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.
Honestly, I just ignore the conversation until they post something meaningful.
No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
51–60 of 279 posts
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#52This may sound reasonable, but the world is not black and white. If we turn every quick question into a complete meeting with agenda and whatnot, the organisation will become extremly bureaucratic. And at some point people will start making guesses instead of reaching out to experts because it is just too much work. So in my opinion, the author is a little bit selfish too. The company cannot 100% align with what best…
Yeah. Nah.
1) are your goals aligned with the ultimate success factors of the company? Probably. 2) are the people who want to stop you from doing your job aligned? Probably not.
Ask yourself if people who "just want a minute" would go stick their arm in an industrial metal press, willingly. Don't they want to make a good impression? Or would this be a horrible act of self harm that is completely disruptive?
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#53We 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…
In my experience forced online water cooler talk has never worked and was always incredibly awkward and boring.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#54We 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.
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Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#55This may sound reasonable, but the world is not black and white. If we turn every quick question into a complete meeting with agenda and whatnot, the organisation will become extremly bureaucratic. And at some point people will start making guesses instead of reaching out to experts because it is just too much work. So in my opinion, the author is a little bit selfish too. The company cannot 100% align with what best…
Yep. Frankly, these articles are just keyboard warrior antics from introverts that are feeling on top of the world with the wave of WFH. Conflating “what’ll get me back to my IDE faster” and “how can I make all communication so structured that I never have to genuinely interact with anyone at work on a human level” with an actual increase in productivity is just a sign of immense naivety.
Thankfully these people tend to be quite vocal about these views online so I can appropriately take it as a soft red flag when hiring.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#56> So we both embark on a completely needless adventure of changing random parts of the code and scratching our heads as to why nothing makes the error go away. I end up wasting hours because of a typo.
Wow. That's just straight up admitting being an idiot and blaming others for it. If a person leaving out a stack trace causes you to ask for a stack trace that is on them. They wasted some of your time. (Or at least I guess you can argue that.) If a person leaving out a stack trace causes you to blindly modify random parts of the code then that is on you and you only.
Confused people ask confused questions. Because they are confused. If they could ask the right questions they would have already helped themselves. It is your job to not let their confusion overtake you. Ask questions until you understand the situation. Software engineering is not a SWAT raid. You can and should ask questions and shoot only later.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#57> Those are common mistakes that people make when working remotely. Maybe you work in an environment where productivity is low, so everyone has time to jump on a quick call or chat with you any time you ask.
Classic 'you are with us or against us' level of argumentation. Saying hello is already a _mistake_, and paraphrasing: you either like to work for a company of underperforming losers, or you need to follow the advice of the article. How convincing!
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#58While I totally agree with the post, I think the tone of the delivery is likely to undermine the points made. From my perspective, for these guidelines to be adhered to there needs to be a broader buy in. 37signals are perhaps a prominent example of how this works. And if it's presented in a more pleasant way, rather than in the tone of a parent chastising a child, I think these principles can take root and become part of team/company culture.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#59I'm a huge advocate of full-time remote working, but those like me who feel it is the future of work need to stop being so dogmatic about how communication should happen.
I don't really like posts like this. Sure, it's a great idea in a remote context to write down how you like to communicate, and how you like to be communicated with at work. (You should do it, it's great!)
However, not everybody will agree with you and part of being a good employee on a large, distributed, team is understanding and working with other people's communication styles.
Even if you hate it.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#60I agree with this entirely, and have griped about it to people (and here) before. But I would never, under any but the most egregious circumstances, complain directly to a colleague who does it or (especially) send them this link. People are different, and most people are different to me. I'm getting paid partly to deal with other people, so that's what I'll (sometimes grudgingly) do. If they're doing this all the ti…
> I would never ... complain directly to a colleague who does it
True. Nor would I. I would push for the company to publish guidelines about remote and asynchronous communication. And then if someone repeatedly communicated badly, I'd provide constructive feedback either directly to them or to their line manager.