I used to work in a big company where people would often drop a "hello" and then wait for a response before saying why they were messaging. It was mildly infuriating because I would check the internal chat about once an hour in order to remain productive. So the first time I check I see the hello, then next time I check I see what they actually wanted to say doubling the amount of time until they got a response compared to asking in one go. It doesn't need to be a single IM message but it should be sent pretty swiftly after.
I always wondered if people wanted to wait until the messagee was sat on the other end of the keyboard giving their full attention. If this is the case a phonecall would be more appropriate imo.
It's such a weird thing. Most of my coworkers don't do this, but a few will do a "Hi" type message.
It wastes so much time for everyone involved.
I sometimes wonder if these same people think I'm being rude when I write a message like "Hey, xyz, I was wondering if you knew PDQ about ABC?"
Like, are they expecting the convo to go like
me: "Hi"
them: "Hello"
me: "How's your day been?"
them: "fine"
me: "Crazy weather"
them: "yeah"
me: "Do you have a second to chat about ABC"?
them: "Just a sec"
me: "Ok"
them: "Ok, shoot"
me: "Do you if PDQ about ABC?"
them: "Oh yeah, it's 123"
Because I've absolutely had chat conversations like that. It drives me nuts because it's stuff that can be solved in 10 seconds but ends up taking 30 minutes worth of disruptions.
A Hello wastes my time, but sometimes I go along with it to see if that's what they really wanted - maybe they didn't have a question after all, and when I have time I'm happy to have a friendly chat:
them: Hello
*hour or two passes*
me: Hey how are you?
But so far every time they say Good and then ask their question :(. A surprising amount of the time when I wait an hour to respond to a Hello they'll tell me they already figured out the answer to their question too (I would never wait that long to respond to actual questions though).
> when I wait an hour to respond to a Hello they'll tell me they already figured out the answer to their question
I used to be part-time sysadmin back in the day, and I fondly remember the benefits of not answering quickly.
Morning: "Hey how do I configure XYC in ABC?"
Afternoon: "I figured it out, it's in .abcconfig"
This was very counter-intuitive for me since I wanted to do a good job and answer quickly, but later I realized it's better for everyone to follow an informal (but well-defined) SLA.
> "It was mildly infuriating because I would check the internal chat about once an hour in order to remain productive. So the first time I check I see the hello, then next time I check I see what they actually wanted to say doubling the amount of time until they got a response compared to asking in one go"
But why is that your problem to be infuriated about? If they weren't bothered by doubling the time to a response, why should you be? And if they are ... why should you be?
One of my coworkers put this website as his status message. People stopped saying "hello" and waiting for a reply. Now they write something like, "Hey, I would like to chat when you have a moment". It's infuriating because it's basically the same as just saying hello because it still doesn't say what they want to talk about!!!
There should be one like this for email too, if your email is simple... put the content in the subject line! Like, if I'm telling someone the date/time for something (that doesn't warrant an "invite"), I'll put it right in the subject line. When I'm telling my coworkers I'm taking a few days off, I'll put those days right in the subject line...etc.
My response is:
?
and go back to work. I feel a bit mean if they are exceedingly polite and Start with "Good Morning" I might give them a Hi in that case.
Either way I go back to what I was doing until I come to a convenient stopping point, typically between 1 and 5 minutes.
It's not easy to say, I would try to say it as diplomatically as possible. Possibly something like "Hello, please ask me your question directly instead of waiting for a response to your 'hi'" or depending on person or situation.
i used to get straight to the point, but people find this offensive, like i am just using them as a google instead of treating them like a fellow human being
once i establish rapport and recognize our mutual humanity, then future engagements i can get straight to the point without people just feeling used
of course some people get offended by the preliminary niceties, but they are in the minority, so best to bet on the common case in absence of further knowledge
How does having to enter the same account information twice in the same session prevent unauthorized access? If an unauthorized person knows my account number, they can easily enter it twice.
And if the account number doesn't exist or doesn't match the name, they know immediately that one or the other was mis-entered.
Automated dial/entry, handoff to an operator, especially in high-volume attacks. Verbal repetition requires greater process coordination by the attacker.
Cues such as hesitation, discomfort, etc., may also be present.
The far more prevalent case is likely simply to guard against mis-keyed digits.
Similarly in heathcare, virtually every caregiver handoff involves asking for name and DoB. For the caregiver this helps confirm they are (literally) on the right page (patient record). Patients may see this as tedious.
>>Verbal repetition requires greater process coordination by the attacker. Cues such as hesitation, discomfort, etc., may also be present.
Actually no... The most effective Social Engineering attacks are ones with simulated chaos going on in the call, and simulated high emotions by the caller..
There is no evidence or actual theory making a person repeat the same number over and over again does anything about annoy legit callers
This sounds very much like security policy created in the same manner of "everyone must change their passwords every 30 days" which we know now makes things LESS secure not more.
>>The far more prevalent case is likely simply to guard against mis-keyed digits.
Again your data input validation should be taking care of that before you ever reach the agent in the first place
Chill out people. Get a little more patient and a little less nitpicky about protocol. You’re not that busy or important. None of us are.
This culture of nitpicking text communication styles has been with us for decades and isn’t going away soon. Same on IRC and Prestel before that. And it has always been about providing the enforcers with a sense of power and reinforcing tribalism around those who know the rules and those who need to be forcibly educated.
If it’s good enough for Lionel Richie, it’s good enough for you.
I do think the context where these communication issues are the most painful are when there are already other serious problems. But if you have a whole org where a decent fraction of people engage in these patterns, it can turn your day into one substantially driven by pointless interrupts.
Broken habits in an org that can exacerbate this:
- People don't feel safe saying stuff in a group context so there's a large number of DM conversations at any one time.
- The chat app is actually used for time-critical issues and sometimes an immediate response is strongly expected. People feel obligated to rely on notifications.
- There's in general a poor commitment to supporting a "low-interrupt" mode of work for some roles.
Rules like the above are what causes a chilling effect on public comms and a rise in DMs. So chill out and create a relaxed space for your colleagues. If you need a low interrupt mode, get off Slack. If you’re in a job where you can’t, that’s a separate issue. If you have a time critical comms channel that’s being used for random chatter, it’s not a time critical channel.
It's not the same, though. Chat is asynchronous, so the recipient doesn't have to wait with their device as they would on hold.
A standalone hello is actually more efficient in time-sensitive situations. The sender needs to know if the recipient is actually available so that they don't waste effort typing a question that won't get answered in time.
it got so bad at my work they had to email out to the entire company to nicer. the one slack room with all employees and no one is allowed to leave is a mine field. anyone can post there, but if you do and your message is not deemed appropriate the slack police will descend to the threads and rip you apart. don’t even think about @here or @channel because there’s already 5+ emojis that will be tacked on your message to ensure you feel like a moron
The most stressful version of this for me is when someone sidles up to you on chat and asks "is X working?" or "is Y supposed to do Z?"
Like, if you're saying it's not working: say that. If you're saying it's not doing what you expect: say that. It's the QA version of "we have to talk" and I'm instantly anxious until you clarify.
We work in an open space and people usually ask to make sure they arent the crazy one. It can go either direction: we had to do that cause x, or yeah thats not how its supposed to work... Followed by... Well its how it works for now cause of this and this... Along with everyone agreeing its wrong. They arent trying to mess with you just confirm intended behavior.
In-person I almost universally heard stuff like "is anyone else having problems with X? the site won't load for me" and that second part is crucial.
In chat, something like 1/4-1/2 are "is X working?" followed by total silence. Sometimes they really are just asking if it's running, i.e. does X still exist. Sometimes they're having a failed build on a different system because their dependency manager cache is broken and it's blaming random libraries. Sometimes the frontend is busted.
What they're doing in practice is asking for 1:1 dedicated help on literally anything, so the only reasonable choice for a responder is those unicorn devs who know everything somehow. They almost never exist, so those "questions" go unanswered for a long time.
Thats usually who I try to be but I have been burned by it cause I didnt mention why I was falling behind at two former jobs. It did cost me a job cause of that plus the fact they were over engineering what would of been a few months into a few years effort just to be bleeding edge.
It sucks how some environments are worse than others. I think the biggest quality for software developers is humility. Without humility you could end up with some nasty devs. I have worked with people who get personallu attached to their code being quality but they dont follow project protocol or write hacky code.
Lots of folks will guard against strong assertions like that out of habit, especially if it's not their area of expertise. They're leaving open the possibility that they could be wrong.
This sounds pretty similar to the "askers vs guessers" cultural difference. If it's okay to receive a 'no', then you're free to ask whatever. If you're expected to know before you ask, then you can't ask until you know what the answer will be.
But, yes, it's valuable if someone is asking can clarify "here's what I tried..".
I dunno it's definitely happened to me before that the company's git repo was only down for me, or whatever. Networking is weird, so it's good to confirm that others are having the same issue.
- Have clear questions that are easy to jump back and respond to. Have them separated out by spacing, and preferably numbered.
- If there's something I need to copy paste, an email address, a specific id, a phone number, then put it on it's own line. Then I can double click and get the whole thing rather then dragging the cursor to do it.
The very first thing you should type after your initial greeting should be your question(s). Don't bury the lede.
You can provide all the additional explanation (i.e. what you were doing when it broke, where you've looked, what you've tried, etc) after you ask your questions. By asking up front, you frame the conversation so that the person you are communicating with can read your supporting information with the correct context.
XY Problem is worth keeping in mind too. It's covered in your link under another name but is probably one of the main problems I get with questions from people.
When I got there I scrolled down to read then when done I expected one click to return to HN. Actual result was each click of back going back to a previous point in the doc (maybe based on my scroll position¿) after 7-8 I was back to the top then to HN.
But how do we feel about people breaking their thoughts up?
Into individually
sent
Messages?
Like this?
One
Right after
The other.
Anyone else find the constant badgering of dings and vibrations when colleagues communicate like this to be a real teeth grinder when you’re zeroed in on work (or trying to take a short pomodoro / coffee break and space out for a bit between tasks)?
I blame the chat apps more for this tbh. Coming from a long history of using IRC, using separate messages is a completely normal way of dividing up one's text, and it was fine because N lines of text in a single message wasn't hugely different from N lines of text over multiple messages. For the most part, the end result takes up the same amount of screen real estate, and I honestly like being able to send out thoughts piecemeal in a more active discussion--it lets others start priming their response before I'm done, or read through it as it's being said, versus having to wait for a complete set of messages. It's really one of the differentiating features that made me prefer chat over email or forums back in the day.
Slack, Discord, etc. wander in and turned chat into a _product_, and specifically a modern mAxImIzE eNgAgEmEnT product. No fucking chat app should send as many notifications as Slack and Discord do default, and they also shouldn't return to the same noisy default every time you join a new server, but they do. There's a good reason for this: constant pings make you use the app more because human brains are easily distracted, doubly so when something has been crafted to grab your attention. This probably results in a mix of actual stickiness and garbage interaction stats that product managers toot in internal meetings to demonstrate how good their ping flood is to clueless upper management, but the end result is that the distractathon defaults are just accepted as the way things are.
Love it. It lets us interrupt each other so we don't waste time if one of us "gets it" before the other.
Plus it keeps attention from straying when the conversation is semi-critical but not critical enough for a call.
A coworker of mine does the opposite: 10 minutes of "X is typing...." The result is a finely crafted paragraph. But we could've done without 90% of it because I would've had an answer for him after the first sentence.
It lowers the latency of the communication and also makes the text easier to read. Before you've finished typing it all out, your co-worker has already started processing and thinking about the question.
This is superior than just sending one big block of text.
1. On the first message of a conversation I prefer a wall of text, because that lets me read all of the details really quickly.
2. If the conversation is likely to be short I prefer the one message after another since my attention is already on the chat, and I might as well be reading what they're typing rather than watching the "x is typing..." indicator.
3. If the conversation is going to be long I much prefer a call, I don't have the time to wait for someone to type all day. Context switches are expensive so I don't like reading occasional long messages while I'm trying to work.
Why would you need a follow up question more for a bunch of lines of text vs a block of text? We're talking about putting a bunch of new lines (i.e sending many messages) vs sending just one large one. They can contain the exact same information.
Why do many comments in response to my initial question default to the alternative being gigantic blobs of text and not advocating for merely brief and concise but informative communication styles?
Is it no less valid than the rapid fire messaging on the one extreme and large paragraphs of words on the other?
I like it. The reason is that sometimes I will see "X is typing...." and it seems to last 5 minutes and I don't know if the app just messed up because they bumped space by mistake and left to get a coffee or if they are actually slowly composing their thoughts in their version of correct capitalisation and grammar.
Breaking it up lets me get to the point quicker than they do, and I'm ready with a reply by the time they're finished (or cut them off when it's appropriate and they're going down the garden path).
The dings are annoying but that's a problem with the chat apps. I turn off sound on my work laptop usually anyway.
And personally, I got into this habit in online games before voice chat and we all moved this over to ICQ/IRC and the habit stuck. It now feels very inefficient to do it the other way.
Interesting. Have you observed others on your team doing the same-or is it something you pay attention to? I admit and understand not many people really care to notice the habit.
To me, that's fine if you're actually having a conversation (i.e. that chat window is likely to be in the foreground). It can be a case of using spare bandwidth to minimize latency, so to speak. But it's terrible if the thread is meant to be in async mode.
Overall, I think the problem here isn't the method of communication, per se. It's people placing unreasonable demands on your attention. Someone who came up to you in the middle of your break and started rambling a vague request would be annoying in the same way, even though the method of demanding your attention is different.
I’m horrible about this. I ask a question and then answer it, hold a whole conversation with myself and the poor recipient. Someone take away my Mattermost login!
> Anyone else find the constant badgering of dings and vibrations
Aside from the obvious issues with the annoying by default clients this is an unfortunate regression in desktop/mobile environments, they offer very little in the way of passive notifications. Silence and changes to the system tray icon used to handle this with a minimum of annoyance but now everything has to play a sound, flash the window or send a notification.
It depends. If they are just typing fast and have real sentences on each line then that's different from two words per line like you showed.
But I think personally that for cognitive work it's actually necessary to be able to turn notification sounds off and ignore chat sometimes if it is used routinely. And if the employer didn't understand then I would try to get another job if possible.
Sometimes very guilty of this but I've done the "type as I think" then "end up figuring out the answer before I finish explaining my question" enough times that I now make an effort to fully form my question before sending.
The exercise of trying to concisely explain the situation and form the question is frequently enough to sort out a path forwards.
Not all coworkers enjoy being used as a chat-based rubber duck!
I think it's a matter of what kind of IM culture you grew up with. As a kid and young adult I used IRC and messengers that limited message size, so doing that was pretty common and everyone did it.
My younger co-workers who only seem to have known Slack and the likes find it really annoying.
I had one friend who did that for years, it was always hard to read him. Surprisingly, after moving from local instant messenger (Gadu Gadu) to facebook messenger he started typing as everyone else. No idea why.
Nope. Not my duty to modulate my communication to YOUR notification preferences.
I say this as someone who has been working remote with various teams for nearly seven years.
Crucial to the success of any remote team is feeling comfortable sharing and communicating via async and text based means.
You can always just turn $SLACKISH off and actually focus. If you're on call or in a situation wherein you need to watch messages and respond immediately - you're not going to reach flow state anyways.
Do not disturb and other notification settings exist so you can decide when you get dings.
I'll leave my bite sized messages for detailed threading, thanks!
> Do not disturb and other notification settings exist so you can decide when you get dings.
Yeah, but an option which I think would smooth this situation which I never see available is "give me a notification when they've stopped adding messages for at least k seconds".
If some of my teammates write chunky messages which are immediately actionable, I'm fine seeing the notification immediately. But if I put that in my settings, the a minority of people who send a stream of short drip messages which are only actionable when considered in aggregate seems super annoying.
I am just as annoyed at this as OP is, and yes when someone does this to me I mute their thread/messages. This is fine for me, but keep in mind you will get much slower replies from me since I will no longer see notifications for your messages, compared to people who don't do this.
I’m not asking you or anyone to moderate or change anything about how you communicate, friend (entirely because I know how futile it is). Just idly pondering if others have similar reactions to it.
I can tolerate it if it’s through slack because I have set DND[1] but it really bothers me when people do that over SMS and I’m trying to concentrate.
[1] I have a set of scripts that trigger do not disturb on macos center notification and sets my status on slack to do not disturb and other relevant services etc but I have not been able to automate my phone settings the same way.
Communication should be done with an awareness of the audience / recipient. Respecting explicitly expressed preferences, if reasonably accommodated, is simple courtesy.
This raised the question of - why not use email instead, then?
Then answer I came up with is that the asker wants an immediate-ish response.
But in this case, the "hello" makes sense not as a pleasantry, but as a way of finding out, "if I ask you a question right now, will I be able to get an immediate-ish response?"
It doesn't sound like this problem can be easily solved with "nohello", it sounds like a more involved solution might be needed.
Or you can just send me a brief sentence about what your problem is. So I can decide how much of a context switch it is. At my last company, I could be working on any number of problems from the front end (not likely), to infrastructure, to dealing with documentation for a customer. If you tell me what the issue is, when I do come up for air, I can decide where I place you in the queue. A “hello” goes to the bottom of the queue. I might not even put “respond to bo1234 to see what he wants.”
If I am asking a question where your response isn’t blocking me, I’ll say that...
“No rush, it’s not blocking me. I have X,Y I can be working on”.
“I’m working a little late tonight. If you’re busy, this can be a tomorrow problem.”
I personally prefer a wall of text telling me everything they have already tried. If they have already tried my first ideas, I can decide whether I have time or not.
> But in this case, the "hello" makes sense not as a pleasantry, but as a way of finding out, "if I ask you a question right now, will I be able to get an immediate-ish response?"
Eh, I respond a lot quicker to questions than "hello", I can ignore a hello for hours.
Email is a linked list with lots of metadata on each node, messages are an array with minimal metadata. Although modern email clients can make email threads simple and easier to follow, the UI is still much more cluttered and sometimes threading gets borked.
I was in an IRC channel a while back that had "Don't ask to ask, ask" in its topic, because it was so common for people to join and write "May I ask a question?".
We see this all the time today over in the Reactiflux channels on Discord. We've got a bot that will show pre-recorded answers for common topics when we ping it, and one of the most frequently used ones is exactly this:
This started going inside Google quite a while back. My feeling then is about the same as now: feel free to say "hello" to me if we happen to be on the same IM system at the same time and you are "opening hailing frequencies", so to speak. I might not be there. I might not have a chance to chat right then. You can find out both without a serious investment in time pre-typing some huge thing which might be a total waste anyway.
It's a good opportunity to get some idea of how quickly things will move, and whether the other end is willing and able to have a solid chat at that time. This applies to being either party in the chat: the asker or the asked!
What's far more annoying is when the [typing] indicator goes on and stays on for a couple of minutes, at which point you are "rewarded" with a wall of text. By then, they have filibustered the chat, and are probably three steps down the wrong road if they got off on the wrong foot, and they need to be backed up and pointed in another direction.
If they start small and evolve it as a natural conversation with back and forths, then a whole lot of needless typing can be avoided.
Yeah, I have a co-worker notorious about this. I just quit answering until he writes something amounting to a statement. It's annoying to keep clicking away from a problem for niceties, especially when it's every...single..day.
i think it would be reasonable to just guide him to say "hey, you often just start off these online messages with 'hi.' can you just get to the point first?"
Oh, I have...but more gently. His reply is that he prefers to engage in conversation than just receive a reply.
I do understand that point, but also that it's a bit selfish.
Years ago I worked with several people from UK. No subject matter will be broached until pleasantries have been exchanged. After a period of time they will ask to proceed. Then, only after a definitive "yes, go ahead" and a "no, this is not too much trouble", will they finally make their request. I found it both charming and terribly inefficient.
It's the same with those ponderous extended variants on "can I just jump in here. Would you mind if I asked a question? Because I'm curious to know..." - seem to be to be used by people from all over.
There is a strong counter-argument though, based on the increase of online meetings and screen sharing scenarios...
Not everybody always remembers to silence screen notifications while sharing screens.
Which leads to more-than-once-a-week situations of "Hi - full question or comment notification that probably shouldn't be seen by co-worker/boss/client" popping up during the share.
A simple "hello" --wait for answer-- protocol makes it a quick way of checking if it's a good time.
I totally agree with the sentiment represented here but thinking linking someone to this is a bad way to handle the situation with others. I think it’s best handled by asking them after they make one of these requests and they get their answer. Linking to external sites feels passive aggressive to most people who are just trying to be nice.
But it's the kind of thing you can put in your Slack status so that the moment someone opens up a DM with you, they might see it, read it, and then know, all before they've typed out their first message.
Yes, usually in real life unless it's a close friend I just don't respond to "Hello" until I get something more. It's not aggressive, it's just me waiting until I have a question.
Close friends get a pass because their "hello" might just in some cases mean "hey I'm lonely and want someone to talk to".
Pinging someone with a "hey" or "hello" isn't really the same as putting a call on hold. As the site points out, chat is asynchronous, so the recipient doesn't have to wait around as they would on hold. Plus it's a status check. With a call you have instant audio feedback to know they're on the line. Not so with chat.
Granted, you don't always need to establish the recipient's immediate availability. But often chat gets used for questions that need answers almost now but don't warrant the time and emotional investment of a phone call.
If you don't do a status check, you risk the recipient not being available to answer your question in time. And if they aren't, you'll waste more time typing your question than you would have with a precautionary hello.
I usually go for a combined approach: pre-type my long question in Notepad++, then post a polite "hello" immediately followed by another message with the actual question. So it's both polite and considerate.
It has a bonus point of not losing what you typed in case the chat window bugs out.
I have these VVs in my chatbox below each message, one V for delivered and one V for read. Please only reply if you have objections and/or questions and/or more time to think. Otherwise,
silence implies consent (until reply)
Another open-ended question is "when will you show up at <location> / be free?". I don't know. Maybe not today. Maybe not even this week. Because "as a cooperating peer I will either show up and help you ASAP, or negotiate the term, or maybe will delegate and not show up at all, but I can only do that knowing what the deal is". Don't be afraid of being imperative, just shoot your problem at me, and we'll decide. Even if you just miss my company and want to share a bottle or two. When in doubt, remember the second V rule.
¹ You cannot expect third parties to follow these seemingly non-polite shortcuts of course, but it makes messaging much easier for those who are your most reliable peers. Repeating the same polite handshake/TIME_WAIT routines again and again and again quickly converges to the point where it is not even remotely polite².
² That may sound harsh at the face value, but I seen how good relationships suffered because of exactly these sorts of conversation. A busy person will answer "yes" to "busy?" when all their contact wanted was to meet at the evening. Or "in the city, can't talk" to "where are you?" when they meant "if you're near X, do Y". But all windows close during the day and at the evening it is too late to ask again, because kids, plans, etc. Repeat that few times and both be repulsed.
Google has a whole list of these (ActionableIM, OnlyHello, ContextPlz); I'm into FastHello
1. Open the chat window, and type your question with no "hello". Do not press enter.
2. Instead, press Ctrl-A and then Ctrl-X to cut your question out of the chat window and into your clipboard.
3. type and send "hello"
4. Pause 2-5 seconds
5. Ctrl-P and enter to send your full question.
I grew up in IRC. I almost got fired from my first job for being to direct around sensitive colleagues. My boss coached me to start my emails with "Hello :)". I'm better but I still get into trouble from time to time, especially on a Monday morning when I forget to ask how someone's weekend was!
That's also a fun one because I love breaking the "my weekend was great how about you?" monotony by actually telling the truth. I remember once going for an interview and the interviewer casually asked how my weekend was as we walked through the office. He wasn't expecting me to say that I didn't have a great time because I'd spent it moving out of my ex's place and a family member passed away the same weekend. How was your weekend?
I mostly dislike all these fake interactions we have. Show me something real any day of the week. If you can't service my request because your mind is on something else, I'd take that. Just give me a human, not a half-assed care-less social dressage.
Part of the 'hello' problem is to get around the lack of context about what the other person is doing - particularly about who else might see their screen at that time. I still prefer just asking the question but that was the reason some others gave when I asked why they did the 'hello's.
While it's a bit annoying I never saw the problem with this.
The article sounds like the author will give their full attention to the chat application after replying "hello" until they receive another message.
You can just switch yourself to nonblocking mode and handle other events and wait until epoll marks this chat readable again, or if you don't have any sort notifications turned on, just check back when you have a second. Worst case, the person at the other end wastes their time, not you. If it takes you an hour, their bad. But chances are they turn to something else in the meantime and don't stare at the chat window for hours on end. Would be kinda bad if you were on vacation and accidentally left your chat client running.
This is good advice, for the people who tends to ask to ask, or surround their questions with bunch of fluff.
On the other hand, is you, the question-receiver. The example starts with "CO-WORKER WAITS WHILE YOU PHRASE YOUR QUESTION" but that's not how I usually deal with these types of conversations.
If someone just writes "Hi" to me without something else and I'm busy, I won't reply until there is more messages, and instead continue with my work.
Although, ideally there would be no "Hi" messages. But, not everything goes as we want it to.
What interests me about this is often I feel the person may be trying (perhaps poorly) to help you and it's just backfiring.
Most often it feels like an attempt to get initial attention because if they launch straight into something the start may be lost whilst the recipient is switching focus.
Clearly the point against this would be that you'll have the chat history available, but there are apps where the flashing up of the notifications is in the corner and they disappear inconveniently before you've focused. So perhaps I suspect it's an attempt to get that focus moved and then start with the payload.
There is some logic in this, annoying as it can be. People do really badly with focus when switching context, just look at how often someone will call you, you say your name (ie the person they were hoping to speak to usually) and then they ask if they could speak to <your name>, because they've been primed to ask this and didn't update mentally in light of new info fast enough to kill the needless question.
I don't advocate the initial hello, but at times, I've broken text up where I get the key detail follow up ready in advance before the initial gambit is sent. This stops it being a whopping paragraph. I'd only use this sparingly but it helps at times and there's a hint of the focus aware point in it.
This concept has to be the new[1] whathaveyoutried.com, the site which became the favourite snarky unhelpful comment on StackOverflow for a while and which the author realised was a bad and unhelpful approach and regretted making.
Just say "Hello" back. You don't have to wait while they are typing. And if you are busy enough that you don't want to be disturbed, put "Do not disturb" on or close the chat client.
[1] newer, anyway. That was 2008 to this 2013. What's the 2018 version?
I'm sorry, but are you really losing that much productivity by being a bit more human and replying to that hello, asking how the other person this? in any case, once the question is asked, you will be context switching and trying to find that answer.
I find that saying hello and then waiting is more practical. If the other person is busy, then they won't reply and they'll reply at a more convenient time.
The article supplied an telephone analogy. Put yourself into the situation of the recipient. Would you or would you not mind being put on hold immediately after being called?
> I find that [doing something that does not affect me adversely, but does for the other party] is more practical.
That kind of reasoning for the benefit of oneself without consideration for the other side causes bad blood.
You are entirely missing the point of async comms then Imo. If I want a synchronous conversation I'll schedule a meeting or a phone call. If I need to be zoned in on an IM client, then the system has failed its use case.
if you write "hello" and they answer "hello", they are under some social obligation to answer rather promptly, whereas if you write your question first, it may simply get ignored. So I tend to write a short hello first.
possibly some other social factors at play here, but still, my experience.
That's exactly the problem, though. You're expecting prompt replies in an async communication medium. Ask your question and then they'll get to it when they have time. If they never reply when you do that then there's a larger issue, but that rarely ever happens. People expecting immediate replies in Slack is a big issue that leads to a lot of unneeded stress at work, and decreases everyone's productivity in the long run.
I dont expect an immediate reply, just within reasonable time. I i've made the experience that a question you ask upfront simply gets ignored and then forgotten.
When that happens to me, I'll give it a reasonable amount of time based on the importance of the question (which could be a few hours or a few days) and then gently prompt with "hey, sorry to bug you, wondering if you had a chance to look at my question?". That has never not worked out for me.
If it's such an emergency that it can't wait, then I can call them. But most of the things we think are emergencies aren't, and most things can wait longer than we think.
An approach I’m using to deal with “hello”-only messages:
– Jog your memory for any input you might’ve been awaiting or could use from the “hello” person, and hit them back with a greeting + request or question.
– If they really cannot help you on anything and you are not inclined to chit-chat, just ignore the “hello” message until substance follows.
– If “hello” was too much of a bother at the moment, perhaps you should’ve been using DnD mode?
– An effective way to use DnD and remain accessible is to set up a periodic alarm to check instant messengers. If you find a lone “hello” when checking messages and you can’t think of any input you might want from that person, “hello” back and leave it until next alarm. Your counterparty will learn to get to the point quicker.
if I'm in regular communication with someone, I'll skip the hi or inline it. the hello comes in handy when I'm getting in touch with someone I might only talk to once every couple weeks. then I like to just kind of break the ice, make friendly conversation so we both can feel at ease and friendly with each other.
I like to be friends with my co-workers - and there are times where if you are hitting them up for an ask, and ignoring them otherwise, thet might feel like you don't value them as a person ... A greeting, a little gossip or "HR" repartée can make two people trust each other - which in the end can foster its own kind of efficiency!
I had a colleague at a company that would always start his Slack chats with “Hey” and then wait for a reply. My “response” was to not respond until he finally got the message and would continue with what he actually had to say. Worked for me but YMMV.
I had a colleague who would do exactly this in order to slack at work -> pinging someone and saying 'hello', then some time passes until the person responds, then the enquirer asks a question, then the person responds and it goes on...
And everytime during the stand-ups the person would be -
"Oh, I couldn't communicate the issue on time, I will continue working in the issue today..."
I noticed this once because we spent two hours discussing about some topic.
(we have a milestone-based flexible release model, milestones could be scheduled every couple of months at times, so the person would slack quite a lot)
I generally agree with this, but I also think there is a legitimate use case for saying “Hello”, namely when you have a request that actually needs a fairly imminent response and if the person you are pinging isn’t responding right away, you need to move on to someone else.
If you type the full message to the first person and don’t get an immediate response, as you paste the same message to other people, the first person or few people who didn’t respond immediately might waste their time duplicating work that someone else you reached is already doing.
Gotta love how programmers are so anti-social they'd rather bitch for decades about salutations than elect even a single dev to spend five minutes scripting a pleasant-reply-bot.
I always assume its because the person wants to make sure you are there before they bother to type the question. If not they will work it out themselves.
It's not more polite to wait for the other person to go through a hi-hi handshake process to make sure you have their full attention before just asking your question in async communication.
If anything, people are trying to port their face to face comforts to digital async communication where it doesn't make sense and has the opposite effect.
Though I'd argue that the "how are you" frivolity that nobody takes serious doesn't make much sense face to face either. So it's only doubly unnecessary when you make someone go through that in a work Slack setting before they can unlock when you're actually pinging them about.
It's quite impolite once you think about it. Respect other people's time and get on with it. Every time you ping someone, realize you may be interrupting them, so get to the point in as few pings as possible.
You call it insane, but it's actually common sense once you think about it.
I think the point is that basic politeness involves not appearances of being polite, but rather thinking of the other person, their time, and how you would feel if the roles were reversed. I do agree though that going as far as to register a domain for this one social quirk is a bit much.
basic politeness involves not appearances of being polite, but rather thinking of the other person
THIS!!!
I have the unfortunate experience of somewhat regularly engaging with people who:
1. Act in a manner / do something they think the other party should appreciate, where
2. The other party does not in fact appreciate this, and is often burdened, bothered, or inconvenienced.
3. When informed of this, the first party both accuses the second that they are ungrateful (for not actually being helped) and controlling (for expressing alternate preferences, including often no assistance).
The cycle can reepeat, over precisely the same exchanges, repeatedly and over long periods.
Small children not knowing better is excusable. Adults not so much.
Kindness and consideration are not forcing your preferences down another's throat (exceptions for specific therapeutic expertise and treatment), but in offering to someone that which they express a preference for or interest in. So long as this isn't actively acutely harmful, one should oblige, aand graciously.
Keep in mind that "where the roles reversed" may not be a reliable guide. It's not what you would want, but what they prefer.
The author doesn't seem to be that annoyed, they're just trying to make life easier for themselves and others.
It's equally polite to say "Hello" and type the question in the same message. Do you genuinely not see how saying "Hello" first, which for many people forces them to lose concentration as they mentally prepare to be asked a question, is worse? The author provides multiple, equally polite examples that respect people's desire to politely greet others and respects the concentration of the receiver.
It can definitely be annoying because sometimes the latency is long. For example, I may be in another window and not see the "hey" right away. When I reply, I may wait half an hour for the person to explain why they messaged me, but I won't know how long I'll wait when sending my reply. I don't think it's a problem if someone says hi, then immediately types their question. But if they wait for an ack it can be kinda silly.
You can add the niceties all in the same message, as the website describes. The initial message can contain the greeting, the hedging about not wanting to bother someone, and also the specific question and details, and any other needed information (error message, traceback, whatever). So much time is saved by just including it all in one message, separated with newlines where needed.
politeness is also not wasting their time for the same reason. If you aren't there or aren't willing to respond, why make them type a huge question before they can learn that?
This might be a little farfetched but is a possible solution to this having chat messages be directly previewed so that the person on the other end can see what you're typing as you do so.
This could bridge the gap between the speed of chatting and talking.
Or are there unintended cinsequences I'm not accounting for (such as accidentaly copy pasting unintended info)?
There are times I have done this if I am not sure if the person at the other end is presenting/sharing screen and the matter is somewhat sensitive.
If that screen sharing software world and messaging/chat software works had some sort of protocol/handshake not to step on each other, many frustrating situations can be avoided.
To add more to this I once had coworker who fist wrote 'hi' and then, in addition asked: 'Can I have a question?' (and waited for response) - it was a bit annoying, and made my style of going straight into conversation ('hi, can you reason of the conversation:) a bit weird, unpleasant
A related annoyance is people who hit return after every statement, so that you end up with multiple alerts for the same message, and worse, the alert you see first is for the last statement that was posted.
I've been trying to do this more myself. I have noticed that I'd get someone's attention, then start writing up what I have to say while they waited for me to finish typing.
I always push No Hello whenever I start on a new team or at a new company. I should publish my latest revision, which I think is more kind and convincing than this original.
There’s a lot of etiquette we can use to improve chat. Another one is phrasing questions in a “search friendly” way, using log names and error strings.
Your second sentence implies you respond to the people who like to talk, and don't respond to the people who "just" need your help. Although it seems like it ought to be the other way around.
I get this kind of "Hello" message all the time. Also popular are "Are you there?" or "$FIRST_NAME ?". It's one of the reasons why I much prefer e-mail to chat. With e-mail, people have to actually formulate a question before hitting "send".
The other thing that gets my goat is the person that sends every line. I guess it’s hard not to do in slack since “enter” sends, but I really wish slack would debounce messages notifications from the same person.
I feel like at this point anyone using Slack should know to shift-enter to add a newline without sending. I don't understand why people still have a problem with that.
> Would you think it was rude if you saw this link as somebody’s status message?
Absolutely not; clearly communicating expectations makes life easier for everyone, which is (much of) what politeness is supposed to be about in the first place. The only possible suggestion I have is inlining a 1-sentence summary.
(Potential) counterpoint: there are those who sometimes prefer indirect language.
E.g. I would prefer if you said "I don't mean to be rude, but in my honest opinion you're looking kind of shabby these days" rather than "You're ugly" (statements exaggerated for emphasis).
I think this matters less in the context of the original thread (the "hello" back-and-forth).
I tried for a while before giving up because almost nobody in my org reads statuses or heeds them to begin with anyway (as I’ve learned on multiple PTO days where I would change my status to “On vacation, please contact Mike at ——— for support” and getting P1 messages and calls over slack anyway).
Indeed. I’m firmly in camp “slack isn’t the problem with workplace communication, it just happens to amplify the problems that were already there”.
Most (not all) tech that tries to “fix” communication in the office suffers from this problem though so I’m not blaming Slack alone for this. It just is what it is.
As Joel Spolsky says, no one really reads. May be if you sum your status up in least possible words it will reduce the pokes a bit.
Also I sent a college a message while he was on holiday knowingly so that he can see and may reply if he wants to when he comes back.
If you are on holiday (palm emoji) you are free to not pick up any calls and messages, until an unless you job is life critical and requires you to respond immediately at any hour.
It just seems passive aggressive, not necessarily rude, per se. You could pull it off if you're a Guilfoyle type. But it definitely does not make you look approachable.
It does give me a good chuckle to think how annoyed someone must have been to have made this site in the first place :)
You should see if you can convince some of your coworkers to adopt it at the same time. I've seen workplaces where many people have nohello as their status.
I would be inclined to think it odd if I saw just one person with that status. When I saw every other person using it, it became less off-putting to me.
no one is addressing the cultural difference here.
In India, people wait in chat after saying hello for a reply.They assume that other person might be busy and also from Indian perspective hi followed by asking for help or question immediately is bad. This is not the case in US where people would expect the intention right after greeting.
I always wondered if people wanted to wait until the messagee was sat on the other end of the keyboard giving their full attention. If this is the case a phonecall would be more appropriate imo.