes let's all make robots out of ourselves. I don't see the issue in someone wanted to initiate an IM this way :

> "Hi, how are you doing?" > Meaning : I want to IM with you, are you available. In a polite way.

We're working remotely (for most of us), we already lost social link, so let along now just start directly requesting things from people.

For non IM related stuff there is a great tool call : EMAILS

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

#319

Post by SapporoChris »

dorkwood wrote: post #158
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…

> They don't want to type out a bunch of words for a question if the reply isn't going to happen for a few hours. I'm trying really hard to understand this mindset. What sort of question either needs to be answered immediately or not at all?

I have a complex problem that needs fixing quickly. I do not want multiple people working on the problem as they are likely to interfere with each other.

So, I have a limited set of people that can fix my problem. I need to check who is available, and I'm doing this in order of my own preferences. (who I think can resolve the problem fastest)

However this is very much an edge case. I'm a proponent of just asking the question without saying hello at all.

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

#320

Post by danaliv »

Everything I know about instant messaging, I learned from communicating via radio with ATC.

Pleasantries are not required, but brief (Just saying “hi” wastes time and effort. Ask your question.

Put these two together and you get something like, “good morning! Do you know how many froops the borgle puts out?”

If a question you’ve asked is no longer relevant/you’ve found the answer elsewhere, a simple “disregard” closes the loop.

“Disregard - Jeff said it’s 12”

People won’t always reply. There are things going on behind the scenes that you don’t and can’t know about.

Keep it brief. Unless there’s an actual reason to write a paragraph, don’t.

If you’re given information without a question, a simple acknowledgment suffices. “Roger,” “copy,” or a thumbs up.

Chat is a walkie-talkie, not a coffee date!

Post reply on HN