291–300 of 391 posts
What I want to know is why someone would buy a domain and build this fancy website just to make this one simple point. Same thing also on the front page rn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30639225
It is just part of a human-centric session initiation protocol. A major reason people do it is to query presence-at-keyboard before continuing. Maybe the matter is time sensitive, maybe they don't want to disclose something immediately without setting context, finding something out first, whatever.
Right: I think everyone gets that; but it is that very concept that is irksome, as the entire reason to use chat apps for many people is to NOT have presence-at-keyboard EVER. Like, the answer to "are you there?" is, an hour later, "no", followed by immediately task switching away from the window again. The "no" is honest: I wasn't there when you asked, and I also am not really there now either. It is akin to trying…
Chat sits in this in-between semi-synchronous zone that different people want to treat as slightly more or slightly less synced.
And that's where the disconnect happens. "Helloers" want more sync, it appears many here want less.
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What are your thoughts on individuals publishing READMEs on how best to interact with them? Similar sort of thing or sufficiently different?
I’ve only seen that once and I thought it was insane. That person was fired less than a year later, so to me, it’s an extremely negative signal.
Yes, this, 100%. I find it very annoying to get a notification popping up on my screen for you to say "hi" when obviously you want to ask me for something...and then you don't ask or say anything else until I stop what I'm doing and say "Hi! What's up?" back to you. After another 5-10 minutes of waiting for you to see me ask "what's up?" and then type out what is up, which we all knew you were going to end up doing a…
I say just 'Hello', if I suspect that asking my question outright, would get me delayed attention.
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... I think maybe you need to rethink or work on that one. Do you just run up to people and ask them a question in person, or do some kind of greeting first? I don't think it's a bad thing that people share some mannerisms in IM that they do in person. Are you really stressed out? Either way, looking at the world at the moment, what a great thing to have as a huge problem.
> Do you just run up to people and ask them a question in person, or do some kind of greeting first? The problem is not whether you're greeting or not. Nobody complained about having a greeting in their messages. The problem is that chats are very asynchronous; by the time I read your message you could've solved it already. There is absolutely nothing wrong in writing "Hey, I need help with . I already tried and . If…
A message "Hey, I need help with x" is just as frustrating as "Hello" because it results in the same back and forth. "What problem are you having with x?" "Well, I want to do y" "Why are you doing y?" "Well, for z purpose".
Your chats should be of the form "Hey, I'm doing x y z because of p d q. I've tried a b c, do you know what I'm missing?"
Enough info that the person on the other side is able to answer the question with minimal followups.
You do this, because you have all the time in the world to craft the opening message, so why not do a good one so you are requiring minimal sync points.
Even if the chat is about setting up a face to face meeting, it should be the same.
"Hey, I need to talk to you about x y z. Can we setup a face to face meeting? I'm available at these times".
What's frustrating is "Got a sec" or "can we talk?" as openers. Yes? No? What's the is about?
Yes, this, 100%. I find it very annoying to get a notification popping up on my screen for you to say "hi" when obviously you want to ask me for something...and then you don't ask or say anything else until I stop what I'm doing and say "Hi! What's up?" back to you. After another 5-10 minutes of waiting for you to see me ask "what's up?" and then type out what is up, which we all knew you were going to end up doing a…
Slightly more annoying is someone who you do not know giving you a "Hey, how are you doing?". Try, "Hey Bob, this is Alice, I work on the QA team in Dublin. I'm looking at an issue I think you might be able to help me with http://jira.yourcorp.org/browse/ORDERS-1234 . Would you have a minute to discuss this?"
This is a cultural thing - some cultures value small talk as a requisite step in person to person interactions, including in business. Americans do have a reputation of wanting to get straight to business and of dispensing with small talk though.
Speaking from experience in France, one can call the same business and make the same request with small talk (polite) and without small talk (impolite) and get vastly different outcomes. If one jumps straight to "I would like to schedule a tour of the winery today", one is more likely to hit a no than if one went in with "Hello, how are you? I was wondering if it would be possible to schedule a tour of the winery today?"
Yes, this, 100%. I find it very annoying to get a notification popping up on my screen for you to say "hi" when obviously you want to ask me for something...and then you don't ask or say anything else until I stop what I'm doing and say "Hi! What's up?" back to you. After another 5-10 minutes of waiting for you to see me ask "what's up?" and then type out what is up, which we all knew you were going to end up doing a…
Just because the chat app shows that you are logged in, it does not mean that you are immediately available to chat. If I want to leave a message for someone with a response accepted at their convenience, then I send an email. If I reach out via chat, it's because I expect a realtime exchange. Again, because the little green dot appears next to user's name does not mean they are not deep in the tall grass and readily…
I don’t make that assumption. My company is distributed across the globe. Some teams are offset by 12.5 hours. For someone not collocated, chat (via Slack) is closer to email except more focused.
I expect people to response to chats “at their earliest convenience”. If they are in different time zones, we try to pack as much into each response to maximize the communications. If they are collocated, once we start a conversation it usually continues in realtime.
I don’t think people do this because they want to be polite. The ‘hello’ is basically the start of what is the human equivalent of the TCP three way handshake. - Hello (SYN) > Hi (ACK) - How are you doing ? (SYN, ACK) Basically, they are trying to set up a synchronous channel over what is essentially an asynchronous medium. This is even more annoying than just slowing down the answer, they are demanding your undivide…
Yes, it is just a workaround for missing features of explicit seession begin/end that are in other mediums.
> This is even more annoying than just slowing down the answer, they are demanding your undivided attention during the conversation.
Why is that annoying? IMHO it is a sensible trade - i offer my undivided attention and expect an undivided attention from the other side. As long as such conversation is beneficial to both sides then it is advantageous to giving it full attention instead of continuously task-switching on-and-off with each reply.
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Slightly more annoying is someone who you do not know giving you a "Hey, how are you doing?". Try, "Hey Bob, this is Alice, I work on the QA team in Dublin. I'm looking at an issue I think you might be able to help me with http://jira.yourcorp.org/browse/ORDERS-1234 . Would you have a minute to discuss this?"
> how are you doing? I’m so annoyed by the abuse of this phrase that I’ve taken to giving entirely inappropriate responses (based on context) when folks ask.