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 synchrono

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.