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> Accurate Chat Status > In meatspace you don't walk up to someone's desk and just start talking. This list seems to assume or suggest that chat should only be
by dahart 6y ago
> Accurate Chat Status
> In meatspace you don't walk up to someone's desk and just start talking.
This list seems to assume or suggest that chat should only be used for synchronous conversation... Are there reasons to avoid using chat asyncronously?
My assumption is that chat can be asynchronous, but I recognize many people don’t want to ask their question until I’m actively responding. I can imagine security concerns, like someone doesn’t want their question to be read by people near me or someone wandering by my desk while I’m away...
But, my status as to whether I can chat synchronously changes dozens of times per day, and I don’t particularly want to have to manually toggle my status when I’m on the phone or when I’m chatting with someone else, or when I’m in the middle of coding and prefer to answer your “quick question” later, since it will inevitably require a 10 minute conversation. Quick to ask is often not quick to answer.
- schwartzworld 6y agoDo people expect immediate responses to chat messages? if I ping a coworker and don't hear an immediate response, I just assume they're busy and use the time to ask my question in detail. am I am outlier here?
- dahart 6y agoI don’t know that people necessarily expect immediate responses, I don’t think you’re an outlier. But the article is explicitly calling for accurate chat status for the purpose of being able to chat synchronously and immediately. And there are some behaviors that indicate, if not the expectation to get immediate chat responses, at least the signal of being unwilling to use chat until responses will be immediate. I’m referring to how some people start their conversation with “hi”, and wait to hear back before telling you what they want to talk about.
- vsareto 6y agoIf you're doing incident response or on-call work, I think it needs to be more synchronous and more accurate. However, chat messages are more natural to me to indicate availability than setting the availability itself. Too many people don't set accurate statuses and it can get changed by the programs own rules, so it's a noisy signal IMO.
- rendaw 6y agoIf you're doing incident response or on-call people don't contact you based on your availability, you guarantee your availability so people can contact you.