5 ms·

Email?

andonisus 9y ago
No, it's 2018, we need some new app to disrupt the tried-and-true method of message delivery.
tonyarkles 9y ago
> "I hate email. Sometimes I won't get an answer for a few hours, or sometimes until the next day" -- Coworker It's definitely a culture thing. I've worked with teams across the spectrum, and, personally, I definitely lean far towards async communication being the best most of the time. There's times when you can't beat a whiteboard session, but those are the exception for me.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  E-mail should be this tool but yes, it’s use is way too company culture dependent. Some places/people treat reading/answering email as optional. Some batch it up and “do Email” 1 day a week or so. I wish there were a better work communication tool with the response expectation of chat plus the asynchronousity of Email.
  - 3pt14159 9y ago
    If someone at my company routinely doesn't answer internal emails then they should be fired.
    - aswanson 9y ago
      What if they're too busy doing work?
      - 3pt14159 9y ago
        If they're routinely dropping emails then they haven't communicated up and down that they're overloaded or they're in a shitty work environment. Either way, I've been on the other side of dropped emails and it's like sand in a motor. It's precisely why most large organizations have issues being agile.
    - megaman22 9y ago
      What's routine mean? I've had people that go all Peter Potomus and start beating down the office door if you don't reply to their insane, rambling emails inside of five minutes, screeching "Did you get that THING I sent YA!" Email is a medium that should require a little bit of thought and deliberation, and if you're doing it, you can't do much else. Incoming-email-driven development is one of the more frustrating and wasteful processes I've suffered through. Ping ping ping, bouncing all around, not concentrating. It's also worth trying to cultivate some self-reliance in your coworkers, so they learn how to find information and solve problems on their own, without needing their hand held every step. It's sometimes overwhelmingly difficult not to send back a lmgtfy link to some questions.
mstade 9y ago
Most people I've ever worked with treat email as an immediate conversation. If you don't respond within 20 minutes (and typically within 5) they'll send another, try me over chat, or even call and immediately go "did you see my email?" I sometimes takes days to respond, unless something is truly urgent – which of course it almost never is. For whatever reason this pisses some people off, but they also learn that the best way to get an immediate answer out of me is to call (I work 100% remote.)
- wolco 9y ago
  I answer my emails immediately it stops the calls. I prefer this.
dahart 9y ago
No. Email is not a scheduler, and it has never stopped someone from interrupting me. If email solved this, there wouldn't be a problem. I want something that forces people to try to answer their own questions for a few minutes, or at least expect to wait, before asking. When there's a small cost to asking the question, a high percentage of the time, the request will vanish on it's own. The asker will answer their own question or realize the question wasn't what they really wanted to ask. Part of the point of what I'm suggesting is to allow people to cancel their request. With my app suggestion, I'm hoping/expecting like half the interruptions (random made-up number) to just go away. Email doesn't do that, in fact it gets worse with email, you waste time reading the question and again reading the answer, or worse, answering the question only to find out the "nevermind" email was buried further down.

Email?

No, it's 2018, we need some new app to disrupt the tried-and-true method of message delivery.

> "I hate email. Sometimes I won't get an answer for a few hours, or sometimes until the next day" -- Coworker It's definitely a culture thing. I've worked with teams across the spectrum, and, personally, I definitely lean far towards async communication being the best most of the time. There's times when you can't beat a whiteboard session, but those are the exception for me.

ryandrake 9y ago
E-mail should be this tool but yes, it’s use is way too company culture dependent. Some places/people treat reading/answering email as optional. Some batch it up and “do Email” 1 day a week or so. I wish there were a better work communication tool with the response expectation of chat plus the asynchronousity of Email.
- 3pt14159 9y ago
  If someone at my company routinely doesn't answer internal emails then they should be fired.
  - aswanson 9y ago
    What if they're too busy doing work?
    - 3pt14159 9y ago
      If they're routinely dropping emails then they haven't communicated up and down that they're overloaded or they're in a shitty work environment. Either way, I've been on the other side of dropped emails and it's like sand in a motor. It's precisely why most large organizations have issues being agile.
  - megaman22 9y ago
    What's routine mean? I've had people that go all Peter Potomus and start beating down the office door if you don't reply to their insane, rambling emails inside of five minutes, screeching "Did you get that THING I sent YA!" Email is a medium that should require a little bit of thought and deliberation, and if you're doing it, you can't do much else. Incoming-email-driven development is one of the more frustrating and wasteful processes I've suffered through. Ping ping ping, bouncing all around, not concentrating. It's also worth trying to cultivate some self-reliance in your coworkers, so they learn how to find information and solve problems on their own, without needing their hand held every step. It's sometimes overwhelmingly difficult not to send back a lmgtfy link to some questions.

mstade 9y ago

Most people I've ever worked with treat email as an immediate conversation. If you don't respond within 20 minutes (and typically within 5) they'll send another, try me over chat, or even call and immediately go "did you see my email?" I sometimes takes days to respond, unless something is truly urgent – which of course it almost never is. For whatever reason this pisses some people off, but they also learn that the best way to get an immediate answer out of me is to call (I work 100% remote.)

wolco 9y ago
I answer my emails immediately it stops the calls. I prefer this.

dahart 9y ago

No. Email is not a scheduler, and it has never stopped someone from interrupting me. If email solved this, there wouldn't be a problem. I want something that forces people to try to answer their own questions for a few minutes, or at least expect to wait, before asking. When there's a small cost to asking the question, a high percentage of the time, the request will vanish on it's own. The asker will answer their own question or realize the question wasn't what they really wanted to ask. Part of the point of what I'm suggesting is to allow people to cancel their request. With my app suggestion, I'm hoping/expecting like half the interruptions (random made-up number) to just go away. Email doesn't do that, in fact it gets worse with email, you waste time reading the question and again reading the answer, or worse, answering the question only to find out the "nevermind" email was buried further down.