I will never understand people who write "Hello" or "Hi Joe" in Slack and then just wait. It has to be some form of mental illness.
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
#42Sorry but if any one of my coworkers behaved or responded like this, I’m not sure we’d be working together anymore.
Simultaneously, 1) I am frequently annoyed when dealing with these help-asking, "can we hop on a quick call?", "good morning [name]" interactions and vehemently agree with the author's frustration with them, and 2) their tone is so condescending and rude that I'd rather deal with 1000 of the former interactions than 1 interaction with this individual. I can't imagine linking this post to anyone.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#43We 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…
The post is about requesting context and preferring long lasting traces for a technical interaction. Not about socializing.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#44We 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…
There's no problem with socializing, but this can also be a special appointment where everyone is free to join and can talk about stuff that is not related so a specific issue.
We do a weekly fixed appointment where we gather together and smalltalk about whatever is on our minds.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#45More often than not when I encounter people with these very strict prescribed communication preferences it’s due to either, hubris, inability to manage their own time or skills issue - people are just afraid to be asked a question because they might not know the answer.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#46[dead]
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#47The level of entitlement in this post is ridiculous. Dude. You're just an engineer from an Engineering department of some company. Nobody's gonna read & apply any special rules of communnicating with you, especially written by yourself (sic!)
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.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#48We 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…
A quick call isn't socialising - it's solving someone's problem. It's not ephemeral happenstance, it's a planned interaction.
I'm not sure you understand the water cooler moments if you think the 'quick call' is in anyway a replacement.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#49I will never understand people who write "Hello" or "Hi Joe" in Slack and then just wait. It has to be some form of mental illness.
It's especially taxing for me because it means I can't concentrate on what I'm doing until I reply to them.
If I know the "Hi Joe" is hanging there, part of my focus is holding onto it until I clear it.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#50I endorse the general thrust of this post, however:
Calls can be much more effective than messaging for detecting and handling the XY problem now that users can easily screen share, because you can often see why the user wanted to do X, not just (as in their two lines of text) that they wanted to do X, and you may be able to solve Y and make them happier.