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What I learned from turning my ‘Out of Office’ auto-replies on for a month

dougbelshaw.com

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Re: What I learned from turning my ‘Out of Office’ auto-replies on for a month

#11

Post by masklinn »

retube wrote: post #4
nextw33k wrote: post #3

Aarrrrggggggg, out of office replied are the BANE of the internet. Its an asynchronous medium, like the postal service. Its not a conversation on the telephone. Replies are not expected to be instant. Anybody that calls you up 1 hour later to find out why you've not answered is clearly "doing it wrong"®. Use the correct tool for the job. The guy could have stopped spamming people and just answered his emails once a m…

Don't agree at all. Whilst it may be asynchronous, people do have an expectation of a reply within a reasonable time frame - hours to a few days depending on the relationship. It is _incredibly_ infuriating when people are out for 2 weeks and don't alert you to this fact. You end up wasting time waiting for a repsonse when you culd have immediately sought assistance from an alternative contact. It's not spam. It's po…

> Whilst it may be asynchronous, people do have an expectation of a reply within a reasonable time frame - hours to a few days depending on the relationship.

Not at all, unless frequent contacts are expected in which case you should be warned through other channels.

> You end up wasting time waiting for a repsonse when you culd have immediately sought assistance from an alternative contact.

If you need fast turnaround, use a fast turnaround transport. That's what instant messengers or phones are for.

> It's not spam. It's polite and helpful.

I completely disagree, especially when the numbskull using out-of-office replies can't be arsed to turn it off for mailing lists. It's spammy, impolite and unhelpful.

Re: What I learned from turning my ‘Out of Office’ auto-replies on for a month

#13

Post by jeltz »

levosmetalo wrote: post #10
lsc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh, the big problem is people on mailing lists. Everyone hates out of office emails in mailing lists. Vacation messages, when emailing individuals? Yeah, in the technical sphere, they are generally considered kinda rude. In the business sphere, the opposite. So yeah, here on hn, with a foot in both camps, eh, just make sure you don't vacation message a mailing list.

That's easy to say, but hard to actually do. As much as I hate spamming mailing lists, it's not like I'm going to spend two days carefully specifying answering rules for every autoreply message target in my Outlook that I must use at work. So, the burden of doing that properly is on Microsoft or company IT to make sure who will get the auto reply, while all user can and has to do is to tick a check box and type an ac…

Is it really hard to do? Wouldn't it be enough to have the server always set the right MIME headers for messages from a mailing list? And then have the vacation mailer not send any out of office replies to mails from mailing lists? This sounds like a problem with a technical solution.

From the Sieve vacation RFC https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5230#page-8

   Implementations SHOULD NOT respond to any message that contains a
   "List-Id" [RFC2919], "List-Help", "List-Subscribe", "List-
   Unsubscribe", "List-Post", "List-Owner", or "List-Archive" [RFC2369]
   header field.

Re: What I learned from turning my ‘Out of Office’ auto-replies on for a month

#15

Post by opminion »

nextw33k wrote: post #3

Aarrrrggggggg, out of office replied are the BANE of the internet. Its an asynchronous medium, like the postal service. Its not a conversation on the telephone. Replies are not expected to be instant. Anybody that calls you up 1 hour later to find out why you've not answered is clearly "doing it wrong"®. Use the correct tool for the job. The guy could have stopped spamming people and just answered his emails once a m…

How do you want to deal with asynchronous tasks which have to be dealt with within the day?

Synchronous communication is not a solution for that when interruptions are undesirable.

Re: What I learned from turning my ‘Out of Office’ auto-replies on for a month

#16

Post by hawkharris »

My understanding is that all communications on Twitter are public and that users are forced to condense all of their comments into 140 characters.

Don't these limitations make it a dangerous medium for discussing detailed and / or sensitive project-related issues?

EDIT: I guess there are direct messages, but I'm not sure how often they're used because I don't use Twitter.

Re: What I learned from turning my ‘Out of Office’ auto-replies on for a month

#17

Post by zorbo »

scottmagdalein wrote: post #12

"some issues resolve themselves" is not true. What you really mean is, "someone else resolved the issue."

There are plenty of problems that go away by themselves because there was no problem to begin with. The micro-managing managers that suddenly get a bright insight that needs to happen now, only to completely forget about it a day later. The impatient people who can't wait 5 minutes before the annual reports are generated and sent out to their inboxes. There are plenty of solutions out there just looking for a problem that doesn't need to solved.

Re: What I learned from turning my ‘Out of Office’ auto-replies on for a month

#18

Post by InTheSwiss »

scottmagdalein wrote: post #12

"some issues resolve themselves" is not true. What you really mean is, "someone else resolved the issue."

Yes and no. Some issues are people being a little overly keen and just allowing a little time allows for things to naturally resolve themselves.

Re: What I learned from turning my ‘Out of Office’ auto-replies on for a month

#19

Post by lepton »

TeddyLondon wrote: post #5

Love this! Basically work email is horrible, do all you can to stop it. It creates individual silos of knowledge that only people included are party to, whenever someone leaves they take this with them (would you start a job and take on someone else's old mailbox, yuck!) It drags people into work 24/7, especially in global organisations but also in 9-5 local time type places, yuck! I've worked hard to get everyone at…

I'm really surprised at this attitude. What is fundamentally wrong with email, that I should do what I can to stop using it?

I prefer written communication since I find it more deliberate, and therefore more productive ultimately (more thought goes into writing than into a phone conversation; the pace is slower). Email lets me keep my written communication all in one place.

I can see how it would create silos; I try to be liberal in cc'ing others to avoid this and to be inclusive.

I don't understand how email drags people in to work in off-hours. I don't typically expect people to have access to work email off-hours, although I realize many do (myself included). For urgent questions yes, I'll pick up the phone.

To be clear, I get 100+ emails on a typical business day. I'm sure if you get a lot more, a different strategy might be necessary to manage them all.

Re: What I learned from turning my ‘Out of Office’ auto-replies on for a month

#20

Post by InTheSwiss »

When I am in crunch I always enable my OoO with a polite message explaining I am in crunch and that I cannot respond to them immediately but will do within the next few days. I also have a dedicated mobile number which I include (which is different to my regular mobile) when I have for people to contact me in there is a real emergency that only I can resolve. Nobody has ever called it :)
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