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No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

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Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#191

Post by MyFedora »

sebtron wrote: post #161
philbo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optimal approach is to ask your question in a public channel . Then all 20 people get to see it at once, they can see if someone else already responded and other people on the team who may have been wondering about something similar also get to see the question and the answer(s).

In my experience, writing in a public channel gets slower responses, if any. Especially if nobody knows the exact solution to your problem. Some people don't have notifications enabled for group chats / public channels, and even if they see the message they may think "someone else will reply". Asking someone directly almost always results in a quick response, even if it is a "I don't know" answer. And an "I don't kno…

This has been my experience. Public channels is where questions go to die. Ask your coworkers directly.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#192

Post by quacksilver »

philbo wrote: post #122
quacksilver wrote: post #102

As a junior i often wrote "Hi, do you have a moment? (ok if not)" in slack (or lync at the time) to senior people when I had questions. I then didn't expect a reply unless the senior person was not busy or bored. If no reply within 5 mins I would ask the next person. I did this when I had a question that perhaps 20 people who I knew could answer, though I had no way of telling who (if anyone) was free to chat somethi…

The optimal approach is to ask your question in a public channel . Then all 20 people get to see it at once, they can see if someone else already responded and other people on the team who may have been wondering about something similar also get to see the question and the answer(s).

In that case I felt like I would interrupt the workflow of more people (i needed the answer within an hour so there would have to be a notification of some sort), share more information than was necessary (auditors don't like that) and court answers from people who I knew weren't really competent in that area but liked showing off for career reasons who were quick to 'solve' the question and would use it to try and show their superiority compared to you to others.

There is also the bystander effect - i.e. yelling call 911 vs asking someone directly to call 911

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#193

Post by widowlark »

leonixyz wrote: post #82

This is the best guide to improve anti-social behaviour in remote workers and disrupt teams. Just refuse to answer when people text you "Hello". Oh, come on... Am I loosing time waiting for your "hello" back? Well, guess what: maybe I took it into consideration the fact that you're busy, and that I might be waiting for hours, but not answering at all only makes you a jerk. This is far from politely refusing "quick ca…

The best way to interact with people who feel this way is to not play the games. Eventually the isolated individual will be managed out or adapt to a more sensible posture. Best to work around them until then.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#195

Post by creesch »

puttycat wrote: post #3

> A call is more distracting than a chat message. I highly disagree. A call has a definite start and end. Async chats leave an open thread in your mind that needs to be constantly polled and interrupt flow much more than a call.

> A call has a definite start and end

Oef, you clearly had not to deal with the "quick" calls I had to deal with at a previous organization. If I had not set boundaries, these would easily drag on for who knows how long.

Besides, chat messages I can respond to in my own time when I have had proper time to look into whatever they need from me.

If they need documentation I can look it up, have them read it and maybe then ask targeted questions. Just to give a simple example. Which is also why "no hello" is important. It isn't that most people mind being greeted, just accompany it directly with the right context.

Which can be as easy as "Hi creesch, if you have some time I wanted to ask about X".

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#196

Post by quacksilver »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #175
quacksilver wrote: post #102

As a junior i often wrote "Hi, do you have a moment? (ok if not)" in slack (or lync at the time) to senior people when I had questions. I then didn't expect a reply unless the senior person was not busy or bored. If no reply within 5 mins I would ask the next person. I did this when I had a question that perhaps 20 people who I knew could answer, though I had no way of telling who (if anyone) was free to chat somethi…

> "Hi, do you have a moment? (ok if not)" I was always very puzzled by people who do that instead of just saying “Hi, [short description of the project/question]”. Especially by junior developers who usually struggle with estimating the importance/complexity of the problems they are trying to solve.

I would ask the question that I wanted to ask immediately in the next message (usually after 'whats up'), as I didn't want to have people think about my problem rather than their problem if they were deep into something.

We were also told not to share things about projects with other staff unnecessarily.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#197

Post by nottorp »

jstimpfle wrote: post #169
nottorp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pray tell, why can't you do this discussion async in writing?

Not engaging enough. I write a couple lines, expect a couple lines some 1 to 180 minutes later that might miss half the point, etc. Totally different dynamic. Having to cache in the previous state of the discussion whenever I receive a reply is exhausting. So some things are just not brought up. And whenever it's actually an interactive synchronous live-chat, why not just hop on a call then?

Cache? It’s a text chat, it has history?

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#198

Post by thomond »

Kamq wrote: post #151
thomond wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's why I don't use IM and just block myself off on those platforms. If it's not meaningful enough to write in an email then it's not meaningful enough for me to read.

Huh, we have really different experiences. I often describe things the other way. My email is full of automated messages, things that get blasted out to the entire organization, status updates that got sent to an entire mailing list and I don't need to read. I assume at this point that if it's an email, it's probably not important. That is to say P(important | email) I mean, I glace at them at some point, but I don't…

I have my emails well filtered. For me, It's Slack/Teams that's full of useless groups of inane chatter and DMs that pop up and annoy me.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#199

Post by Leynos »

daghamm wrote: post #47
Leynos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems reasonable to me. I tell my reports to decline meeting requests unless the invitations include an agenda and a clear goal. If you're asking for 30 minutes or an hour of someone's time, it is only common courtesy to tell them why. If you send someone a message, don't just say "Hi". This is incredibly bad manners in the context of asynchronous communication. Give the recipient an opportunity to prioritize your…

"I tell my reports to decline meeting requests unless the invitations include an agenda and a clear goal." We have a team that works this way 100% of the time, assuming the invitation is not coming from higher management. They are always the last to deliver and the team with the most critical bugs. If you don't make time for back channel sync, you will become an isolated island and your product will eventually suffer…

How so? There is no excuse for sending a meeting invite without an explanation as to what will be discussed or what you hope to achieve. That just results in aimless meetings that either have too many unnecessary attendees or missing people who do need to attend.

When someone asks you to provide an agenda for a meeting, do you really just ignore them?

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#200

Post by sirolimus »

rethab wrote: post #29

We cannot forget that we also loose something with working remotely (say more than 75% of the time) and that is the occasional bumping into each other at the water cooler or in the morning when coming in. These are situations you can artificially create by scheduling calls to socialize etc, but that is still not comparable with being in an actual office. By categorically saying no to quick calls, you're isolating you…

Agree, this blog post is primarily for hermitic autists.
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