hahaha. yep. A senior executive at my company would sometimes ping me with "got a minute?" And whenever I saw it, I'd always think > I'm about to get a raise

hahaha. yep. A senior executive at my company would sometimes ping me with "got a minute?" And whenever I saw it, I'd always think > I'm about to get a raise or i'm about to get fired When it's HR, or someone where the person sending the message is significantly more powerful than the person receiving it should consider that their "ping" might be interpreted as negatively as possible, unless they specifically indicate that everything is fine. (Turns out the VP was reaching out with some question about how we logged data to a 3rd party tool, not to fire me. :phew:) This was particularly challenging when a meeting would be scheduled. > VP: Hey wonder_er, I just put a meeting on your calendar to chat tomorrow spends 24 hours wondering if I'm going to be fired turns out the call was to say "good work, here's your annual performance bonus".