6 ms·

It's a neat idea, but after too many sarcastic, "clever", trying-to-be-funny, defensive, et al emails in my career I have a simpler heuristic. If I have to ask

It's a neat idea, but after too many sarcastic, "clever", trying-to-be-funny, defensive, et al emails in my career I have a simpler heuristic. If I have to ask myself "should I send it?", the answer is no. Leave it in drafts (with no one in the to: line!) until either things have cooled down and I delete it, or there's more perspective and it's actually ok to send. I have too many fails to tell, but the worst ever was an email from a middle manager I didn't know at BigCo, cc: upper management. It blamed an issue on my team at the time, and I took it as an attack. For once there actually was no issue, and in my reply I managed to subtly rub in that they apparently didn't understand how their own dept. worked. CC: upper management still of course. It worked too well, and the person called me crying an hour later because they looked like an idiot to the big cheeses. As soon as we talked on the phone, they became a real person to me, and I felt like the utter dick that I had been. Moral of the story, there are real people with real feelings on the other end of your words. It's almost never worth it to be a dick, slightly off color, or sarcastic, save that for in-person ;-)

gcatalfamo 8y ago
> If I have to ask myself "should I send it?", the answer is no. Exactly.
flamtap 8y ago
My rule of thumb for email correspondence is the "you idiot" rule. If the email could be appended with the words "you idiot" without changing the overall tone, then I need to rephrase.
- dpwm 8y ago
  I do this too and at first I needed to rewrite quite a few emails. Over time it's completely changed the way I write emails.
sxp62000 8y ago
My experience has been that being firm but polite over a phone call or in an in-person meeting is more effective than sending a sarcastic, clever, trying to be funny, or smiley-face-at-the-end email.
baxtr 8y ago
Great. I apply something I’ve came across: - if you question whether you should send an email, call the person - if you ask yourself for too long what to say on the phone, go and see the person Has worked well for me
- dustingetz 8y ago
  - Does the email fit in a slack? if not, delete it, go open slack and type the message into the slack box, then copy paste that into the email and send.
ryan-allen 8y ago
A similar anecdote in How to Win Friends and Influence people (which I read 15 years ago) has had me leave many an email in drafts. It's cathartic to write, but you don't need to send. Almost every time I re-read the draft a week later, I'm glad it stayed a draft.
cabaalis 8y ago
Put a rule in outlook to delay emails in the outbox for 2 or 3 minutes. Gives you a chance to delete after you vent. This also helps in a compliance-heavy environment to give time to correct if something is accidentally sent.
geowwy 8y ago
The real value of this tool is as an objective measure of how pleasant your communications are. Now that Codes of Conduct are the norm rude/abusive behaviour is not tolerated, but this can cause problems because one person might see rude and abusive behaviour where another person does not. Having a tool to objectively measure incorrect words and thoughts would be a great way to protect developers from themselves.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  > Now that Codes of Conduct are the norm rude/abusive behaviour is not tolerated, but this can cause problems because one person might see rude and abusive behaviour where another person does not. I dare say "abusive behavior" has never been "tolerated", but our individual and societal recognition of "abusive behavior" is different now than earlier.
anonytrary 8y ago
Feature request for email: Click "maybe send" to queue the email and send it to yourself in 3 hours, where you might be in the right headspace to rethink anything before hitting "send" to the original recipient.
baud147258 8y ago
> As soon as we talked on the phone, they became a real person to me, and I felt like the utter dick that I had been. It reminds me when I was doing Jira & Confluence admin work for team leads at my previous job. I don't think I was a dick to the (many) people sending mails asking for admin operation, but when one came to see me in order to work together on his task workflow, this person went from an outlook contact to a real person and I realize that I could have been more polite in my email answer. Also it was weird, because from his picture I had imagined him taller.

gcatalfamo 8y ago

> If I have to ask myself "should I send it?", the answer is no. Exactly.

flamtap 8y ago

My rule of thumb for email correspondence is the "you idiot" rule. If the email could be appended with the words "you idiot" without changing the overall tone, then I need to rephrase.

dpwm 8y ago
I do this too and at first I needed to rewrite quite a few emails. Over time it's completely changed the way I write emails.

sxp62000 8y ago

My experience has been that being firm but polite over a phone call or in an in-person meeting is more effective than sending a sarcastic, clever, trying to be funny, or smiley-face-at-the-end email.

baxtr 8y ago

Great. I apply something I’ve came across: - if you question whether you should send an email, call the person - if you ask yourself for too long what to say on the phone, go and see the person Has worked well for me

dustingetz 8y ago
- Does the email fit in a slack? if not, delete it, go open slack and type the message into the slack box, then copy paste that into the email and send.

ryan-allen 8y ago

A similar anecdote in How to Win Friends and Influence people (which I read 15 years ago) has had me leave many an email in drafts. It's cathartic to write, but you don't need to send. Almost every time I re-read the draft a week later, I'm glad it stayed a draft.

cabaalis 8y ago

Put a rule in outlook to delay emails in the outbox for 2 or 3 minutes. Gives you a chance to delete after you vent. This also helps in a compliance-heavy environment to give time to correct if something is accidentally sent.

geowwy 8y ago

The real value of this tool is as an objective measure of how pleasant your communications are. Now that Codes of Conduct are the norm rude/abusive behaviour is not tolerated, but this can cause problems because one person might see rude and abusive behaviour where another person does not. Having a tool to objectively measure incorrect words and thoughts would be a great way to protect developers from themselves.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mgkimsal 8y ago
> Now that Codes of Conduct are the norm rude/abusive behaviour is not tolerated, but this can cause problems because one person might see rude and abusive behaviour where another person does not. I dare say "abusive behavior" has never been "tolerated", but our individual and societal recognition of "abusive behavior" is different now than earlier.

anonytrary 8y ago

Feature request for email: Click "maybe send" to queue the email and send it to yourself in 3 hours, where you might be in the right headspace to rethink anything before hitting "send" to the original recipient.

baud147258 8y ago

> As soon as we talked on the phone, they became a real person to me, and I felt like the utter dick that I had been. It reminds me when I was doing Jira & Confluence admin work for team leads at my previous job. I don't think I was a dick to the (many) people sending mails asking for admin operation, but when one came to see me in order to work together on his task workflow, this person went from an outlook contact to a real person and I realize that I could have been more polite in my email answer. Also it was weird, because from his picture I had imagined him taller.