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Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat (2013)
- alekratz 7y agoDon't tell me what to do.
- azeotropic 7y agoA lot of things posted here to HN are formulated as "everyone should do x" but would be more accurately formulated as "I personally prefer when people do x" Edited to remove irony
- stagger87 7y agoAs you ironically tell someone else what to do.
- lisper 7y agoThis is a reasonable thing to say, but does it really need its very own domain?
- qubyte 7y agoSoon (it's available): diditreallyneeditsveryowndoma.in
- crooked-v 7y agoThe part that I find weird is less the domain and more that it's a full Blogger setup and not using Netlify or Neocities or whatever.
- lisper 7y agoThat's not so surprising. Blogger makes it easy to point a domain to a blog. But what else would you ever do with this particular domain other than have it contain this one post? (Once upon a time back in the pre-cambrian era of the internet I once got myself into a situation where I had to register a new domain with Network Solutions in order to re-activate an account (or something like that, I don't really recall the details). So I registered networksolutionssucksbigfathonkingweenies.com. Got myself into a wee bit of trouble with that one.)
- anonytrary 7y agoAnother rule: Don't ask to ask, just ask. For example, don't do: u1: Hi, can I ask a question? u2: Yes. u1: <asks question> u2: <provides answer> Instead, do: u1: <asks question> u2: <provides answer>
- analogmemory 7y agoIf I'm feeling snarky, I'll say "Looks like you've already asked a question there ;)" A nice way to help folks is to say to them after the exchange, "Feel free to ask your question when you ping me so we don't have to do the hello/hi exchange"
- satyrnein 7y agoIt might work, but I'm not sure the typical person would interpret that as "nice" or "help[ful]"...
- andrewla 7y agoMeh. More typical is u1: Hi, can I ask a question about the flubulator process? u2: Hmm... u3 owns the flubulator, unless it's frobnicator-related. u1: thx
- TacticalTable 7y agoAnd in an older company, you might find that u3 has left the company and handed it off to u4, who has touched the code just as much as you have.
- readhn 7y agothats BS. It is common courtesy to ask if its ok to ask a question.
- paulgb 7y agoBut that in itself is asking a question! More seriously, I never know how to respond to that question because it depends on what the question is. It feels like a trap so that I can't get out of providing an answer to a question I won't want to answer.
- rc_kas 7y agoI've always heard it as "don't ask to ask, just ask."
- pram 7y agoI get so many random messages on Slack that I usually just ignore the DM if it says 'hello' typically because the actual request/question will appear sooner or later (as they grow impatient) Hasn't burned me yet but YMMV
- WaxProlix 7y agoI'll occasionally end up with people creating tickets or making noise with managers if they're ignored. The only reason I stopped doing this, really.
- kbenson 7y agoI wonder if if the integration hooks in slack have enough options to allow a good bot to help with this. I know they can identify and respond, but if they can't alter the message or noise it makes, maybe they can at least set a specific noise for the automated reply? Then if you recognize the telltale combination of the two, you can assume that initial interaction has been handled and wait until you hear the singular message received noise.
- penagwin 7y agoLast I had checked most platforms don't have much in the way of modifying messages or accessing PM/DMs. What I wanted it for was a timezone converter, so everyone saw the time in their own timezone. Our group is from across NA, so somebody saying "I'll be on at 6!" can be hard to figure out when dealing with a dozen people from 4 timezones
- gowld 7y agoTickets are good. They give you tangible credit for your time spent helping someone. If they are interrupting your manager the same way they interrupted you, instead of sending a request in an efficient manner, they saved you the trouble of you going to your manager to ask for help dealing with the person being a nuisance.
- 7y ago
- Chunkyated 7y agoI just pretend I haven't seen the "hi".
- tyingq 7y agoAlso, don't pollute your advice by surrounding it with giant adverts :)
- shoes_for_thee 7y agoOh god, yes. At my previous job this would happen constantly. Super annoying.
- tonymet 7y agoslack (and any chat app) should "absorb " hellos and consolidate them with the subsequent message, maybe with a 2 min timeout .
- learc83 7y agoI hate this as well. There also seems to be a correlation between people who do this and people who type slow.
- jrootabega 7y agoAnd its sister site, emailhasasubjectforareason.org
- lucb1e 7y agoTo prevent spam (very successfully, so far), I have users fill in their email address instead of displaying mine on my website. They get an email like this: From: lucb1e-$randomcode@example.com Subject: Email address for lucb1e Content: To contact me, just reply to this email! People use this, but not a single person changed the subject from "Email address for $me" to the actual subject of the message. Not one.
- jvolkman 7y agoMost people don't change the subject when replying to an email, which is what the content instructs them to do.
- dredmorbius 7y agoYou could programmatically vary the subject. Either by time/sender, or by lifting the first (or first statistically improbable) phrase from the message.
- lucb1e 7y agoI don't mind that much that I'd bother writing a script to take content from their email or something, I'm just surprised nobody uses subject lines.
- dredmorbius 7y agoPeople are very lazy.
- jrootabega 7y agoLike jvolkman says, I'd be worried changing it might break your mechanism. Not that that's what's driving most people's choices.
- api 7y agoThis needed a domain.
- areyouseriousxx 7y agoI think we may want to consider if our hatred of meetings, and now just saying "hello", has more to do with dealing with unrealistic deadlines and pressure for what should be a white collar job. In the example given, there is 1 minute between the "Hi" and the question. If 1 minute makes or breaks getting things done in time, you do not have a white collar job, you have a fast paced labor job similar to that of a worker on a factory room floor. Food for thought.
- carlosdp 7y agoI think it's more about context switching than time. I might be on a roll writing something and then have to change context for a few minutes to wait for someone to ask a question, and by then I lost my train of thought.
- ryanSrich 7y agoWhy are you even getting notified of someone messaging you? I’ve had my notifications for computer and phone muted for the last 1.5 years. It has changed the way I work. If someone needs an answer right now, they know how to call me. If not, I’ll see it when I check slack again.
- eridius 7y agoWhy are you asking your coworkers to place a phone call just to get ahold of you? That seems like an incredibly high barrier to having a conversation with you.
- ryanSrich 7y agoFor immediate conversation? I work remotely. It’s either wait until I check slack or call me. That doesn’t seem reasonable?
- readhn 7y agoi think its just most people cant communicate effectively and respectfully.
- codegeek 7y agoFunny how this resonates with so many of us that it is #1 post on HN within minutes. We have been telling our team members to not just say "hi" or "hello" and instead ask the question straight away. Imagine the amount of hi and hello texts that are stored on tools like skype/slack :)
- azhenley 7y agoDiscussion from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868294
- dmix 7y agoThe site homepage is not optimized for mobile and is 90% google ads with a small link to the blog post. I’d rather not share this. Too bad because I agree with it. Edit: it’s also stolen from a Google wiki https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14870907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14870907
- kristopolous 7y agomaybe that's a business model. go find high ranked content on HN from a couple years ago, make a site about it, put some ads, and pretend it's something new.
- gowld 7y agoThe site is 6 years old.
- kristopolous 7y agooh phew, that means my proposed content mill of an offshore team doing shameless reposts is still an untapped market. Just think, by this time next year I could be losing thousands each month. Finally I'll put those Reid Hoffman books to practice.
- dmix 7y agoThere’s about a million marginally skilled SEO guys working from home you’ll be competing with. I know you’re joking but it’s an interesting thing to think about. The countless people scrapping the bottom of the pool of where internet money is made with endless grey hat trickery.
- kristopolous 7y agoFooling Google is a different game than catering to arrow clickers. This is really more of a data problem. I think the strategy is to take the most popular things around this time of day, day of week, and month of year from say a pool of 5-10 year old data. Then you filter it looking for evergreen content. This would be an incremental heuristic model. You take the candidate content, use some trivial grammar model to rewrite it so it's not completely identical and then automatically put it on different styled templated sites. Register a few domains that suggest they are tech information sites Make sure your Twitter cards and url naming system is reasonable, then have a bot to post it from a handful of puppet accounts Have a much larger pool of about 250 or so puppet accounts and use a different 5% subset to seed them with upvotes over Tor in order to confuse any clustering algorithm and then keep the profits. Affiliated ad revenue is total complete shit though. Even if this all worked beautifully you're looking at what? $20/day? I mean who cares... The truly dishonest and devious thing you could do is freemium it and have a generous paywall like NYT. That's an incredibly dishonest way to make money though. It'd probably work great.
- duxup 7y agoAt a previous employer received a ton of "Hello" and I would respond immediately....and they would not say anything. I don't understand that.
- massivecali 7y agoAs others here have said, ignoring the 'hello' is the best bet. For those on the asking end, my advice is to ask your question and if it goes beyond a simple answer, follow up with 'do you have time to talk about this now?' Most people assume I have time or desire to answer a flood of questions because I responded to the first simple one, which isn't usually the case.
- randylahey 7y agoAt my old work we used to call this PWP: Ping with Payload.
- ir193 7y agotldr: use udp rather than three-way handshake tcp when you want to ask a question.
- johnwheeler 7y agoAnd, if you're sick of your coworkers saying, "Hi"--tell them directly. Don't create a domain name and get it front-paged on a site you know they frequent. ;)
- HenryBemis 7y agoThere is an anecdote, but I just cannot remember which major US bank it was. The anecdote is that they have eliminated the "Hi <name>" on the email. No greetings are accepted. People were asked to proceed to the task/question and wrap it up fast. Also no "kind regards" etc. in the end of the message. I will continue googling and I may update if/when I find more info on this.
- dsalzman 7y agoI love this. When I worked at Qualcomm we had a page just like this on an internal wiki.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- warp_factor 7y agoThat's the issue with Slack and other hype trends that will eventually go away as fads. Slack doesn't you make you more productive, it makes you spend more time on smalltalks and constant distractions. I almost never had a constructive discussion on Slack. In contrast, I used to have them way more over email.
- nurettin 7y agoAhhh, reminds me of the early 2000s IRC. Which is pretty much the same right now.
- dredmorbius 7y agoSlack is IRC's corporate successor, FBOW.
- voidhorse 7y agoI understand the point of this is efficiency, though I feel it's necessary to give voice to the other persuasion: are we really going to pursue maximum efficiency in trivial matters to the point that it no longer sounds like it's human beings communicating? There are such things as rudeness, crudity, boorishness--and in my opinion, those don't go out the window in the workplace. Keeping your interactions civil and pleasant is important, just like getting to the point can be important too. Saying "hello" before asking someone a question is polite because you're treating them like a human being, not some question-answer bot. Being too aggressive in eliminating these "pointless" social signals can have a cumulative effect of making you look like a real jerk that only values people for their utility in a given situation, in other terms, treats others like objects. I shall remain a staunch defender of manners and etiquette and pepper all of my conversations with so-called needless pleasantries. All that said, I of course don't promote saying only hello and then waiting for a reply before proceeding. That's just silly.
- slothario 7y ago> All that said, I of course don't promote saying only hello and then waiting for a reply before proceeding. That's just silly. Well, that's what the article is arguing against. No one is saying you shouldn't start your question with hello. You should just say, "Hello X, I was wondering..."
- kelnos 7y agoNot sure what you're disagreeing with here. The article doesn't advocate being rude, boorish, or robotic, and explicitly points out that if you want to keep up with social niceties, to prefix your question (in the same message), with something like "hi, if you have time for a question, i was wondering, [question]?" That's perfectly polite and friendly, and also respects your colleague's time.
- _throwawayyyyy1 7y agoindeed. as a sociable software engineer who appreciates the art of conversation, i often have a hard time getting the hang of the mood on my dev team. greetings are generally eschewed, even of the brief-eye-contact-mini-nod variety when passing in the hall. always have to remind myself i'm not getting dissed - they're just shy!
- ravitation 7y agoIf I receive a message that says "Hi", I'll respond with something like "Hello", but I'm not going to sit there staring at the chat window watching them type a message... I'll swap back to what I was doing until I see whatever their next message is... I also probably won't make a website to try to change an otherwise ubiquitous social practice because it slightly hurts my productivity...
- kelnos 7y agoI guess it just doesn't bother you as much as it does others. I absolutely hate needless interruption, and every time I get a "hello" without anything else substantive, it means an extra interruption that wastes my time. I often won't switch back to what I was doing after replying to the "hello", because my brain is doing a little wager, hoping that the question is short and quick to type out, because doing two mini context switches back and forth is tiring. And if my brain loses that wager, I end up sitting there idle for longer than I'd like. It's funny how there's so much attention being paid to social niceties in this thread when a simple social nicety is learning how to best communicate with people on an individual basis. And I think that's even more important when the purpose of sending a message to someone is to ask for their help with something. If you're asking someone to take time out of their day to help you, doesn't it make sense to do your best to respect their time, on their terms?
- ravitation 7y agoIt certainly is important to respect others time, but I wonder if at a certain point people will stop asking the person who is annoyed by "hello" questions.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- eknkc 7y agoWe have an intercom widget on our SaaS website. A lot of people just say "hi" and wait for an ACK. Or go with "I have a question". Then they wait. I guess they think it is turn based. Just go ahead and ask your question. We'll have the appropriate person for you. We'll take a look at the issue before responding you. Or we'll get back yo you if nobody is available right now. It bugs me a lot.
- phlakaton 7y agoIf you are making a request of someone with whom you are not in regular contact, it is good etiquette to start with a salutation. Therefore, "no hello" is bad advice. "Inline hello," as the article suggests, is better advice. But even there, the mechanics of whether the request comes in one long message or broken up is just not that important in the grand scheme of things...
- kelnos 7y ago> the mechanics of whether the request comes in one long message or broken up is just not that important Yes, it is. If you put "hello" in one message, and then follow up with a question some time later, you've possibly interrupted someone twice. If you put both in the same message, you've interrupted them once. This may not bother you if you're on the receiving end of it, and that's fine. But it does bother me, and I wish people -- especially people who are asking for a bit of my time -- would get this and do me the courtesy of being respectful of my time. Because that's what we're talking about, right? Being respectful and socially-aware when initiating communication with someone? There is no one-size-fits-all approach to communicating with different people.
- tunesmith 7y agoSure, let's squeeze another drop of humanity out of conversing. Maybe it's because I'm a remote worker, but I don't mind the "hello" and "hey, are you available for a quick question?" stuff at all. I prefer it, I find it polite and collegial. I'm honestly surprised this bugs so many people. Maybe it's an indication that our working environments are asking too much out of us.
- js2 7y agoI'm a remote worker too and have been for over a decade. Please, just put it all in with the message: "Hi. I have a quick question if you're available. Let me describe it as best I can here to start: ..." This way even if I was not available to respond immediately, at least I have some actionable information when I do reply.
- loktarogar 7y agoyeah, this is it for me. I worked for a company on the other side of the world and they'd often message me "hey, you around?" at like 5am in the morning my time. I'd get up later by that time many of them had gone home, meaning i'd have to wait for tomorrow to find out what they wanted. Which, as well as well as having to wait every interaction, also left the issue hanging over my head, fuelling anxieties.
- mrhappyunhappy 7y agoI have clients who occasionally do this while we are half a world apart. It ends up wasting our time because sometimes I can’t get back to them while they are in the office and an entire day passes before I know what they want.
- GordonS 7y agoPlease, yes!! It drives me nuts when someone IMs with "Hi" or "You got a minute?", when my IM status clearly says whether I do or not - just say what you want, and I have something useful to say when I do have time.
- 7y ago
- mozillas 7y agoA Slack bot could reply to solitary "Hello" messages with a link to this URL. Although that might come abrasive to some people.
- Spooky23 7y agoThis is stupid. There’s a lot of reasons why one might want to establish that a person is there without providing more detail. I deal with reasonably sensitive material all of the time. Spewing information without context to my laptop when I’m presenting something, for instance is a bad idea.
- icebraining 7y agoWhy are you letting your chat program interrupt you in the middle of a presentation?
- hirundo 7y agoWhen time isn't of the essence, I prefer to use email for the same reason. With email it isn't expected to follow the face to face round trip greeting convention, but to greet and then get to the meat. And compared to any kind of chat there's a much lower expectation of immediate response so it's more conducive to a considered rather than an off-the-cuff response. But mostly, becaause it's a more considerate way to address people who depend on being in a flow state and how I prefer to be treated. I prefer to keep chat questions to occasions when there is actual time sensitivity, or I already know that the recipient is not heads down or is currently chatty.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- minimaxir 7y agoIn general, if I have to do consecutive message in a Slack channel (not just direct messages), I try to use Shift+Enter to do a single multiline message so it only does one ping.
- human20190310 7y agoThere's no way the "hello" should make a difference. If you're getting so many questions that the removed "hellos" add up to an appreciable amount of time, the real problem is that you're getting too many questions.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kelnos 7y agoIt's a "death by a thousand cuts" sort of thing. As a maker, every little interruption hurts. And an interruption that's entirely unnecessary and wastes my time makes me annoyed. Not "I'm going to go throw something out a window" annoyed, but annoyed nonetheless. These things add up. If this sort of thing doesn't bother you on the receiving end of it, that's great for you. But please recognize that other people have different communication styles and respond to things differently. If you're going to ask someone for help with something, it's a nice thing to do to try to be aware of their communication style and work with it if possible.
- dgzl 7y agoThe first example given seems incorrect. The author says that if you combine your greeting/request then you can get your answer sooner, but that's not calculated right. In the first interaction, the time user1 spends on writing out the problem is accounted for, but in the second interaction it's not. The "time savings" the author is referring to assumes that user1 can combine greeting/request without needing to combine the time it takes to write the request. That's ridiculous.
- kelnos 7y agoYeah, I noticed that too and was a bit disappointed. But I think the point still holds, even if the math is wrong. If I get a context-free "hello", and it wastes my time, I'm going to be less inclined to immediately switch back to the chat when the next message comes in.
- dgzl 7y agoThat's where you and I differ. I wouldn't consider the ~1s of time used to read "hello" as time wasted any more than I'd consider a person saying "hello" in person as time wasted. On the contrary, I'd be happy for the greeting.
- kelnos 7y agoPerhaps you're not a programmer, but the context switch often wastes a lot more than 1 second.
- keithnz 7y agoThis doesn't worry me, I don't sit there waiting I just carry on until something more substantial turns up. Or I completely ignore it if I'm in the middle of something.
- noja 7y agoIf I am talking to a person, I will say hello first. (and if someone was to send me a link to a website telling me not to say hello, then I would think that person might have some issues)
- chiefalchemist 7y agoMoi? I'd rather say "Hi", get an acknowledgement and then continue. Rather than Hi + type something out; wait; still nothing; move on; find answer elsewhere; and have to remember to go back and say "NVM". I find NVM semi-offensive. It so often seems to come across as "I'm done with you." Also, there's the chance the colleague replies for naught, as I've already sorted myself out.
- kelnos 7y ago> I'd rather say "Hi", get an acknowledgement and then continue. Rather than Hi + type something out; wait; still nothing; move on; find answer elsewhere; and have to remember to go back and say "NVM". Basically you're just telling us that you are optimizing for your own time and don't respect your colleague's time, which I think is a nice thing to do, especially when you're asking someone to take time out of their day to help you. > I find NVM semi-offensive. It so often seems to come across as "I'm done with you." Then don't say that. A more-friendly, "hey, i managed to answer my own question, no need to reply" works equally well.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago"Basically you're just telling us that you are optimizing for your own time and don't respect your colleague's time, " Huh? How did you draw that conclusion? As for NVM, your suggestion feels longer than necessary / optimal. That makes it a waste of my time to type and someone else to read. For someone who is time sensitive, can you give me something else I can use?
- bondolo 7y agoaka "Don't ask to ask, just ask" the mantra of IRC for at least 25 years.
- angry_octet 7y agoIf you like this you might want to investiage email as a method of communication.
- js2 7y agoThe only way to win is not to play. I had to stop letting Slack interrupt me. Too many of my colleagues had started using it as an email replacement. So I keep it on a secondary monitor or desktop and only glance at it when I'm done with a task. I don't let its icon bounce/beep/bloop/be badged. I still try to be respectful on my end and go as far as composing everything I want to say in an editor before pasting it into Slack, gathering links to screen shots and logs in advance, etc. We can still model good behavior, right?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sand500 7y agoI agree, there should be no expectation to respond to IM immediately. If it is super house is on fire urgent, people can call me (phone or chat app calls).
- shados 7y agoAnother similar one, even in person, is someone shouting an (often negative) exclamation and making everyone wait a minute before explaining themselves. "Oh crap!" <long pause as everyone around is panicking, waiting on what actually went wrong> Sometimes something really wrong happened and the person is trying to process it. That's cool. But more often than not, it's like "Oh shit!" <2 minute pause as people ask what happened> "I forgot about my cat's birthday!". Thanks for the dose of anxiety.
- dredmorbius 7y agoA uni flatmate of mine. Sport. It was always sport.
- ghostly_s 7y agoI think you just have a really weird work culture if this is considered acceptable.
- shados 7y agoWork culture? Im not talking about work, and just in general. And people don't do it as a joke, thats how they talk. Annoying as hell.
- peterwwillis 7y agoWhile we're telling people how to talk: please don't tell people how to talk.
- wutbrodo 7y agoHaha I remember at Google, we had an escalating series of go/ links for people's chat preferences: nohello, yeshello, notonlyhello, etc etc. This always just seemed like common sense to me, and I say that as someone whose in-person manner of speech is substantially more polite and flowery than most people. There doesn't seem to me to be a big difference in politeness or friendliness between "hello <new IM> [content]" and "hello, [content]".
- mlmartin 7y agoMy pet peeve is when you get the message "Hey, have you got a minute?" You type back "Yeh, sure". And then wait... and wait.... Whenever they do actually ask the question almost an hour later, I'm always tempted to reply "Sorry, the minute is long gone".
- pteraspidomorph 7y agoCan I open with SYN?
- caymanjim 7y agoI couldn't agree more with this. It's long been a pet peeve of mine, and I get irrationally infuriated when it happens. It makes me passive-aggressive, too; I tend to completely ignore messages that are a simple "Hello", or "Can I ask you a question?" You've now interrupted me and wasted my time, so I'm going to waste yours by not replying. If it's important, the person will eventually just ask. There's a cultural component to this as well. I've worked with people from a few cultures where their norms dictate that smalltalk and pleasantries be exchanged before getting down to business, so sometimes it's even worse than simply "Hello" or "Can I ask a question?" Sometimes they want to go through the whole rigmarole of "How are you?" as well. Sorry, but in my culture, we get to the damn point, because the most polite thing to do is to interrupt me only if necessary and consume as little of my time as is required. We're not friends, we're coworkers. You're sending me a message because we're interacting to some business end. The most polite thing to do is to optimize the transaction and move on. If you want to chit-chat, I'd be happy to join you for lunch.
- notimetorelax 7y agoI see you're adding a fair amount of your own cultural bias, which you do recognize. You also recognize that there are other cultures where poeple value small talk. The best solution might be to be inclusive and meet in the middle: - Hi - Hi, how are you? How can I help? - <here they can quickly reply how they are and ask the question> WDYT?
- GordonS 7y agoFirstly, the first "Hi" is a distraction, and pressure to respond without know the urgency, or anything else about what the issue is. Secondly, and assuming this is a random co-worker rather than a friend, why is "how are you?" in the response when you don't actually care, and possibly don't even know the person?
- notimetorelax 7y agoAgain, you interpret everything through your prism. Sometimes it’s worth to be more empathetic and just go with it. This book taught me to value my cultural norms less and be more accepting of others: “The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business”
- alan5 7y agoco-worker: @here co-worker is typing... co-worker is typing... co-worker is typing... co-worker: Could you help me with $x? Nothing more annoying than grabbing everyone's attention with the first message and _then_ spending time to compose the question.
- pikewood 7y agoI start chats with a separate "Hey" message solely just for the chance that the recipient is sharing their screen in a meeting. That way others in the meeting will only see the "Hey" popup and not any details of the rest of my message.
- gowld 7y agoAnyone who shares their whole screen deserves what they get until they learn to properly share a window.
- snowmaker 7y agoOne way to split the difference on this issue is to type out your question in a separate text editor ahead of time and store it on your clipboard. That way, when your coworker responds to your "hello", you can immediately reply with your question, saving them the time of waiting for you to type.
- crazygringo 7y agoThis is ridiculous. You say "hi" or "hello" to check if the person is there. And if they are, it's worth spending 2 minutes typing out the question. If they're not, you're not going to waste those 2 minutes. It's just simple efficiency. If they're not there, you might walk over to someone else's desk and ask them... why would you bother wasting the time to type something out if they're not there? And waste their time because by the time they see it and answer it, you already got an answer from someone else?
- nine_k 7y agoThe title as it currently stands, "No Hello", does a poor job conveying the (imho correct) idea. It should be "No Hello Without The Actual Message in an IM Conversation". (That would also obviate the need to read the article for like 90% of people who actually use IMs.)
- EamonnMR 7y agoI agree with this, but mostly because 'hello' is a demand for synchronous communication, whereas just dropping your question off means you can walk away and the recipient can handle it at their convenience. Of course, chat has mostly supplanted email at companies I've worked at and as a result it is used for both sync'd and async communication.
- mcqueenjordan 7y agoAs someone who used to get directly pinged by hundreds of teams for questions, if all I got was "hey", I used to simply reply with https://nohello.com https://nohello.com. People appreciated the feedback. :)
- sebringj 7y agoYes this makes perfect sense and its something developers for the most part have adopted minus needing to say hi in the first place as slack is a different animal and mode of communication. We've already gotten to the place where "What's up." means "I acknowledge you exist." and nothing more when in person when it used to be an actual question of genuine interest. How often have you passed persons in the hallway or on the street and they act as if you don't exist or don't respond to you if you give a nod or say "good morning". It's more common these days to be impersonal which I don't like but it may be due to the greater number of humans existing, the less interesting and annoying they become.
- karolsputo 7y agoAren’t single word or short messages like “Hi”, “Sure” simple ACKs in our human protocol? I’ve observed (at work) that people feel more comfortable and respected when I use these words while writing.
- dredmorbius 7y agoYes, but they're distracting, unnecessary, and grating in an async memorialised medium such as IRC or Slack.
- timzaman 7y agoIf you need an answer quickly, you'd end up asking the same question to multiple people. Then, multiple people will take the time to read and respond. This takes up a lot more time than just probing for 'Hi'. And, since when does anyone wait for a response in a chat channel!?
- PorterDuff 7y agoNot a bad point. It's like how talk show callers often ask how the host is doing instead of cranking right up. It hurts the flow.
- smlacy 7y agoFuck this gatekeeping
- rococode 7y agoI feel this deeply from building online games that have chat communities. Often random people I don't know will message me, or more frustratingly, write a message in a group chat directed at me, along the lines of "hey rococo can I ask you a question" or "hey i have a suggestion". I see these messages so frequently that I just don't have the energy to respond to every one of them with "yeah what's up". People who directly post their ideas or feedback are much more likely to get a response from me.
- piqufoh 7y agoAnother non-obvious, but good reason for doing this; Often I get as far as typing out my actual question and I work out what the answer is before hitting send. Sometimes forcing yourself to layout the problem in a structured way helps you understand it and solve it - rubber ducking. If you've not hit send, you can save yourself the embarrassment of "Hi!", "Hello", "... Oh - never mind, sorry to bother you!"
- sexyflanders 7y agoNo. Close the chat app if you don't want to be interrupted. Don’t impose your personal communication preferences to others. There are far to many languages, cultures and personalities to think that you know better how to chat than someone else. Be nice and take time to communicate with your colleagues.
- jeffbarr 7y agoThis works for me! Far too many IMs seem to go like this: Them: Hey Jeff ... Them: Can I ask you a quick question ...... Them: I am sure that you are really really busy with re:Invent ......... Them: And I could look this up, but you have been here forever and I figured you would know .................. Them: Where can I find X? I am happy to help, but would prefer: Them: Hey Jeff, hope all is well. Where can I find X?
- nyx_ 7y agoAt my workplace we use Skype for Business. I often get "IM?" or "OK to IM?" Starting the conversation that way requires me to greet them and request that they continue. Why ask if it's OK to IM, if you're using an IM to do it? Ostensibly it's to prevent, like, notification sounds going off from my laptop if I'm in a meeting, or to avoid disrupting me while I work... but sending the "Permission to communicate?" message is already a disruption. Also, S4B has available/away/busy/meeting/call status indicators. Why not use those if you can't decide if it's OK to IM?
- viraptor 7y agoI know there are exceptions, but I think the idea of the IM status is generally dead these days. It's hard to micromanage it, and the only general status for a work day is "busy". People leave it by default on available and that's a new normal.
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- turbinerneiter 7y agoI regularly have people sending me "hellos" - and then nothing until I answer. If you want a synchronous conversation, call me or catch me in person. Messages are asynchronous.
- alexandercrohde 7y agoI'm confused by people admitting they're "irrationally emotional" about this, as though those two things aren't flaws. Maybe that 1 minute efficiency is something you're irrationally emotional about. But you have the privilege of working with hundreds of other people who have their own, sometimes contradictory, emotional irrationalities. I think our industry's greatest weakness is the too-accurate perception of petty emotional battles and tribalism (e.g. Tabs vs Spaces, vim/emacs, mac/windows, front-end/backend, iphone/droid, sql/nosql, php/python). Why don't we do ourselves the favor of not leaning in to finding more silly hills to die on?
- vzaliva 7y agoWhile I agree with the sentiment of the site, the form they suggest "Hi -- ...." looks ungrammatical. Disclaimer: I am not a native English speaker.
- ada1981 7y agoAlso, tech support folks.. please don't say "Hello, how are you today?" Instead say "Hello, how may I help you?"
- code_duck 7y agoFirst off, this is a fairly confrontational and antisocial way to make a point about social graces. Also I’m puzzled that someone made an entire website based on one assumption. If someone says hello to me and doesn’t continue immediately, or even if they do… I’ve already switched to another window. The initial “hello” is perfectly fine for getting attention and informing someone that you wish to speak with them in the near future. There’s no reason to assume they are staring at the chat window, immobilized, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for you to continue.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThe history of business communications since 1800 (and before) has been toward both increasingly abbreviated and structured communications, largely doing away with the prolux formalities of earlier ages. JoAnne Yates and James Beniger have both explored this in what I've found to be a surprisingly fascinating literature. For the brief intro: JoAnne Yates, "The Emergence of the Memo as a Managerial Genre", May 1, 1989. http://www.ismlab.usf.edu/dcom/Ch6_YatesMemoMgtCommQtly1989.pdf http://www.ismlab.usf.edu/dcom/Ch6_YatesMemoMgtCommQtly1989.... https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318989002004003 https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318989002004003 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0893318989002004003 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0893318989002004003 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1177/0893318989002004003 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1177/0893318989002004003 James R Beniger, The control revolution : technological and economic origins of the information society https://www.worldcat.org/title/control-revolution-technological-and-economic-origins-of-the-information-society/oclc/611061815 https://www.worldcat.org/title/control-revolution-technologi... JoAnne Yates, Control through communication : the rise of system in American management https://www.worldcat.org/title/control-through-communication-the-rise-of-system-in-american-management/oclc/278033068 https://www.worldcat.org/title/control-through-communication... JoAnne Yates, Information technology and organizational transformation : history, rhetoric, and preface https://www.worldcat.org/title/information-technology-and-organizational-transformation-history-rhetoric-and-preface/oclc/1042854432 https://www.worldcat.org/title/information-technology-and-or...
- scarejunba 7y agoIt's not about efficiency or anything for me. It's about courtesy. For instance, if you're moving and you want to ask a friend to help you out, the right way to do so is "Hey, man, I'm moving this Saturday to the Mission. Can you help me out?" The wrong way is "Hey, can you do me a favour?" or "Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Oh you're free?" And then going with things. It's the same way with everything else. If you have a question, give them a chance to not answer it. "Can I ask you a question?" is a trap on question complexity because the answer is always "depends". It's okay if they can't answer the question you have. You can just copy-paste it. Also, always ask in public channels unless it's sensitive. That way everyone learns. If you priorize your conversation partners this behaviour is easy and natural. If you're prioritizing yourself (don't want to repeat the question, don't want to be seen as not knowing the answer, etc.) this behaviour doesn't seem obvious.
- mr_tristan 7y agoAfter reading _Deep Work_ by Cal Newport, I realize that this "hi" message is just yet another way we are distracted in the modern workplace. (I heartily recommend that book.) What I've adopted is a structured "offline" timeframe, where I answer _no_ communication over the period of about 1-2 hours. When I come "online", I take the time to really answer questions very completely. I've noticed a few things: 1. This has reduced stress a _lot_ 2. Nobody cares I don't answer immediately 3. People do appreciate that when I do answer them, I've taken the time to really research the response (Now, "offline" isn't really offline, it's more "no distractions or notifications".) The funny thing I've noticed, is that the people that just want you to be online when they say "Hi" are often very distracted people themselves.
- dennisgorelik 7y agoI use brief "Hi" message when I want to voice talk. If person on another end is not available - I may send a brief email.
- anotherevan 7y agoThis reminds me of a little anecdote. My colleagues in the office all used Skype, which was particularly handy for me as I was the only person who worked remotely (about half the time). However, I always had the habit, when in the office, to eschew Skype and go see a person directly. It had the advantage of higher fidelity communication, and about half the time I'd figure out the answer to my own question before I got there. After a while, I started turning Skype off when I was in the office (remember there were no other remotes at this time). This actually became an annoyance to one of my colleagues as they would have to, get this, walk across the hall if they wanted to talk to me. My ill concealed amusement at their ire did not go over well. In person, face to face: the original instant messaging.
- qbaqbaqba 7y agoHello!
- dorgo 7y agoI also like following chat style. Especially when I try to concentrate on something else. colleague: Hello 5 seconds later colleague: I have a question 5 seconds later colleague: I work on problem X 5 seconds later colleague: .. and can't do Y 5 seconds later colleague: are you there?
- eibrahim 7y agoThank you. Thank you. Thank you. This BUGS the s out of me and I have to tell all my remote developers to do that. The worst is when they are in a different time zone and say “I have a question” and wait for me to respond before they ask it. VERY FRUSTRATING.