51–60 of 256 posts
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way Eric Steven Raymond http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
My life hack for this kind of situation is to say “hello” back. Works every time.
I reply in kind with "hello".
There can then be many hours to sometimes days.
Either they then reply AGAIN with "hello" (arghhh), or even worse, there is no reply, and I break asking what they want, and _maybe_ get a reply of "never mind, got it sorted" so I NEVER KNOW.
Hello was invented for phone conversations. It doesn't make sense if the conversation isn't verbal.
Yeah doesn’t seem that we need to ACK in slack. It’s a boomer tendency.
> It’s a boomer tendency. wat. No, it isn't. I see it almost 100% from young people who live in India. And that probably isn't the right criteria either - it is probably different people within each organization. This is a cultural thing, not generational.
So while I do find it annoying, I also try to be polite back and I certainly won't be putting some "No Hello" link.
If it is a cultural thing and coming from a place of politeness, then I'll engage in a quick round of pleasantries. Once people are familiar, I've noticed this stops.
It's 2025, we should be able to use LLMs to adapt between communication styles. If someone I don't know "hello"s me, my LLM should detect that, suppress the notification, and reply automatically - and then resume notifications and defer to me once non-greeting conversation has started.
What's next - "press 1 for a question about FOO, press 2 for.." and level 1 AI support bots?
also: https://nometa.xyz/
Then I became a manager, I had to start dealing with more people, to navigate the enterprise environment and I understood that one of my strengths is to be understand people and to accommodate their ways of working. In this context, being hard with people that just say hello just doesn't make much sense to me anymore. People have busy schedules, they start conversations and are interrupted, they receive hundreds of notifications and have other meetings going on.
If the worst they do to me is to say hello and never talk to me again, I'm ok with accommodating this in my daily workflow.
It's 2025, we should be able to use LLMs to adapt between communication styles. If someone I don't know "hello"s me, my LLM should detect that, suppress the notification, and reply automatically - and then resume notifications and defer to me once non-greeting conversation has started.
No hello but time for goodbye? /s I get it. It’s the same on IRC when people ask if they can ask a question. Just ask the bloody question!
When I’m in a Smart Alec mood, I’ll usually respond “you already did” if they ask if they can ask a question.
My life hack for this kind of situation is to say “hello” back. Works every time.
It opens a synchronous channel, setting social expectations for somewhat realtime responses. Most of the time I treat chat like "small email", so this is abhorrent.
But do you see how that is your choice? You can just type "hello", or a longer form of the same, and then go back to work. You can then check back in about an hour to see if they managed to describe what they are looking for.
You can always change yourself, while it is so much harder to change others that it is almost futile. The true source of your distress is not them saying hello, but your understanding of that social expectation of realtime responses.