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Sure, 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

Sure, 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 8y ago
I'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 8y ago
  yeah, 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 8y ago
    I 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 8y ago
  Please, 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.
president 8y ago
It's hard to understand until you've worked at a place where you and all your co-workers are context-switching between 5 projects all due yesterday and everybody is pissed off. I didn't mind the "hello" at my older jobs where I actually wasn't stressed out.
asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
Or maybe it's just that an asynchronous medium has different etiquette than face to face?
delish 8y ago
I'm glad this is the top-rated comment--it teaches me that there are people who are totally different from me! I'm a remote worker who is sharply annoyed by "Hi" [send] "QQ" [send] [wait 30 seconds] "[question]". I find it impolite, and I am honestly (honestly, honestly!) surprised anyone feels otherwise. It's nice to be able to express this here; there's no way I could say it at work!
- xiphias2 8y ago
  > there's no way I could say it at work If you can't politely ask people how to address you on chat, it's a problem with either you, or the team / workplace. You should be able to talk about things effecting your productivity, or switch job.
- viraptor 8y ago
  As a full time remote, I really don't mind people doing this. I don't microoptimise my day to that extent. If it takes extra 30 seconds, then I can just wait for the rest of the message, chill, stretch, have a drink. If I get annoyed over 30sec delays at work, I'll take that as a signal something doesn't work well.
- dennisgorelik 8y ago
  Why can not you express your frustration with distracting messages at work?
- tunesmith 8y ago
  Honestly it taught me something too. Before I commented, there were a lot of comments, all practically unanimously expressing as you believe. So I'm as surprised as anyone that it's (currently) the top-rated comment. It's easy to forget that lurkers can believe quite differently than active commenters!
  - chronogram 8y ago
    Honestly, what kind of person comments on articles instead of looking at the page, scoffing, and going about their day. I do consider myself a bit out of the ordinary for doing that. Then there’s also the topic of the discussion here. Topic: “don’t say hello”. Replies can be whole anecdotes of superstar developers who lost 10 seconds of their precious time, or something more mild, but there’s no anecdote in “I am okay with people spending a line in Slack/Teams to say hello.”
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Kaveren 8y ago
It doesn't squeeze any humanity out of people to ask them to actually ask what they want, instead of just saying "hi". The annoying part is that they will wait until you reply to the "hi" before asking the question, which is a waste of time. It's not impolite to say "Hi. If you have a moment, can you tell me why I am getting this error in my JS on line 20?". Saves hassle. I work for myself and am not at all overworked. Still annoyed by it. You wouldn't send an email saying "hi" (usually).
zapzupnz 8y ago
As the website suggests, those who still wish to say 'hello' can just integrate it into the same message as the question. There's no drops of humanity being squeezed out of the conversation, just the conversation being made more efficient to reflect the nature of the conversational medium. Your example 'hey, are you available for a quick question?' could easily have the question directly after that in the same line. No less polite, no less collegial, but much more efficient. Of course it bugs people, it causes us to sit and wait for something when it could have been given to us straight up. People don't have infinite amounts of time to devote to mere waiting. Perhaps it is because you work remotely that this isn't so much the case, but for busy IT help desks, dedicating screen space to a conversation with nothing useful in it for any period of time is both a waste of the user's time and the technician's. Our working environments aren't asking too much of us. There's absolutely nothing strenuous about people learning to adapt their mode of conversation for the medium, especially to meet everybody's efficiency needs. As the website stated, it's altogether possible to keep the polite chit-chat in the same post as the question.
- nxc18 8y ago
  You could just switch to some other activity while the colleague finishes typing their message. With a very basic policy change to how you receive messages, you can totally avoid all inefficiency. You also avoid supporting the transparent money grab of a website dedicated to a needless complaint that is 90% ads.
  - geofft 8y ago
    The problem is I was already doing some other activity, and was interrupted. I'm happy to be interrupted if I can be helpful, I don't want to be interrupted when there's literally no point. Also, many people seem to want to get a reply to their "Hello" before they type more, so you have to switch over to the chat tab instead of just ignoring the notification.
    - aeternus 8y ago
      Exactly, there are so many articles showing how costly context switches are, especially for software developers. By saying hi in a separate message you are forcing the recipient to perform a completely avoidable context switch while also priming them for another. A cordial greeting before an ask is mostly an empty gesture anyway. If you actually care how someone's day is going, ask in person or via a message with more substance.
freyir 8y ago
I get a few notifications daily from my manager: “Hi. You there?” Morning, noon, and night. Maybe the intention is that I don’t have to respond. But every now and then, it’s about something important. So I have to stop what I’m doing every time, respond, wait for the actual message to be typed out, and realize it’s something unimportant that doesn’t need to be discussed on a Saturday afternoon. Maybe this is humane, but it’s also annoying.
- alistairSH 8y ago
  When I get those from my manger, it’s usually because he wants to discuss something private/sensitive, so cannot type out the question. It’s also stipulates always “r u there?” Followed by “come on down to room X so we can chat in private”
- dennisgorelik 8y ago
  > “Hi. You there?” Just reply "Hi" or "Here" or even "Not here" (if your manager understands jokes and you are ready to leave). You do not need to wait for the answer after that. Especially if it is not your work day. Please understand, that your manager is trying to solve a problem, and getting your help -- is not the only option for your manager. That is why he may not want to spend his time explaining the problem to you if you are not available anyway.
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
I'm maybe hypersensitive to the 'quick question' question. That's already a question, and the next one isn't going to be quick. How about, just ask the question? Like "Can I get your attention today to help me figure out xxx?"
dfischer 8y ago
Yeah seriously, when I first read what this was about my reaction was concerning to say the least. Keep the humanity alive! We are not robots – yet.
Skunkleton 8y ago
I personally refuse to respond when coworkers just send a hello when I know they are just going to ask a question. Waste of everyone's time, and I don't appreciate someone who would never talk to me otherwise pretending to care about me.
- CharlesW 8y ago
  > Waste of everyone's time, and I don't appreciate someone who would never talk to me otherwise pretending to care about me. That's not what's happening. If there is a selfish reason (generally there's not), it's their handshaking protocol to discover if you're available to answer immediately.
  - Skunkleton 8y ago
    I would guess it is because they haven't thought about what it is they are doing. There is a big difference between "hi" and "hi, do you have a few minutes to answer some questions".
  - growse 8y ago
    I find that my availability to answer immediately depends on a number of things, one of which is the urgency or nature of the question. Usefully, in my experience, nobody opens an IM session where they need my help on a production outage with just 'Hi'. :) (I suspect I'm in a minority, but it's also why I hate answering the phone. An incoming phonecall is just a way for another person to unilaterally decide that they need my attention right now, which is often both disruptive and not true).
SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
>Sure, let's squeeze another drop of humanity out of conversing. You sure you're not overreacting a little? When I answer tech support questions, the first thing out of my mouth is "Hi I'm SlowRobotAhead, what is the problem you're having?" Not what can I do for you today, not tell me the setup, not what it is I do here. Tell me the problem have - and we'll see from there. That's not rude or removing humanity. It's polite by acknowledging we're not going to waste each other's time because of a mutual respect we start off with.
- tunesmith 8y ago
  >You sure you're not overreacting a little? Hehe... no. I wrote the comment, took it out, then decided it didn't really express what I was trying to put across, so put it back in. So I was clearly on the fence anyway! A fine line between pithiness and rudeness sometimes, I regret when I fall over into the latter.
mmaunder 8y ago
And this... "Short link to this page: http://nohello.com/ http://nohello.com/. (If you see that as someone's status, please be prepared to be ignored if you only say "Hello!".)" Is just a new way of being an asshole. Don't do that.
- reificator 8y ago
  > And this... [snip] is just a new way of being an asshole. Don't do that. I agree fully with the message behind the page. Put your greetings in the same message as the question. A lot of people seem to think it's rude, but I'm convinced that it's the only polite option and not doing so is rude. That said, I agree with you as well. Don't just set that as your status and ignore people. That's about the worst of all worlds.
- ada1981 8y ago
  This is from 2013, so not that new. And certainly not as bad as the folks who ask me to "please consider the environment before printing their email." Maybe even with some weird text-based tree art. I dislike most email footer text. Those privacy policy things are the worst. I'd love to see some annual award for most ridiculous email boilerplate text actually in use.
  - viraptor 8y ago
    Just keep in mind that most privacy footers are company requirements. They may even be appended to all outgoing mail. The people who send them may be as annoyed by them as you.
    - ada1981 8y ago
      This is great > https://gizmodo.com/11-of-the-most-obnoxious-email-signatures-ever-1688536904 https://gizmodo.com/11-of-the-most-obnoxious-email-signature...
    - ada1981 8y ago
      Non-binding quasi-legalese. I'm not bound by a privacy agreement because I open your email. It's so silly and useless.
laughinghan 8y ago
Can I ask what kind of remote work you do, tunesmith? Perhaps some kinds of work are more sensitive to interruptions than others.
- tunesmith 8y ago
  Usually deep work, backend integrations and distributed communications, architectural consulting and implementation. So at least generally for me, when I'm blocked, I don't tend to be entirely blocked, where I need my answer now now now or everything is ruined. :) Plus, it's very important to have collegial relationships with the people that I am working with. I can see being more impatient with this if I were in Ops and everything was an urgent fire all the time. Sometimes you just need the information as quickly as possible and that's what you need to optimize for. But for me, if someone asks, "Hey, you there?" I'm sort of thankful for the opportunity to say, "Hey! How's it going, what's up?" rather than think, "Just ask me the question already!" As a remote worker it's often more important to optimize for the relationship because that's how you stay connected to what's going on.
wetpaws 8y ago
There is nothing about humanity, it's all about using communication tool right way. Phone is real-time. Chat is asynchronous. It's just as simple as this. You don't put phone call on hold and reply next day. You don't use text chat to expect realtime communication. Interestingly, people don't have this trouble with e-mail. No one sends an email with single line "hello" and expect a reply, because instinctively people expect email work like real paper mail. With chat they expect it to work like phone, although it's pretty much works on the same principles as email.
- tunesmith 8y ago
  I think this "chat is asynchronous" point gets abused to the point of being rather meaningless. People often, and I would say usually, want to have a synchronous -ish connection when they engage in chat. They want a person-to-person session. It's like synchronous with a generous timeout, or to stretch it, maybe it's like asynchronous -ish but with a very limited thread pool. But the point is it is mostly used to discuss as you would on the phone, except slightly slower so you can take advantage of other abilities, like the pasting of a code snippet or a log output or a screenshot, and so you can maintain the connection while you are doing some light multi-tasking or virtual pairing at the same time, or even just so you can avoid whatever minor social anxiety you might have. But if you're in a work conversation with someone on chat, and then they disappear for twenty minutes with no explanation or transition, that's usually not the etiquette and it's usually annoying. More common is they'll say "brb" or "ok, gotta do this other thing" or whatever. And even if you do have a question, it usually doesn't work to just drop the question in their chat, and then blithely expect an answer "whenever". They might have a followup question or a clarification when you aren't available, and then this simple exchange can stretch on for hours or days. So it's not like this totally asynchronous thing where people drop singular notes into each other's mailboxes and then go on about their days. It's more often a very efficient and low-friction alternative to scheduling fifteen-minute one-on-one meetings with someone or going and interrupting them at their desk.
raz32dust 8y ago
You have to think from the point of view of a person doing their own work, while being pinged by 5 people on slack. It is super annoying because this is what happens: - You're in the flow of working on your thing. - Now, you see a notification. But you decided to continue working but now you have a thing at the back of your head that you have to respond to the message. - Finally you take a break and decide to look at the pending messages, and you see just a hello. So now you have to respond with hello and know that you are going to be interrupted once again, because very likely, the other person is not looking at their slack at this time so they will respond later when you are busy again. It doesn't say, "Don't say hello". It says, "Don't say just hello". Say your greetings but also give a brief overview of the question. Saves everyone time and it isn't any less courteous.
biztos 8y ago
I'm also a remote worker and have been for many years. Everyone else on my team is in a different time zone than I am, many of them quite far apart. I get the "hello" message quite a bit on Slack, and I find it pretty reasonable, since the person hello-ing me is really asking "are you there? Because I expect you might not be, and I want your help with something." I think "hello" is a polite way to check for presence. If I reply (and the asker is still online) then it's a green light for the conversation. If I'm not online then fine. (I usually send messages like "Hi @coworker, can you please check the smoke alarm in the server room?" -- but the questions the coworkers have for me usually involve more Q&A than a one-liner would cover.)
- alkonaut 8y ago
  > I think "hello" is a polite way to check for presence. If I reply (and the asker is still online) then it's a green light for the conversation. It is. But typing a long question for say 5 minutes isn’t really “conversation” it’s just keeping someone waiting. That’s what the usual problem is. Not someone saying “hello” and then when greeted back they ask a 5 word question. In that situation it obviously makes no difference.
- GordonS 8y ago
  > I get the "hello" message quite a bit on Slack, and I find it pretty reasonable, since the person hello-ing me is really asking "are you there? I haven't used Slack for some time now, but I presume it's like every other I'm service in that it displays your current status, such as" Available", "Away" etc?
  - gubbrora 8y ago
    Ime: available, away, busy - all mean "phone is on and person may or may not be available".
    - GordonS 8y ago
      I actually assume the status means what it says. Where I work we use Skype for Business, and it automatically changes to away if their is no interaction for some time or I lock my workstation. Skype also has Outlook integration, so automatically switches status to Busy if it knows I'm in a meeting. I presume other IM software does the same kind of thing.
alkonaut 8y ago
That’s fine. This isn’t exclusive. If you have a long question to ask me, just type it in a text editor. Then chat “hello, have you got time for a question” I answer “sure”. Then you paste the question instead of typing for 5 minutes. If the question is just 5 words or 100 words you can type them in 10 sec then sure I’ll wait. But that’s not how it usually works. You see it’s the people who are least used to chat and so both type the slowest that also misunderstand the greeting protocol. Greeting is fine. Greeting and then typing for 5 minutes is not. Also as a remote worker something that really annoys me is when someone goes “hi, got time for a question?” and then 20 minutes later “sorry someone just walked in”. Don’t do that. If you sent a hello, always pay attention at least 15 seconds and be ready to interact. Don’t ping and then go for coffee. And please ask people who walk in to wait while we finish chatting, or just tell me someone walked in you need to talk to so I can go on with work.
- njepa 8y ago
  While I would think it would be annoying, I think the multiparter (like one sentence per message) works pretty well for work stuff. The people I work with type pretty fast however. Maybe someone should bring back ytalk ;)
romanovcode 8y ago
OP is autistic, nothing to see here.
learc83 8y ago
When someone says "Hey are there?" there's pressure to respond right now--many times they won't ask if I don't. If someone just asks the question, I can respond when I have time.
geofft 8y ago
I don't find it polite and collegial; I find it rude. I appreciate that the intent is to be polite and collegial, but impact matters more than intent for rudeness.
reificator 8y ago
> Sure, 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. I don't think that's the takeaway. The message is more about treating chat as a lightweight email rather than treating it like face to face or phone calls. You'd never send an email that said hi, wait for the person to respond, and then respond to that with a question you wanted to ask them from the start. Chat should be the same way. That doesn't mean no pleasantries, it means bundle them up into your message.
chefandy 8y ago
I like a happy medium. I usually have my question typed out but send a "Hi, how are you?" ahead of time and actually read the answer, you know, because humanity. But then I've got the question ready to paste right then. Best of both worlds.
- dennisgorelik 8y ago
  If you already spend time typing your question - why not send it as well?
  - chefandy 8y ago
    Because I care about the people I'm conversing with and want to know how they're doing. They aren't a search engine.
chillacy 8y ago
Hey are you available for a quick comment? ... In all seriousness, imagine if every response to your comment did that, and you had to reply and say Yes before they actually typed up their comment.
wufufufu 8y ago
As if there was any humanity to messaging someone as compared to face to face conversation?
serjts 8y ago
Why don't we just not care and do whatever we think is ok at the moment, then assuming everyone is honest and frontal enough we get feedback from our actions and address them at the resolution we can manage. It's not like everyone is the president.
jgvgkvljhvojg 8y ago
I have ADHD and every interruption harms my productivity. If a co-worker emails me "hello" there are two possibilities: 1) Notifications are enabled, and visible/audible to me. If I'm working, I will likely be set back by multiple minutes by the interruption. I respond back asking what they need and it takes them a few minutes to formulate their question, at which point I've possibly managed to refocus and begin working again. There is a desperate struggle to switch context without losing the mental model I have been building of the problem at hand, before I have the chance to record it by writing some code, a comment or personal notes. 2) Notifications are disabled. I see the "hello" an hour later. I respond "hi, what's up?" and my coworker is now in a meeting or something and takes an hour to get back to me. They respond with "I was wondering if you could help me with something" and the cycle begins anew. And by the way, I actually really like helping people with technical problems. I would sit around all day doing just that if I didn't have other work to do.
debt 8y ago
We’re not conversing, we’re trying to run a business. Get to the point sooner so we can solve the problem sooner. Let’s converse during non work hours.
zerkten 8y ago
In large organizations the person is likely "pinging" multiple people to see who is available to answer their question. This is deeply problematic because folks sitting next to each other look over, or comment on the usual suspect pinging each of them. This becomes an interruption for more than just folks on the end of the IM.
cptskippy 8y ago
It's odd but I don't find it polite. It's akin to calling someone on the phone and when they say "Hello", responding with "Hey cptskippy, let me put you on hold real quick." If you say "<small chat> <actual question>", I'm perfectly capable of responding "<small chat> <actual question || delaying response>". There's no need to decouple the questions and making one contingent on receiving a response from the preceding question. The downside to slamming a person with multiple questions is obviously aligning their responses to the questions asked. So there's obviously some thought that must go into formulating your questions. But I don't see any issue with opening your line of communication with small chat and your actual question as the responses would be easily distinguished.
fmpwizard 8y ago
I've been working remotely for about 13 years, something that I do with every new developer we hire, is to tell them that we are all available to answer their questions, no matter how "silly" they may think it is. I tell them not to worry about interrupting what we are doing, because if we are truly busy, we will not go into the chat app (flowdock in our case), but when we have a minute, we'll come to it and if the question is already there, we can answer it right away, instead of saying hi back and having no clue what the real question was. And we are all very polite about it, we do say things like: "Hi, if you have a minute, how do I get this code working?" And, we also have a "water cooler" room/flow, where we talk anything that isn't work related, weather, music, etc, and there sure, you can just say hi and nothing else. In my case, it is not that I'm on a tight deadline, we make sure to have almost no tight deadline, my case is, I'm probably playing with my kids, or about to have breakfast with my wife, so if you need me, and post your question along with "hi", I can answer before I step away from the computer. Hope this gives you an alternative view.
groby_b 8y ago
It's not "squeezing a drop of humanity". It's making the case that chat pretends to be a synchronous communication medium, but is actually asynchronous. Somebody just saying "Hi", without followup, is saying "I expect you have nothing else to do, except wait for me". That's not "humanity", that's entitlement. I do draw a distinction to "hey, available for a quick question", because that is stating a request - the person sending it asks for a chunk of our attention. It's a deliberate request to move to synchronous mode. And to forestall the "but isn't chat just like talking to each other" - no, no it isn't. Talking is 150 words per minute, and it's delivered as a continuous stream. Chatting is (if we're lucky) 50 wpm, and it's delivered bursty.
GordonS 8y ago
Maybe it's because I'm not American (or maybe it's because I'm possibly low down on the autistic spectrum) - but I absolutely hate the fake "how are you?" at the start of every single interaction (unless of course it's a friend who actually cares). It's even worse on telephone, Skype and IM, where any semblance of "personalism" is lost - someone starts a new conversation with "Hi, how are you?", and I have to respond to that before you'll just tell me why you're actually starting a conversation! How am I meant to respond? I invariably just say "yeah, fine, you?" - but I don't care, the other person doesn't care. It's just... awkward and pointless. I don't get what either party is meant to get our of this.
- dennisgorelik 8y ago
  > I absolutely hate the fake "how are you?" Just interpret "how are you?" as "Hi" and reply "Hi" or "Hi. What's up?" back.
  - GordonS 8y ago
    Thanks for the advice, I'll give that a try
rictic 8y ago
Network effects create counterintuitive situations. If you pick a random one of your friends, that person probably has more friends than you do (this is true! for most values of "you" at least). I bet that it's likewise true that when you ask someone a question, it will usually be the case that that person answers more questions than you do (again, for most values of "you"). I think the distribution of how many questions a person is asked is very nonlinear. Someone who answers five questions a week is going to have a very different experience, and want very different social norms, than someone who answers fifty, or a hundred and fifty.
laumars 8y ago
The thing that irritates me about people who just say "hi" is it wastes my time. I stop what I'm doing to read their message only to find out that I now need to wait for them to ask that question - which isn't always quick because if you've not replied to them right away then they're likely off doing something else themselves. So my workflow has been interrupted for no good reason. I now passively aggressively handle this by posting lyrics of songs that feature their greeting in, like "Hey Jude". It usually gets a laugh but also makes a subtle point that their "Hey" follow up comment was a little pointless. I don't mind if people post something like this though: <13:00:00> Hi, hows things? <13:00:30> Did you manage to get that report sent? In that instance it's still 30 seconds before the follow up but at least they open with something more conversational and they're not waiting for me to respond before getting to the point.
tripzilch 8y ago
Humanity is taking into consideration what the other person may be doing, whether you are disturbing them and whether it's nice to make them wait for your question after typing "Hi". It's a very cultural thing whether and how much greeting is appropriate (I've heard this varies widely even within the USA). But empathy for the other is universally cool and appreciated. So you take a moment to consider the other, and you put your preferred greeting first, and add the question in the very same message. Bam! Best of worlds! Polite, nice, collegial and not making people wait and lose focus and switch context (which clearly is less of a deal to some people, but when it is, it's a big deal for some others). Reading the comments in this thread from the people defending to split the "Hi" and the question into two messages, I really wonder what is their reluctance to just type everything in one go? Because I'm not buying that saying "Hi" in a separate message and then waiting is somehow more polite than saying the very same things but in one single message. See, it sounds to me that it is them who don't like waiting. Sending a "Hi" first makes it more likely you have the other's (waiting) attention by the time you finished typing the question, so that you get an answer right away, not wasting any of your precious time. If you were to type your "Hi" and the actual question in one message, you spend your time and effort typing that question but the other person only gets the notification as you press <send>, and now it's you who has to wait in idleness. Much easier too, to quickly fire off a "Hi" first and only then start thinking about actually formulating your question.
spurgu 8y ago
Screw that. I just wait for 10 minutes before I engage in that chat (wishing I could turn off notifications for individual people in Slack), let the person say "Hi spurgu", followed by "Hope you are doing well" (and whatever else they come up with), after which they finally type out what they actually wanted to say. When they're done going through this horribly inefficient, annoying and time-wasting procedure I just directly respond to their question, without any added social bs. Then again I come from Finland.
taoufix 8y ago
What I personally do is to write my question down, copy it, say Hi, wait for a replay, then paste my question. And thus have the best of the two approches.

js2 8y ago

I'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 8y ago
yeah, 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 8y ago
  I 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 8y ago
Please, 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.

president 8y ago

It's hard to understand until you've worked at a place where you and all your co-workers are context-switching between 5 projects all due yesterday and everybody is pissed off. I didn't mind the "hello" at my older jobs where I actually wasn't stressed out.

asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago

Or maybe it's just that an asynchronous medium has different etiquette than face to face?

delish 8y ago

I'm glad this is the top-rated comment--it teaches me that there are people who are totally different from me! I'm a remote worker who is sharply annoyed by "Hi" [send] "QQ" [send] [wait 30 seconds] "[question]". I find it impolite, and I am honestly (honestly, honestly!) surprised anyone feels otherwise. It's nice to be able to express this here; there's no way I could say it at work!

xiphias2 8y ago
> there's no way I could say it at work If you can't politely ask people how to address you on chat, it's a problem with either you, or the team / workplace. You should be able to talk about things effecting your productivity, or switch job.
viraptor 8y ago
As a full time remote, I really don't mind people doing this. I don't microoptimise my day to that extent. If it takes extra 30 seconds, then I can just wait for the rest of the message, chill, stretch, have a drink. If I get annoyed over 30sec delays at work, I'll take that as a signal something doesn't work well.
dennisgorelik 8y ago
Why can not you express your frustration with distracting messages at work?
tunesmith 8y ago
Honestly it taught me something too. Before I commented, there were a lot of comments, all practically unanimously expressing as you believe. So I'm as surprised as anyone that it's (currently) the top-rated comment. It's easy to forget that lurkers can believe quite differently than active commenters!
- chronogram 8y ago
  Honestly, what kind of person comments on articles instead of looking at the page, scoffing, and going about their day. I do consider myself a bit out of the ordinary for doing that. Then there’s also the topic of the discussion here. Topic: “don’t say hello”. Replies can be whole anecdotes of superstar developers who lost 10 seconds of their precious time, or something more mild, but there’s no anecdote in “I am okay with people spending a line in Slack/Teams to say hello.”

deleted 8y ago

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Kaveren 8y ago

It doesn't squeeze any humanity out of people to ask them to actually ask what they want, instead of just saying "hi". The annoying part is that they will wait until you reply to the "hi" before asking the question, which is a waste of time. It's not impolite to say "Hi. If you have a moment, can you tell me why I am getting this error in my JS on line 20?". Saves hassle. I work for myself and am not at all overworked. Still annoyed by it. You wouldn't send an email saying "hi" (usually).

zapzupnz 8y ago

As the website suggests, those who still wish to say 'hello' can just integrate it into the same message as the question. There's no drops of humanity being squeezed out of the conversation, just the conversation being made more efficient to reflect the nature of the conversational medium. Your example 'hey, are you available for a quick question?' could easily have the question directly after that in the same line. No less polite, no less collegial, but much more efficient. Of course it bugs people, it causes us to sit and wait for something when it could have been given to us straight up. People don't have infinite amounts of time to devote to mere waiting. Perhaps it is because you work remotely that this isn't so much the case, but for busy IT help desks, dedicating screen space to a conversation with nothing useful in it for any period of time is both a waste of the user's time and the technician's. Our working environments aren't asking too much of us. There's absolutely nothing strenuous about people learning to adapt their mode of conversation for the medium, especially to meet everybody's efficiency needs. As the website stated, it's altogether possible to keep the polite chit-chat in the same post as the question.

nxc18 8y ago
You could just switch to some other activity while the colleague finishes typing their message. With a very basic policy change to how you receive messages, you can totally avoid all inefficiency. You also avoid supporting the transparent money grab of a website dedicated to a needless complaint that is 90% ads.
- geofft 8y ago
  The problem is I was already doing some other activity, and was interrupted. I'm happy to be interrupted if I can be helpful, I don't want to be interrupted when there's literally no point. Also, many people seem to want to get a reply to their "Hello" before they type more, so you have to switch over to the chat tab instead of just ignoring the notification.
  - aeternus 8y ago
    Exactly, there are so many articles showing how costly context switches are, especially for software developers. By saying hi in a separate message you are forcing the recipient to perform a completely avoidable context switch while also priming them for another. A cordial greeting before an ask is mostly an empty gesture anyway. If you actually care how someone's day is going, ask in person or via a message with more substance.

freyir 8y ago

I get a few notifications daily from my manager: “Hi. You there?” Morning, noon, and night. Maybe the intention is that I don’t have to respond. But every now and then, it’s about something important. So I have to stop what I’m doing every time, respond, wait for the actual message to be typed out, and realize it’s something unimportant that doesn’t need to be discussed on a Saturday afternoon. Maybe this is humane, but it’s also annoying.

alistairSH 8y ago
When I get those from my manger, it’s usually because he wants to discuss something private/sensitive, so cannot type out the question. It’s also stipulates always “r u there?” Followed by “come on down to room X so we can chat in private”
dennisgorelik 8y ago
> “Hi. You there?” Just reply "Hi" or "Here" or even "Not here" (if your manager understands jokes and you are ready to leave). You do not need to wait for the answer after that. Especially if it is not your work day. Please understand, that your manager is trying to solve a problem, and getting your help -- is not the only option for your manager. That is why he may not want to spend his time explaining the problem to you if you are not available anyway.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

I'm maybe hypersensitive to the 'quick question' question. That's already a question, and the next one isn't going to be quick. How about, just ask the question? Like "Can I get your attention today to help me figure out xxx?"

dfischer 8y ago

Yeah seriously, when I first read what this was about my reaction was concerning to say the least. Keep the humanity alive! We are not robots – yet.

Skunkleton 8y ago

I personally refuse to respond when coworkers just send a hello when I know they are just going to ask a question. Waste of everyone's time, and I don't appreciate someone who would never talk to me otherwise pretending to care about me.

CharlesW 8y ago
> Waste of everyone's time, and I don't appreciate someone who would never talk to me otherwise pretending to care about me. That's not what's happening. If there is a selfish reason (generally there's not), it's their handshaking protocol to discover if you're available to answer immediately.
- Skunkleton 8y ago
  I would guess it is because they haven't thought about what it is they are doing. There is a big difference between "hi" and "hi, do you have a few minutes to answer some questions".
- growse 8y ago
  I find that my availability to answer immediately depends on a number of things, one of which is the urgency or nature of the question. Usefully, in my experience, nobody opens an IM session where they need my help on a production outage with just 'Hi'. :) (I suspect I'm in a minority, but it's also why I hate answering the phone. An incoming phonecall is just a way for another person to unilaterally decide that they need my attention right now, which is often both disruptive and not true).

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago

>Sure, let's squeeze another drop of humanity out of conversing. You sure you're not overreacting a little? When I answer tech support questions, the first thing out of my mouth is "Hi I'm SlowRobotAhead, what is the problem you're having?" Not what can I do for you today, not tell me the setup, not what it is I do here. Tell me the problem have - and we'll see from there. That's not rude or removing humanity. It's polite by acknowledging we're not going to waste each other's time because of a mutual respect we start off with.

tunesmith 8y ago
>You sure you're not overreacting a little? Hehe... no. I wrote the comment, took it out, then decided it didn't really express what I was trying to put across, so put it back in. So I was clearly on the fence anyway! A fine line between pithiness and rudeness sometimes, I regret when I fall over into the latter.

mmaunder 8y ago

And this... "Short link to this page: http://nohello.com/ http://nohello.com/. (If you see that as someone's status, please be prepared to be ignored if you only say "Hello!".)" Is just a new way of being an asshole. Don't do that.

reificator 8y ago
> And this... [snip] is just a new way of being an asshole. Don't do that. I agree fully with the message behind the page. Put your greetings in the same message as the question. A lot of people seem to think it's rude, but I'm convinced that it's the only polite option and not doing so is rude. That said, I agree with you as well. Don't just set that as your status and ignore people. That's about the worst of all worlds.
ada1981 8y ago
This is from 2013, so not that new. And certainly not as bad as the folks who ask me to "please consider the environment before printing their email." Maybe even with some weird text-based tree art. I dislike most email footer text. Those privacy policy things are the worst. I'd love to see some annual award for most ridiculous email boilerplate text actually in use.
- viraptor 8y ago
  Just keep in mind that most privacy footers are company requirements. They may even be appended to all outgoing mail. The people who send them may be as annoyed by them as you.
  - ada1981 8y ago
    This is great > https://gizmodo.com/11-of-the-most-obnoxious-email-signatures-ever-1688536904 https://gizmodo.com/11-of-the-most-obnoxious-email-signature...
  - ada1981 8y ago
    Non-binding quasi-legalese. I'm not bound by a privacy agreement because I open your email. It's so silly and useless.

laughinghan 8y ago

Can I ask what kind of remote work you do, tunesmith? Perhaps some kinds of work are more sensitive to interruptions than others.

tunesmith 8y ago
Usually deep work, backend integrations and distributed communications, architectural consulting and implementation. So at least generally for me, when I'm blocked, I don't tend to be entirely blocked, where I need my answer now now now or everything is ruined. :) Plus, it's very important to have collegial relationships with the people that I am working with. I can see being more impatient with this if I were in Ops and everything was an urgent fire all the time. Sometimes you just need the information as quickly as possible and that's what you need to optimize for. But for me, if someone asks, "Hey, you there?" I'm sort of thankful for the opportunity to say, "Hey! How's it going, what's up?" rather than think, "Just ask me the question already!" As a remote worker it's often more important to optimize for the relationship because that's how you stay connected to what's going on.

wetpaws 8y ago

There is nothing about humanity, it's all about using communication tool right way. Phone is real-time. Chat is asynchronous. It's just as simple as this. You don't put phone call on hold and reply next day. You don't use text chat to expect realtime communication. Interestingly, people don't have this trouble with e-mail. No one sends an email with single line "hello" and expect a reply, because instinctively people expect email work like real paper mail. With chat they expect it to work like phone, although it's pretty much works on the same principles as email.

tunesmith 8y ago
I think this "chat is asynchronous" point gets abused to the point of being rather meaningless. People often, and I would say usually, want to have a synchronous -ish connection when they engage in chat. They want a person-to-person session. It's like synchronous with a generous timeout, or to stretch it, maybe it's like asynchronous -ish but with a very limited thread pool. But the point is it is mostly used to discuss as you would on the phone, except slightly slower so you can take advantage of other abilities, like the pasting of a code snippet or a log output or a screenshot, and so you can maintain the connection while you are doing some light multi-tasking or virtual pairing at the same time, or even just so you can avoid whatever minor social anxiety you might have. But if you're in a work conversation with someone on chat, and then they disappear for twenty minutes with no explanation or transition, that's usually not the etiquette and it's usually annoying. More common is they'll say "brb" or "ok, gotta do this other thing" or whatever. And even if you do have a question, it usually doesn't work to just drop the question in their chat, and then blithely expect an answer "whenever". They might have a followup question or a clarification when you aren't available, and then this simple exchange can stretch on for hours or days. So it's not like this totally asynchronous thing where people drop singular notes into each other's mailboxes and then go on about their days. It's more often a very efficient and low-friction alternative to scheduling fifteen-minute one-on-one meetings with someone or going and interrupting them at their desk.

raz32dust 8y ago

You have to think from the point of view of a person doing their own work, while being pinged by 5 people on slack. It is super annoying because this is what happens: - You're in the flow of working on your thing. - Now, you see a notification. But you decided to continue working but now you have a thing at the back of your head that you have to respond to the message. - Finally you take a break and decide to look at the pending messages, and you see just a hello. So now you have to respond with hello and know that you are going to be interrupted once again, because very likely, the other person is not looking at their slack at this time so they will respond later when you are busy again. It doesn't say, "Don't say hello". It says, "Don't say just hello". Say your greetings but also give a brief overview of the question. Saves everyone time and it isn't any less courteous.

biztos 8y ago

I'm also a remote worker and have been for many years. Everyone else on my team is in a different time zone than I am, many of them quite far apart. I get the "hello" message quite a bit on Slack, and I find it pretty reasonable, since the person hello-ing me is really asking "are you there? Because I expect you might not be, and I want your help with something." I think "hello" is a polite way to check for presence. If I reply (and the asker is still online) then it's a green light for the conversation. If I'm not online then fine. (I usually send messages like "Hi @coworker, can you please check the smoke alarm in the server room?" -- but the questions the coworkers have for me usually involve more Q&A than a one-liner would cover.)

alkonaut 8y ago
> I think "hello" is a polite way to check for presence. If I reply (and the asker is still online) then it's a green light for the conversation. It is. But typing a long question for say 5 minutes isn’t really “conversation” it’s just keeping someone waiting. That’s what the usual problem is. Not someone saying “hello” and then when greeted back they ask a 5 word question. In that situation it obviously makes no difference.
GordonS 8y ago
> I get the "hello" message quite a bit on Slack, and I find it pretty reasonable, since the person hello-ing me is really asking "are you there? I haven't used Slack for some time now, but I presume it's like every other I'm service in that it displays your current status, such as" Available", "Away" etc?
- gubbrora 8y ago
  Ime: available, away, busy - all mean "phone is on and person may or may not be available".
  - GordonS 8y ago
    I actually assume the status means what it says. Where I work we use Skype for Business, and it automatically changes to away if their is no interaction for some time or I lock my workstation. Skype also has Outlook integration, so automatically switches status to Busy if it knows I'm in a meeting. I presume other IM software does the same kind of thing.

alkonaut 8y ago

That’s fine. This isn’t exclusive. If you have a long question to ask me, just type it in a text editor. Then chat “hello, have you got time for a question” I answer “sure”. Then you paste the question instead of typing for 5 minutes. If the question is just 5 words or 100 words you can type them in 10 sec then sure I’ll wait. But that’s not how it usually works. You see it’s the people who are least used to chat and so both type the slowest that also misunderstand the greeting protocol. Greeting is fine. Greeting and then typing for 5 minutes is not. Also as a remote worker something that really annoys me is when someone goes “hi, got time for a question?” and then 20 minutes later “sorry someone just walked in”. Don’t do that. If you sent a hello, always pay attention at least 15 seconds and be ready to interact. Don’t ping and then go for coffee. And please ask people who walk in to wait while we finish chatting, or just tell me someone walked in you need to talk to so I can go on with work.

njepa 8y ago
While I would think it would be annoying, I think the multiparter (like one sentence per message) works pretty well for work stuff. The people I work with type pretty fast however. Maybe someone should bring back ytalk ;)

romanovcode 8y ago

OP is autistic, nothing to see here.

learc83 8y ago

When someone says "Hey are there?" there's pressure to respond right now--many times they won't ask if I don't. If someone just asks the question, I can respond when I have time.

geofft 8y ago

I don't find it polite and collegial; I find it rude. I appreciate that the intent is to be polite and collegial, but impact matters more than intent for rudeness.

reificator 8y ago

> Sure, 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. I don't think that's the takeaway. The message is more about treating chat as a lightweight email rather than treating it like face to face or phone calls. You'd never send an email that said hi, wait for the person to respond, and then respond to that with a question you wanted to ask them from the start. Chat should be the same way. That doesn't mean no pleasantries, it means bundle them up into your message.

chefandy 8y ago

I like a happy medium. I usually have my question typed out but send a "Hi, how are you?" ahead of time and actually read the answer, you know, because humanity. But then I've got the question ready to paste right then. Best of both worlds.

dennisgorelik 8y ago
If you already spend time typing your question - why not send it as well?
- chefandy 8y ago
  Because I care about the people I'm conversing with and want to know how they're doing. They aren't a search engine.

chillacy 8y ago

Hey are you available for a quick comment? ... In all seriousness, imagine if every response to your comment did that, and you had to reply and say Yes before they actually typed up their comment.

wufufufu 8y ago

As if there was any humanity to messaging someone as compared to face to face conversation?

serjts 8y ago

Why don't we just not care and do whatever we think is ok at the moment, then assuming everyone is honest and frontal enough we get feedback from our actions and address them at the resolution we can manage. It's not like everyone is the president.

jgvgkvljhvojg 8y ago

I have ADHD and every interruption harms my productivity. If a co-worker emails me "hello" there are two possibilities: 1) Notifications are enabled, and visible/audible to me. If I'm working, I will likely be set back by multiple minutes by the interruption. I respond back asking what they need and it takes them a few minutes to formulate their question, at which point I've possibly managed to refocus and begin working again. There is a desperate struggle to switch context without losing the mental model I have been building of the problem at hand, before I have the chance to record it by writing some code, a comment or personal notes. 2) Notifications are disabled. I see the "hello" an hour later. I respond "hi, what's up?" and my coworker is now in a meeting or something and takes an hour to get back to me. They respond with "I was wondering if you could help me with something" and the cycle begins anew. And by the way, I actually really like helping people with technical problems. I would sit around all day doing just that if I didn't have other work to do.

debt 8y ago

We’re not conversing, we’re trying to run a business. Get to the point sooner so we can solve the problem sooner. Let’s converse during non work hours.

zerkten 8y ago

In large organizations the person is likely "pinging" multiple people to see who is available to answer their question. This is deeply problematic because folks sitting next to each other look over, or comment on the usual suspect pinging each of them. This becomes an interruption for more than just folks on the end of the IM.

cptskippy 8y ago

It's odd but I don't find it polite. It's akin to calling someone on the phone and when they say "Hello", responding with "Hey cptskippy, let me put you on hold real quick." If you say "<small chat> <actual question>", I'm perfectly capable of responding "<small chat> <actual question || delaying response>". There's no need to decouple the questions and making one contingent on receiving a response from the preceding question. The downside to slamming a person with multiple questions is obviously aligning their responses to the questions asked. So there's obviously some thought that must go into formulating your questions. But I don't see any issue with opening your line of communication with small chat and your actual question as the responses would be easily distinguished.

fmpwizard 8y ago

I've been working remotely for about 13 years, something that I do with every new developer we hire, is to tell them that we are all available to answer their questions, no matter how "silly" they may think it is. I tell them not to worry about interrupting what we are doing, because if we are truly busy, we will not go into the chat app (flowdock in our case), but when we have a minute, we'll come to it and if the question is already there, we can answer it right away, instead of saying hi back and having no clue what the real question was. And we are all very polite about it, we do say things like: "Hi, if you have a minute, how do I get this code working?" And, we also have a "water cooler" room/flow, where we talk anything that isn't work related, weather, music, etc, and there sure, you can just say hi and nothing else. In my case, it is not that I'm on a tight deadline, we make sure to have almost no tight deadline, my case is, I'm probably playing with my kids, or about to have breakfast with my wife, so if you need me, and post your question along with "hi", I can answer before I step away from the computer. Hope this gives you an alternative view.

groby_b 8y ago

It's not "squeezing a drop of humanity". It's making the case that chat pretends to be a synchronous communication medium, but is actually asynchronous. Somebody just saying "Hi", without followup, is saying "I expect you have nothing else to do, except wait for me". That's not "humanity", that's entitlement. I do draw a distinction to "hey, available for a quick question", because that is stating a request - the person sending it asks for a chunk of our attention. It's a deliberate request to move to synchronous mode. And to forestall the "but isn't chat just like talking to each other" - no, no it isn't. Talking is 150 words per minute, and it's delivered as a continuous stream. Chatting is (if we're lucky) 50 wpm, and it's delivered bursty.

GordonS 8y ago

Maybe it's because I'm not American (or maybe it's because I'm possibly low down on the autistic spectrum) - but I absolutely hate the fake "how are you?" at the start of every single interaction (unless of course it's a friend who actually cares). It's even worse on telephone, Skype and IM, where any semblance of "personalism" is lost - someone starts a new conversation with "Hi, how are you?", and I have to respond to that before you'll just tell me why you're actually starting a conversation! How am I meant to respond? I invariably just say "yeah, fine, you?" - but I don't care, the other person doesn't care. It's just... awkward and pointless. I don't get what either party is meant to get our of this.

dennisgorelik 8y ago
> I absolutely hate the fake "how are you?" Just interpret "how are you?" as "Hi" and reply "Hi" or "Hi. What's up?" back.
- GordonS 8y ago
  Thanks for the advice, I'll give that a try

rictic 8y ago

Network effects create counterintuitive situations. If you pick a random one of your friends, that person probably has more friends than you do (this is true! for most values of "you" at least). I bet that it's likewise true that when you ask someone a question, it will usually be the case that that person answers more questions than you do (again, for most values of "you"). I think the distribution of how many questions a person is asked is very nonlinear. Someone who answers five questions a week is going to have a very different experience, and want very different social norms, than someone who answers fifty, or a hundred and fifty.

laumars 8y ago

The thing that irritates me about people who just say "hi" is it wastes my time. I stop what I'm doing to read their message only to find out that I now need to wait for them to ask that question - which isn't always quick because if you've not replied to them right away then they're likely off doing something else themselves. So my workflow has been interrupted for no good reason. I now passively aggressively handle this by posting lyrics of songs that feature their greeting in, like "Hey Jude". It usually gets a laugh but also makes a subtle point that their "Hey" follow up comment was a little pointless. I don't mind if people post something like this though: <13:00:00> Hi, hows things? <13:00:30> Did you manage to get that report sent? In that instance it's still 30 seconds before the follow up but at least they open with something more conversational and they're not waiting for me to respond before getting to the point.

tripzilch 8y ago

Humanity is taking into consideration what the other person may be doing, whether you are disturbing them and whether it's nice to make them wait for your question after typing "Hi". It's a very cultural thing whether and how much greeting is appropriate (I've heard this varies widely even within the USA). But empathy for the other is universally cool and appreciated. So you take a moment to consider the other, and you put your preferred greeting first, and add the question in the very same message. Bam! Best of worlds! Polite, nice, collegial and not making people wait and lose focus and switch context (which clearly is less of a deal to some people, but when it is, it's a big deal for some others). Reading the comments in this thread from the people defending to split the "Hi" and the question into two messages, I really wonder what is their reluctance to just type everything in one go? Because I'm not buying that saying "Hi" in a separate message and then waiting is somehow more polite than saying the very same things but in one single message. See, it sounds to me that it is them who don't like waiting. Sending a "Hi" first makes it more likely you have the other's (waiting) attention by the time you finished typing the question, so that you get an answer right away, not wasting any of your precious time. If you were to type your "Hi" and the actual question in one message, you spend your time and effort typing that question but the other person only gets the notification as you press <send>, and now it's you who has to wait in idleness. Much easier too, to quickly fire off a "Hi" first and only then start thinking about actually formulating your question.

spurgu 8y ago

Screw that. I just wait for 10 minutes before I engage in that chat (wishing I could turn off notifications for individual people in Slack), let the person say "Hi spurgu", followed by "Hope you are doing well" (and whatever else they come up with), after which they finally type out what they actually wanted to say. When they're done going through this horribly inefficient, annoying and time-wasting procedure I just directly respond to their question, without any added social bs. Then again I come from Finland.

taoufix 8y ago

What I personally do is to write my question down, copy it, say Hi, wait for a replay, then paste my question. And thus have the best of the two approches.