Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

dontasktoask.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 391 posts

Re: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

#321

Post by closeparen »

abnercoimbre wrote: post #186
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #128

I don’t think people do this because they want to be polite. The ‘hello’ is basically the start of what is the human equivalent of the TCP three way handshake. - Hello (SYN) > Hi (ACK) - How are you doing ? (SYN, ACK) Basically, they are trying to set up a synchronous channel over what is essentially an asynchronous medium. This is even more annoying than just slowing down the answer, they are demanding your undivide…

Paying proper attention was always core to effective human communication. Will we ever adapt to being async all the time?

There is no amount of attention that it is "proper" to pay someone who interrupts you while working. Any such attention is a favor, a gift.

If you want to create a venue where attention is obligatory, schedule a meeting. Then we can also have a look at the meeting agenda relative to is duration and our total meeting load, and make reasonable tradeoffs.

Re: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

#322

Post by evandale »

MattGaiser wrote: post #192
dylan604 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because the chat app shows that you are logged in, it does not mean that you are immediately available to chat. If I want to leave a message for someone with a response accepted at their convenience, then I send an email. If I reach out via chat, it's because I expect a realtime exchange. Again, because the little green dot appears next to user's name does not mean they are not deep in the tall grass and readily…

> "got a sec?" The problem is that the answer to this is heavily dependent on what it is, especially because "got a sec" doesn't meaningfully time box the activity. I need something more to know whether this is something I can engage in immediately.

Not only on what it is but who it is. My boss? Absolutely. A colleague on my team? Maybe. Junior developer that can never seem to use google? Probably not. L1 or L2 support? Never, use the team's support email.

Re: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

#323

Post by IceMetalPunk »

vsareto wrote: post #314
IceMetalPunk wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would 100% miss messages that way, so it's not an option. But honestly, the anxiety isn't about the notifications (although those are annoying). It's about how if someone says "hi" without any info, then I say "hi" back and now I have to wait for a response before I even know if I can help or not. The anxiety is about time management, not notification toasts.

You don't have to sit and watch the screen for a response. Reply with 'hi' and go back to whatever you were doing and ignore it until you're ready to answer it. Maybe you are in an environment where everyone needs a fast reply from you and your undivided attention, in which case, I don't think it'd be unreasonable to link them nohello.net as your first reply.

I didn't say anything about watching the screen; I mentioned time management as the issue. Yes, I can go back to what I was doing, only to be interrupted by another notification when you finally respond telling me what you need. But (a) that interrupts my workflow twice instead of just once, which is all that's needed, and (b) regardless of whether I'm watching the chat or returning back to work, it still takes longer to start helping you if I have to wait for you to tell me what you need help with.

I'm fine with a hello-only message if you're just chatting to talk, but at work, 90% of chat messages are for collaboration; I can't collaborate with you if you still haven't told me what you need collaboration on.

Re: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

#324

Post by n42 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #173
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #128

I don’t think people do this because they want to be polite. The ‘hello’ is basically the start of what is the human equivalent of the TCP three way handshake. - Hello (SYN) > Hi (ACK) - How are you doing ? (SYN, ACK) Basically, they are trying to set up a synchronous channel over what is essentially an asynchronous medium. This is even more annoying than just slowing down the answer, they are demanding your undivide…

> I don’t think people do this because they want to be polite Actually, yes, we really are (were). I don't have a problem with it, but the people who do have a problem with it seem to have a problem with it with the intense burning passion of a thousand suns so I've stopped doing it, but don't attribute malice to people who were just trying to follow social conventions.

I don’t mean this hostilely; social conventions are typically based on etiquettes, so in trying to follow the conventions of an existing medium of communication you are failing at basic etiquette of a new one. it’s all about being considerate of the other person, which is why they feel “passion of a thousand suns” — at a fundamental level they feel disrespected

Re: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

#325

Post by dinkleberg »

warent wrote: post #311

These things always come across as people being surprised humans aren't just super smart chat bots. Who cares if a friendly greeting adds 2 minutes

It isn’t just 2 minutes. I’ll have people ping me “Hi” and I could be busy on calls for a few hours and they won’t have added any context in the interval.

I reply “Hey, what’s up?” and by the time I respond they are busy and take a few hours to respond with their ask.

If they had the ask in the initial message I could’ve had the answer in my first response.

There is nothing wrong with pleasantries. Nobody is saying that is the problem. The problem is requiring a response before making your ask.

If you’re just chatting to chat that is another matter.

Re: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

#326

Post by MattGaiser »

evandale wrote: post #322
MattGaiser wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "got a sec?" The problem is that the answer to this is heavily dependent on what it is, especially because "got a sec" doesn't meaningfully time box the activity. I need something more to know whether this is something I can engage in immediately.

Not only on what it is but who it is. My boss? Absolutely. A colleague on my team? Maybe. Junior developer that can never seem to use google? Probably not. L1 or L2 support? Never, use the team's support email.

Support requests though chat were a massive problem at my first job and it caused my boss to blow up on a few people making requests as they were constantly told that specific devs were on support and chat was not a way to go around to get faster help.

Re: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

#327

Post by closeparen »

cyberpunk wrote: post #171
IceMetalPunk wrote: post #122

Yes, this, 100%. I find it very annoying to get a notification popping up on my screen for you to say "hi" when obviously you want to ask me for something...and then you don't ask or say anything else until I stop what I'm doing and say "Hi! What's up?" back to you. After another 5-10 minutes of waiting for you to see me ask "what's up?" and then type out what is up, which we all knew you were going to end up doing a…

... I think maybe you need to rethink or work on that one. Do you just run up to people and ask them a question in person, or do some kind of greeting first? I don't think it's a bad thing that people share some mannerisms in IM that they do in person. Are you really stressed out? Either way, looking at the world at the moment, what a great thing to have as a huge problem.

The closer analogue would be leaving a voicemail or a note that says "hey, I want to talk to you ASAP" without any context.

Re: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

#328

Post by dspillett »

dylan604 wrote: post #165
IceMetalPunk wrote: post #122

Yes, this, 100%. I find it very annoying to get a notification popping up on my screen for you to say "hi" when obviously you want to ask me for something...and then you don't ask or say anything else until I stop what I'm doing and say "Hi! What's up?" back to you. After another 5-10 minutes of waiting for you to see me ask "what's up?" and then type out what is up, which we all knew you were going to end up doing a…

Just because the chat app shows that you are logged in, it does not mean that you are immediately available to chat. If I want to leave a message for someone with a response accepted at their convenience, then I send an email. If I reach out via chat, it's because I expect a realtime exchange. Again, because the little green dot appears next to user's name does not mean they are not deep in the tall grass and readily…

> Just because the chat app shows that you are logged in, it does not mean that you are immediately available to chat.

That is what “busy” statuses are for, most good IM solutions support this. If I message someone while they are set that way I accept they will ignore me until a later time. Even if not set to busy, I and accept a non-immediate response. For me in a professional context IM has become short-form email, with the advantage very-low priority cruft¹, and external comms², are not mixed in with local conversations.

[1] HR updates & other periodicals, mailing lists, unsolicited junk, alerts that I'm 2nd-or-plus-line contact for, ...

[2] which for me are not usually a priority as I'm not supposed to be client facing, if I'm contacted directly instead of the client using a proper support channel they'll get a slower response than via the proper channel³⁴, anything else encourages the incorrect behaviour!

[3] officially, direct comms like that are not covered by any SLA even if the same request via proper channels would get the “grade A, class 1, priority 0, emergency, all hands to their stations” treatment

[4] unless, of course, I'm expecting their contact as part of an ongoing issue I've been drafted in to deal with

Re: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

#329

Post by Izkata »

Forricide wrote: post #55
tablespoon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is silly and quite time wasting online too, but it's what they need to feel comfortable asking you questions... No necessarily. Asking "Any Java experts around?" takes little effort, while formulating a question for a Java expert could take significant effort. A "no" response for the first question could save everyone from wasting their time with the second.

This might be the rationale, but it's fundamentally very wrong. In the vast majority of "programming/tech discussion/help" spaces I frequent, the response to this is almost always going to be: "Maybe, ask your question." It turns out that, a significant percentage of the time, the "preconditions" for the question are either: - Way too specific (i.e. yes, even a non java expert knows what "nullpointerexception" means)…

Or in a broader context someone does know about. Or maybe someone's just better at getting things out of google.

For example, I once helped a co-worker who was having trouble with a toy webserver written in Go as a learning exercise. It wasn't recognizing url paths that it should have. I don't know Go, but did recognize the problem from our apache/wsgi django setup - path prefixes being stripped. Knowing the right keywords to search for, I was able to find the fix for a config file and we got it working.

Re: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

#330

Post by dinkleberg »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #198

Technically, yes. But this is forgetting how much of this is related to social contracts. It's not necessarly: > I have a question about Java but I'm too lazy to actually formalize it in words unless there's someone on the channel who might be able to answer it But it could be: "I have a question about Java, but nobody knows me around here, so instead of flooding the chan with a wall of text, interrupting the flaw of…

This can be done much more effectively than just “hey does anyone know Java?”

Something like “Hey I’m having trouble with X. Is anyone able to take a look?” is much better since you’re actually describing your ask.

Sure, I may know Java, but I may not know the answer to your problem.

Post reply on HN