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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

#31

Post by jeltz »

dorfsmay wrote: post #21
masklinn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 turnaroun…

Mailing lists are supposed to use priority=bulk. Mail server are supposed not to reply to bulk email automatically.

They also should include a List-Id and mail servers are not supposed to reply automatically to those either.

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

#32

Post by VLM »

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…

"It is _incredibly_ infuriating when people are out for 2 weeks and don't alert you to this fact."

Email is a great "electronic mail" system but a miserable trouble ticketing system. None the less, just like "Excel" is the corporate standard database system, in practice email is the corporate standard ticketing system. Of course it doesn't work very well, but incorrect application of the tool, is not the fault of the tool.

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

#33

Post by SeanDav »

scottmagdalein wrote: post #12

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

The operative word is "some". The OP was not implying that "All" problems resolve themselves, surely you must have experienced something that you thought was a problem only to discover a bit later that it was not?

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

#34

Post by TeddyLondon »

lepton wrote: post #19
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…

I'll add to why I think it is so bad, there is so god damn much of it!

I am not trying to convert anyone but I would hate to get 100+ emails a day, how do you get anything else done?

Since Monday morning (all of Monday and 3/4 of Tuesday) I have had 21 emails, mostly I have been cc'd by customers and they are irrelevant for me.

For the out of work hours thing I have had a lot of emails out of hours and felt that I had to reply - I do accept that if I turn off emails out of work then I'm less likely to be dragged in out of work and maybe other people can read stuff and put it to the back of their minds or just ignore!

I really felt it liberating to stop receiving so much email, I highly recommend it!

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

#35

Post by a3_nm »

minikites wrote: post #27
scottmagdalein wrote: post #12

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

Sounds like you've never worked a computer help desk. Lots of times people would call in and the problem would stop as soon as they got halfway through explaining it. They just weren't patient enough. Sometimes people would call in and through the process of describing the issue they would figure out exactly what they needed to do, they just needed to talk it out. I think this is true for lots of things.

That's a known effect, the keyword is "rubber duck debugging" " rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging>.

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

#36

Post by bnegreve »

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…

What do you use instead?

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

#37

Post by VLM »

scottmagdalein wrote: post #12

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

Operational issues often self-resolve.

System down for an hour to convert data while XYZ software was shut off to upgrade from 1.2.3 to 2.3.4 last week while you were not answering email? Solution, don't upgrade XYZ software from 1.2.3 to 2.3.4 again, seems simple enough.

Also in the real world random end users are free to request absolutely any imaginable feature or capability which management via budgets or goals have already declared will not be done. So waiting for some higher up to deliver the bad news when you can't deliver the bad news, is perfectly valid assuming you have a reasonable excuse. Oh you'd like it quadruple redundant as long as that redundancy is free? Yes I'd like that too, but it isn't happening.

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

#38

Post by evilduck »

scottmagdalein wrote: post #12

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

I can't count how many tickets I've closed by saying "This is lower priority than X, Y and Z. We will address it, but not this very second." Then, two weeks later, going over to the person to gather more information about the ticket, it's suddenly not required any more.

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

#39

Post by colanderman »

scottmagdalein wrote: post #12

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

I disagree. I've seen plenty of "bugs" resolve themselves as the reporters realize they just typed something wrong.

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

#40

Post by dajbelshaw »

gambiting wrote: post #2

Hi Doug, I was in your presentation for Super Mondays at Newcastle University yesterday. Just wanted to say thanks for coming,and congratulations for getting to the front page of HC again, interesting how you mentioned that yesterday and it happened today.

Thanks! It's all to do with getting to know the system. Popular HN threads have a certain logic to way people format link titles. ;-)
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