No Hello: A New Wave
sbmueller.github.io
No Hello: A New Wave
1–10 of 60 posts
Re: No Hello: A New Wave
#2So this is a direct copy of https://www.nohello.com/ ?
Re: No Hello: A New Wave
#3I've seen these for years, and I've sent it to people who needed it, but as I get older and learn more emotional intelligence, I'm starting to consider the reality is some people just want to build relationships at work because of how terribly difficult it is to make friends as an adult.
Also, depending on your job, you may have to accept that some jobs require you to be malleable to having wrenches thrown into your flow state. It feels like people expect life to always have their boundaries in mind, but none of us are the main character here.
Re: No Hello: A New Wave
#4I disagree. I start text chats with "hello" all the time.
It basically relates to channel choice. For some kinds of messages a near-real-time text chat is the right channel but async email-like flow would be entirely the wrong channel.
So I start a convo with "hello" to probe if the other party is available for near-real-time text chat, because away-status indicators are frequently unreliable.
There are also special kinds of communication needs like if I need help with something and there are 3 people who could potentially help me out on something that's a blocker for me. I then just want to probe for the first person capable of unblocking me. The protocol is then something like: "me-to-person-a: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no respone. "me-to-person-b: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no response. "me-to-person-c: hello" wait for 5 minutes. all of a sudden person b has become available and replies "person-b-to-me: hello, what can i do for you?" ...now i start chatting with person b. meanwhile, 20 minutes after my initial prompt when I'm already well into my way, discussing my blocker with person b, person c comes online and says "hello". I respond "oh, never mind: person b is already helping me out". ...person a, as it happens, is fighting a production issue and not responding to me right now, knowing that i'm a newbie developer who likely has newbie questions. fair enough, he's entirely within his rights to ignore me.
If instead, I just open the convo with a drawn-out description of the issue i need help with, I'm kind of stuck after firing off a message to the first person. Because now, I don't want to start wasting another person's time by "cross-posting" to a second 1-on-1 chat, as that is likely to duplicate work. In that case, to be polite, I'd have to at least wait a few hours, cross-post to a second person, and then say to the first person something like "oh, it seems like you're unavailable. actually never mind, I guess person-b might be able to help me out faster". ...this latter kind of communication is kind of awkward, and in any case inefficient.
Re: No Hello: A New Wave
#5So this is a direct copy of https://www.nohello.com/ ?
It also includes some additional wording about modern phone etiquette.
Re: No Hello: A New Wave
#6So this is a direct copy of https://www.nohello.com/ ?
https://github.com/sbmueller/nohello
> This website was inspired by the original at nohello.com. Acknowledgements go to the original anonymous author. I felt an urge to modernize this gem with a more suitable layout, https connection and open-sourced code.
Re: No Hello: A New Wave
#7I disagree. I start text chats with "hello" all the time. It basically relates to channel choice. For some kinds of messages a near-real-time text chat is the right channel but async email-like flow would be entirely the wrong channel. So I start a convo with "hello" to probe if the other party is available for near-real-time text chat, because away-status indicators are frequently unreliable. There are also special…
I think you're still missing the point that the question isn't about what kind of conversation the initiator is ready and willing to have, but rather about the information asymmetry and time/emotional costs imposed on the recipient. When you open a conversation with "Hello," *you* know generally what you want to have a conversation about and that this is a good time for you to have it. The recipient receives only the notification that you would like to talk about something and is left to imagine what that might be as you type, or wait for a reply to begin typing.
Beginning a text chat with "Hello, I have a few questions about xyz and was wondering if now would be a good time to talk?" is considerate of the other party's time and attention, and it does not cost you anything but seconds to provide this context up front.
Edit: you edited and lengthened your comment.
> The protocol is then something like: "me-to-person-a: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no respone. "me-to-person-b: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no response. "me-to-person-c: hello"
I'm sorry, this is _insane_! That's 10 minutes to send out 3 words of communication, and the people who don't get back to you right away will now be getting back to you later to clarify, further worsening your signal to noise ratio! You could have spent 20 _seconds_ composing the first message with a one sentence synopsis. "Don't worry, no one is dead" or "The factory is on fire" are useful to know up front. You could copy and paste it to the next two people if they don't get back to you.
Re: No Hello: A New Wave
#8I disagree. I start text chats with "hello" all the time. It basically relates to channel choice. For some kinds of messages a near-real-time text chat is the right channel but async email-like flow would be entirely the wrong channel. So I start a convo with "hello" to probe if the other party is available for near-real-time text chat, because away-status indicators are frequently unreliable. There are also special…
> If instead, I just open the convo with a drawn-out description of the issue i need help with, I'm kind of stuck after firing off a message to the first person.
Succinctly, your whole strategy is wrong. Instead of round-robin'ing your way around the people, you should be broadcasting your message to an appropriate channel set to the group of people that can respond to your query.
Re: No Hello: A New Wave
#9I've got a similar issue with people emailing IT to ask if they should raise a ticket - just raise the ticket and if it's the wrong place to ask a question then you'll get a response telling you that. Instead we get email question->response: raise a ticket->ticket raised->actual response to question
It's especially annoying as our ticket system can just be emailed, so the original email question could just include the ticket system as well which would enable us to answer it and not waste attention and time for both us and them.
Re: No Hello: A New Wave
#10I disagree. I start text chats with "hello" all the time. It basically relates to channel choice. For some kinds of messages a near-real-time text chat is the right channel but async email-like flow would be entirely the wrong channel. So I start a convo with "hello" to probe if the other party is available for near-real-time text chat, because away-status indicators are frequently unreliable. There are also special…
I’m guessing people seem to not answer you over IM a lot?