61–70 of 256 posts
My life hack for this kind of situation is to say “hello” back. Works every time.
If I'm feeling grumpy I don't respond, but if I have some patience left in the tank I'll use, "Hi, what's up?" which usually short-circuits the salutations.
Hello was invented for phone conversations. It doesn't make sense if the conversation isn't verbal.
You can still say hi, with the first message of the day, that's a nice human touch, and not the point here: say hi + what you need to say, that's the point
Saying Hello or good morning and then spending multiple minutes composing your actual message while I'm attending you is extremely annoying.
Quite frankly though I don't think it makes sense to do any of that outside a group chat. Just say what you want to say and get out.
I prefer "hey, got a minute?"... or "sorry to bother you, but..." if I know that they're the only one who can fix said issue.
The first one says I know it won't take you long, but that assumes you know the time it'll take me to handle whatever you are going to say, but the reality is that you likely don't know, and even if the conversation itself lasts less than a minute, the person will likely been cut of what they were doing for more than this.
The second one is even worse as you imply that you know are bothering me, so don't bother me! (even if it is a polite phrase, it's not nice)
In other words, just ask. It's more efficient and doesn't make any assumption: we'll figure out how long it takes and if that bothers me.
My life hack for this kind of situation is to say “hello” back. Works every time.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way Eric Steven Raymond http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
My wife, god bless her, is really good with people. I try very hard to mimic her, but this multi-round interaction has completely permeated how she interacts over tech, even with tech. I cannot manage it. Her: "Alexa, add to shopping list". "OK, what should I add for you". "Peanut butter". "OK, peanut butter added, what else?". . Me: "Alexa add peanut butter to shopping list". "Peanut butter added". Some people are T…
Nailed it! This is going up on the wall in my office.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way Eric Steven Raymond http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
These topics are so important for junior engineers to grasp, because not only is it helpful for interacting with humans, providing the additional context to LLM's will get you much, much better answers. I wish there was a good source of this information from a less polarizing figure.
That being said I do find the tone of this guide somewhat annoying and condescending at times. It could use some editing to make it more impersonal and to the point. Justifications and explanations could be attached separately and most people won't read them anyway. When people ask poor questions, it's often precisely because they don't read longform text for some reason.
Where is the problem? Just do what you did until the question pops up?
It’s not a phone call, remember ?
I also like to inject civility and cordiality into messaging because I find it's treated with barbarism by some that send a message like a stone through a window.