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> But what will come across as "curt" or "mean" is if your e-mails are substantially less fluffy than those of your boss or your co-workers. You have to be esp

> But what will come across as "curt" or "mean" is if your e-mails are substantially less fluffy than those of your boss or your co-workers. You have to be especially careful to not treat people who don't report to you as if they're your subordinates. It's bad to do that to people on your own team, and it's worse to do that to people on another team. A good way to build a bad relationship with someone is to treat them like your lackey when they're not even in the same reporting chain as you. I've been treated like this before, by someone on another team who sent me a number feature requests that involve significant new work, and by "requests", I mean "demands", without any fluff or niceties or anything. He did this without opening a new ticket (in a company where anything requiring new work needs one), without CCing my boss, and only rarely CCing his boss. This has always resulted in me switching into full-on form letter mode: "Please make your feature request by opening a JIRA ticket in the [redacted] project, and management will choose how to prioritize it.", with my boss and my skip level CC'd on the email.

vidarh 9y ago
Absolutely agree. Even when in the same reporting chain, I'd consider it quite bad form because it leaves the people in between with reduced visibility, and often they might have information that makes them prioritize differently or assign different people. You can get away with some reduced formality when addressing people reporting in to a layer below you but on another team, but "get away with" being the operative part. You will not get away with bypassing managers - even if you manage to sneak it past them now, it'll make people look out for future attempts. Sometimes if you know everyone well it may be ok to e-mail someone direct and cc their manager and address it to both and suggest the person you're sending it to would be a good person to carry out the work, but I'd take care to make it clear it's up to said manager unless I have very strong reasons to ask for a specific person and then too the manager should at least be informed.. I've been on both ends of this, and more than once told off my managers for bypassing me because of the disruption caused.

vidarh 9y ago

Absolutely agree. Even when in the same reporting chain, I'd consider it quite bad form because it leaves the people in between with reduced visibility, and often they might have information that makes them prioritize differently or assign different people. You can get away with some reduced formality when addressing people reporting in to a layer below you but on another team, but "get away with" being the operative part. You will not get away with bypassing managers - even if you manage to sneak it past them now, it'll make people look out for future attempts. Sometimes if you know everyone well it may be ok to e-mail someone direct and cc their manager and address it to both and suggest the person you're sending it to would be a good person to carry out the work, but I'd take care to make it clear it's up to said manager unless I have very strong reasons to ask for a specific person and then too the manager should at least be informed.. I've been on both ends of this, and more than once told off my managers for bypassing me because of the disruption caused.