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Say No

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31–40 of 96 posts

Re: Say No

#31

Post by chipsy »

chuckcode wrote: post #10

I wish I had a little LED at my desk that would sync with my IM status to show people when I was busy or available to chat online or in person. One of the earliest usability features in the online world but still not replicated in the real world.

It never worked that well in the online world, IME. People used their away status message for the equivalent of Weird Twitter; there was little incentive to proclaim yourself "available." Likewise, there's always the person who goes "ping", "ping" at you, and then you say "what," and then they finally ask a question that you can answer in one sentence.

Better, I find, is just talking at someone with a cultural expectation of high latency in their response, which is true of a lot of IRC channels. In many previous HN threads people have mentioned the chat room format being crucial for their work discussion; you can direct a question at someone, while allowing it to be publicly visible too so that someone else can step in.

Re: Say No

#32

Post by chuckcode »

DanBC wrote: post #24
xeromal wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ex-company uses those. They would sync up with our Lync clients and you could even set the color for each status. If anyone is interested I'll ask my old contact there.

These? http://www.blynclight.com/

Thanks! Just what I was looking for!

Re: Say No

#34

Post by danielweber »

princip3 wrote: post #8

That's just rude. A short and polite "I'm a little busy, can we talk later" would require no more effort or concentration than just saying no.

No, because that's a question, inviting a discussion.

If you want a more polite version, "I'm sorry not right now."

Re: Say No

#35

Post by changdizzle »

DanBC wrote: post #24
xeromal wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ex-company uses those. They would sync up with our Lync clients and you could even set the color for each status. If anyone is interested I'll ask my old contact there.

These? http://www.blynclight.com/

this is really cool - anything like this for HipChat/Slack/Gchat/other clients?

Re: Say No

#36

Post by famousactress »

Preseed wrote: post #15
princip3 wrote: post #8

That's just rude. A short and polite "I'm a little busy, can we talk later" would require no more effort or concentration than just saying no.

We don't quite agree. It is upon the person who is taking it wrongly - that is negative on their part. Everyone should practice saying 'no' without having to explain themselves.

Unlearning your advice is probably the single most beneficial thing I've done during my career as a programmer. While I at my core tend to think exactly the way you do about this, it's a righteous stance that only did me a disservice before I decided to take more responsibility for how I'm heard.

As the person delivering information, you by definition have more context than the person or people you're delivering it to. Asking the world to figure-it-out and expecting them to do so correctly is a path that I think is likely to net-cost you.

Re: Say No

#37

Post by qq66 »

chuckcode wrote: post #10

I wish I had a little LED at my desk that would sync with my IM status to show people when I was busy or available to chat online or in person. One of the earliest usability features in the online world but still not replicated in the real world.

Microsoft employees have these.

Re: Say No

#38

Post by elwell »

> they would simply edit files live on the Harvard server and shout out what file they were changing to avoid conflicts

That's awesome.

Re: Say No

#39

Post by Scalar »

I'm willing to give Dustin some sympathy, I don't think any company could ever relate to the amount of rapid growth that was experienced within Facebook back then and is still continuing today. I was put in a similar situation to a much smaller extent and as the team grew it honestly felt like the majority of my job was babysitting rather than accomplishing what I had set out to do.

At the same time it's important to understand that for every no there should also be a yes, and it's just as easy to gently put people down rather than say something that could be construed as rude.

Re: Say No

#40

Post by kin »

It depends on the situation but I pretty much agree. For example, sometimes coworkers will come up to me to discuss or ask something that'll take less than a minute. These minutes can add up to suck all the productivity out of your day, especially with the context switching.

On the other hand, something that could take a minute for me to answer could take someone an hour to figure out, thus thwarting productivity on the other end.

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