24 ms·

It is your responsibility to follow up (2019)

194 points by dbrereton 4y ago

cube00 4y ago
Email will go the way of ticketing systems and have a status for each message so you (or the system) can keep following up with a delightful series of canned messages. "Just circling back" "Any ETA on this?" "Checking in to see were we're up to" The other end can then color the messages depending on what reminder number you're on.
- toxik 4y ago
  Email is fundamentally different from ticketing systems in that the primary goal is communication, though email often serves as an ephemeral database also. With ticketing systems it’s the reverse, communication is incidental instead. Addendum: It’s actually better, in my experience, to treat ticketing systems like communication tools instead of issue tracking databases. In fact one of the more common sources of contention is engineers coming from a documenting/databasing point of view, and other system users approaching it more like a web forum.
meowzero 4y ago
Squeaky wheel gets the grease.
johnathandos 4y ago
Agree with the premise, and it can be more effective to choose a different medium for your follow-up communication. Someone not responding to email? Try sending an IM or giving them a phone call.
- johnathandos 4y ago
  To be clear, I don’t mean when you’re cold-emailing someone for an intro or a favor you don’t need. I mean when you have a dependency at work and can’t move forward without information from someone else.
deleted 4y ago
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xnickb 4y ago
It's a very shaky premise. Using that same logic I can derive: "If you want to meet with me, it's your responsibility to set up your mailbox filters" In fact if one cares about the said mailbox, there would never be any significant number of unread emails in the mailbox. This article is just a lame attempt to excuse self-centered people who couldn't be bothered
- ginja 4y ago
  >In fact if one cares about the said mailbox, there would never be any significant number of unread emails in the mailbox. I don't care about the mailbox and suck at managing it, but I do care about the people who reach out (if you give me a call or follow up I will always apologize and get you what you need). Usually I manage to get to everything, but when I'm swamped or when my mental health is not doing so well things start descending into chaos pretty fast. Recently it's been bad enough that I am considering just hiring a part-time secretary to organize things, reply to the trivial stuff and keep me in check so others don't have to.
- csydas 4y ago
  I'm not sure this follows. I have easily millions of emails per year controlled with excessive filtering to get through my day in a very organized way, and I still end up with messages that I just skip over if the apparent need/involvement from me isn't clear quickly. Time is very precious and especially in situations where someone wants something from you without any specific requirement for you to act, it's just common sense that these get deprioritized or ignored. > In fact if one cares about the said mailbox, there would never be any significant number of unread emails in the mailbox. I looked away from my laptop for about 15 minutes just a bit ago to take a fresh air break and came back with 80 emails that evaded filters ;) I'm not complaining "oh woe is me I am to be pitied", I'm just saying that not all inboxes and positions have the same email habits and patterns for filtering. Some critical things did sneak by because the senders have a different communication style than I planned for and the usual triggers I rely on failed. We're from different teams so none of us are responsible towards the other in any fashion, but there were critical issues to be addressed. People are very creatively complex, and when you hit a high mail volume, there just isn't enough waking time in the day to get every single item. Despite mailing lists/distribution lists, far far too many people are shy to write these for fear of looking stupid and prefer the "human" approach of 1 on 1 conversations. I don't blame such persons, and at the same time I don't feel bad that I'll absolutely deprioritize a 1 on 1 that could easily be delegated to my team, but the sender decided not to use the distribution list as we require. Absolutely I'm selfishly protecting my time; I'll gladly help people, but if it's not my specific job requirement or obligation to do so, then my help comes on my terms. Any other way and I'll likely be drinking to an early grave ;)
Group_B 4y ago
But what happens once everyone is sending 4+ follow up emails?
datadata 4y ago
This feels like a tragedy of the commons. The person being emailed has a finite amount of attention. Sending additional emails will only prioritize your topic for their attention until everyone does this trick, at which point the advantage of multiple emails will converge back to zero.
- 31835843 4y ago
  That is until the inflation forces a shift to another medium of higher value. It goes like this at my work: email -> Slack -> Meeting invite > Text Message(!) -> phone call (!!). If it gets to a phone call it better be the CEO stuck in a well and I’m the only person limber enough to pull him out, otherwise I’m just going to be mad.
  - throw10920 4y ago
    Still a tragedy of the commons situation. Slack, text messages, and phone calls are more synchronous media that demand more attention from the recipient - attention which you usually have no right to ask for - and escalation of everyone using email to Slack/meeting invite/text/phone call is worse off for everyone.
    - 31835843 4y ago
      Agreed. I wish I knew what the solution was. I used to be very anxious about following up on everything. But burn out has made me more resigned to the fact that it’s just impossible
      - throw10920 4y ago
        I haven't found a way of fixing this problem individually - I believe that the only solution is systemic/cultural, where the work culture has to change to one where initiators of communication are more restrained and receivers are more diligent about following up. I believe that the fact that senders are trigger-happy and receivers aren't great at reading suggests that the root problem behind both symptoms is that both groups don't value the time of others very well, which would explain both sides of the problem - although I'm open to alternative explanations.
ninkendo 4y ago
Does anyone else have trouble paying attention to email at all nowadays? Particularly in workplaces that use Slack or other chat software. I only have the focusing capacity to use one communication medium. I spend tons of mental energy making sure I reply to Slack threads and DM's, but at the end of all of it, my email inbox is sitting with thousands of unreads. The article says "if it's important, they'll follow up [again over email]", but in my mind at this point, it's more like "if it's important, they'll hit me up on slack." I think more generally, I hate having multiple communications systems. If we (at the workplace) generally move to Slack for communications, stop emailing me. I won't see it.
- kome 4y ago
  I do the contrary, i never even open slack, but i keep a 0 mail inbox. Slack is de facto, a way more annoying version of the email.
- 31835843 4y ago
  I go days without opening my inbox. When people send me emails I assume it’s like, FYI type stuff that I’ll find… someday?
- 121789 4y ago
  Depends on the company, I think. Current company barely uses email, but my old company was primarily email for anything important (mainly sharing deliverables and external communication)
- remram 4y ago
  I'm the opposite, my email is where the important stuff is. If you Slack me, GChat me, or contact me in any IM that doesn't have threads that I can mark back as "unread" if I'm busy or on the go... At best it's important enough that I send myself an email about it, to handle asynchronously. At worst I will never get back to you.
sjburt 4y ago
Tech recruiters seem to have some kind of god-awful candidate management software that sends follow ups automatically now. It's always the worst recruiters.
- bpicolo 4y ago
  The irony sometimes is that automating the best practice can make it so ubiquitous that it loses effectiveness. Bunch of tools for this. gem.com is a big one (it's also a data broker feast which is how they get your email in the first place)
  - throw10920 4y ago
    > automating the best practice can make it so ubiquitous that it loses effectiveness I believe that this is just tragedy of the commons.
billyjobob 4y ago
Whether I “follow up” depends on the purpose of the communication. If I’m asking to borrow money from someone then that clearly benefits me more than him so I will follow up if necessary. If I’m asking my friend to come to my party then no I won’t follow up. If his misses the party because he couldn’t be bothered to read all of his emails then that’s his loss, no skin off my nose.
throwaway98797 4y ago
it is, but never forget who is bad at email they don’t value you no one misses emails from high status people
AlwaysRock 4y ago
Most responses comes from the 2nd or 3rd email. For any external (not at my current company) outreach I expect to have to follow up 3 times at least to get a response.
cruano 4y ago
> Now, if he didn’t reply to you after having 4 chances to do so, that’s a pretty good indication that he doesn’t want to talk to you. But before that - it’s just you being stupid and thinking too much of yourself. Or, you should learn to use email instead of thinking too much of yourself. Unless you are CEO of a Fortune 500 you have no excuse to have 100K unread emails
- 31835843 4y ago
  Hm, not quite. Email at my company is also used as a catch-all notification bucket. That’s what the filters are for.
- ketzo 4y ago
  I dunno. I have learned that I truly have no sense for the amount of e-mail some people get. When I started working at a big company, I felt like a big kid because I was getting 20ish emails a day, many of them automated. Then I learned that my relative who runs a non-profit can get 1,000 emails from actual human beings in a single day. Her normal day is composing at least 250 individual, non-templates responses. And now scale that up to one of the biggest/hottest startups in the country at the time. I’m gonna say that’s kind of an excuse.
  - daydream 4y ago
    A 10 hour workday is 600 minutes. (Who works an 8 hour workday anymore? So 2019.) To write 250 individual non response template emails every day. It means she sits down at her desk at 8am, writes an email every 2.4 minutes for 10 hours straight, and then stops working at 6pm. Seems unlikely.
- prepend 4y ago
  I disagree. I have the same same mailbox I’ve had for 20 years and have lots of unread emails. I have to prioritize time and use the time that I would spend on 100k unread emails to better purposes. I think there’s probably zero important unread but tons of unimportant stuff. I think people have very individualized email coping mechanisms and I work on not assuming that my method works for everyone or thinking that someone has “no excuse.” If you are gainfully employed and produce good work and are professional to me, I don’t judge your email.
jongold 4y ago
fuck this - if you send me even one unsolicited follow up I'm setting up a filter to report all of your messages as spam if you text me once/day until you get a reply, I'm getting a restraining order have some respect
marban 4y ago
Simple rule of thumb: Only follow up with people you've been in touch previously.
perryizgr8 4y ago
> so unless you follow up, they will probably just ignore you, correctly believing that you do not even want to talk to them so much This is just bs. They are not "correctly believing", they are just assuming my time is worth less than theirs. Unless they are my direct boss, I won't be "following up" at all. I will just say I am blocked on action so-and-so by person so-and-so who is not responding.
- tssva 4y ago
  If I were your direct report and you said you were blocked on action so-and-so by person so-and-so who is not responding I would accept that for a brief period and then ask what you have done to follow up with the person including the use of alternative communication channels. If the answer was nothing the following conversation would not be a comfortable one.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ivanche 4y ago
    I had a team lead like that once. I ran away screaming ASAP at the first opportunity. How is that fair that I can reply within minutes to every email/slack/phone call, but multiple persons within the company don't ever reply and it's my fault???
    - tssva 4y ago
      Them not replying to an email is not your fault. What I would consider someone's responsibility is to follow up and try alternative communications to just sending an email. If that doesn't work then escalate it on your own accord to your team lead. What I would consider not acceptable is sending one email and just blocking any attempts at forward action because you didn't get a response. Quite honestly that type of behavior would make me happy to see you run away screaming.
      - ivanche 4y ago
political12345 4y ago
the lion, the witch, and the audacity of this ...
ormaaj 4y ago
It is _your_ responsibility to configure your mail filters and use your tools to organize your workflow in such a way that you do not miss important emails. Your failure to do so is your own failure. If you fail to see my email because you have a laughably amateaurish gmail-based workflow consisting of a single 100k-message inbox, then please, kindly fuck off. You're not worth my time. The notion that a message "must not be important because they only sent one" is absolutely hilarious! If I don't reply to your message, it's because I feel there is no need to reply or because I'm ignoring you. Sending multiple such "did you get my email?" followups will land you in the kill file. protip: I whitelist signed and / or encrypted emails and they go to the top of the queue. Spammers never PGP. Marketers and slimy recruiters can't be bothered to look up a public key. Easy way to get my attention.
- blairbeckwith 4y ago
  I think the problem is that what is important to the sender is not necessarily important to the receiver. I am not Travis of Uber, but I do have expertise in a domain such that I frequently get people reaching out to me to solicit advise or answers to a question. It is very important to the person asking the question that they get an answer. It is less important to me that they get an answer, and so if I'm busy at the moment those emails won't get a response. I do wish more people followed up though, because I do wish to help; the more they follow up without getting angry or hurt, the more likely they are to reach me at a time when I am able to help.
  - mbg721 4y ago
    That principle certainly applies to spam. The messages there are "I want to sell you something," and "I am not particularly interested in buying that thing."
  - ErrantX 4y ago
    This is an important distinction I think. I generally coach people who email regularly to explain the why behind a question or the value to them of me answering. If your consistently failing an audit because I am ignoring you then you you can have an answer.
dobin 4y ago
100k unread mails, of which 75k are "hey have you got my previous emails" ? If someone doesnt answer me after the first email, too bad for him - i will go somewhere else.
Claude_Shannon 4y ago
I disagree. On contrary, if you do follow-ups, the recipient may think you're too pushy and entitled. I'd never dare send follow-up in my university.
jefftk 4y ago
If you respond only to people who follow up, you're filtering for more dedicated senders. On the other hand, even if you're a very busy person who gets a ton of email, dedication is a very rough proxy for importance.
- Hizonner 4y ago
  No, you're filtering for assholes.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    If not receiving a response is strong evidence that they're not interested then yes, but with how the majority of people use email it isn't. A lot of people just miss a large fraction of incoming email. This approach to filtering does give you a higher level of jerks, but not overwhelmingly so.
    - Hizonner 4y ago
      It also gives you a lower level of non-jerks. Basically if you do not act like a jerk, you will get ignored. Norms that actively punish being reasonable and considerate are bad norms, and people who promote norms like that should feel bad.
duxup 4y ago
Isn't this encouraging spamming MORE communication because the inbox or whatever channel is full? Now what? I half suspect the just "hello" messages are a form of this whole game, rather than write a whole long block of text that might be ignored, they think they have to spam someone so they just fire off a hello... and maybe another ... https://nohello.net/en/ https://nohello.net/en/ Great job guys... Depends on the context but I really don't want to have to follow up with everyone. It happens in some cases so I will, but as a rule having to repeatedly follow up means I stop caring. If someone is so busy I always have to follow up I'm not wasting my time just to hope to get their attention ... maybe.
- kstrauser 4y ago
  Huh, I think you just described bufferbloat.
zhte415 4y ago
Perhaps Travis would only have 25k emails if not everyone was expected to send him 4 emails where 1 would have sufficed. Or to manage his inbox rather than spending time reading self-help and 'art of productivity' thought pieces from 'very important' people / his self-selection of 'influencers'. No sarcasm is intended here. I'm reminded of an article entitled 'Wanted: employees who are good at getting things done' https://www.ft.com/content/d77f4d06-4fc0-11e4-908e-00144feab7de https://www.ft.com/content/d77f4d06-4fc0-11e4-908e-00144feab... The 'getting things done' take-away was, conscientiousness.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  I have 30,000 unread emails in Gmail. I don't see why I need to do anything about it as long as I'm not missing emails. In fact, email management would entail that I do more work (like delete vs archive every message) for the same end result even if it would feel like productivity.
  - rexpop 4y ago
    > as long as I'm not missing emails From the article, it sounds like Travis was missing 75% of emails.
    - hombre_fatal 4y ago
      I don't think you can say that, and that's why I don't think it's really an email issue but a more general one about async communication. I'd liken it to any time you click into a chat/SMS/WhatsApp notification, read it, but don't respond. Maybe you just don't want to deal with it at the moment. Maybe you're busy. Maybe a response takes some thought and you aren't ready. You didn't miss the message. You just didn't do the extra work of ensuring you'd deal with it. Just think of how few notifications you get that demand that kind of action. This is how a lot of personal/social stuff goes. But especially for the sort of "cold call" emails in TFA. Frankly, I don't see inbox-zero vs inbox-30000 much related to this. Just because you have inbox-zero certainly doesn't mean you respond to every email on the spot. Nor does it mean you treat every email with the same priority. Those two things are all you need for emails to slip through. It's all the same result and it doesn't matter because the point is about the email sender, not the receiver.
TameAntelope 4y ago
Hey look, it's the very same bro culture that caused Travis Kalanick to have to step down from Uber in the first place! Maybe it's true, but acting like it should be true, and insulting the people reading the article for apparently not knowing it's true is toxic masculinity. Is the author an early Uber employee? That would make a ton of sense, and if not he would have fit right in.
3pt14159 4y ago
This is one option, and I'm sure it works for some people, but I prefer to overdeliver for the trusted contacts that I actually have then get introductions slowly over time to more important people. Not my only tactic, but by far the best one. I don't really care about status or wealth, but I've had calls with multiple billionaires and world renowned subject area experts. None of these were from cold calling or cold emailing. Honestly, I've found cold contacting to be such a slog that it demoralizes me more than the meagre amount of work it brings in. Sometimes the front door works and its the only option for some circumstance or another, but if you have enough time and enough of a buffer there's always a better way. Even something as simple as finding, say, the person's philanthropic foundation and showing up to a $500 fundraising dinner is far, far more effective. But for some, the sales grind works just fine and they like the fact that they can set up funnels and process around it. I prefer a more fortuitous, organic life. I find it more fulfilling and authentic.
nnoitra 4y ago
Yeah, just pester them. Show up at their doorstep while you're at it.
haolez 4y ago
Oh. That might explain why I've started receiving lots of follow up spam e-mails that are obviously sent by automated Crams and often doesn't even get my name or the company's correctly.
bluepizza 4y ago
> I live by the rule that if it’s important, the sender will follow up. This is a silly rule. Maybe the sender will reach out to a competitor.
Railsify 4y ago
If you sent a personal friend 2 twitter DMs, then 2 emails, and then 3 text messages and they don't reply, I don't think they are a friend. My inbox gets pounded as well but if a personal friend emails I skip all the other emails and reply to that one first.
- MiddleEndian 4y ago
  Yeah my friends know how to reach me, doesn't matter how busy my work email is. I'd be really surprised if the CEO of Uber didn't have a way for his actual friends to reach him that was unrelated to his 100,000 new email work inbox.
- ryanbrunner 4y ago
  Absolutely agreed. I think the parent article is decent advice for cold e-mails, but for personal interactions not responding is a good way to lose friends over time.
einpoklum 4y ago
You should: 1. Create an email subfolder hierarchy. 2. Automate a categorization of messages to said folders Now you have a much more managable set of email backlogs. Spend some time getting to "0 unread" in all important categories (and in "uncategorized") - and then you can live like a king _keeping_ those subfolders at 0 unread.
pdimitar 4y ago
"If you want to connect to famous and busy people, you should keep trying N number of times". "I am too important and you should pester me until I reply because did I mention I am important?" Yeah, very profound insights, lol.
scarface74 4y ago
This is really bad take especially the part about him wanting to meet his friend when he is town. With a close “friend”, I’m going to text him once or twice to his personal phone, then call him. If he doesn’t answer my text or phone calls, I’m calling his wife to see if everything is okay. Because after us being friends for 30 years, I know some of his people. I can at least reach out to them on FB messenger. If it is someone I don’t know that well, I’m playing 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon until I can reach them through my network if it’s business related.
hitovst 4y ago
This is a foolish waste of time.
wiz21c 4y ago
My strategy is simple: I just walk to the person's desk, have a chat and kindly ask if he can help me. Health point : I walk. Social point: you get to understand the person better and feel if he/she's under pressure. It doesn't scale. But I work only with people I need to meet. Customer is different. I'll pick the phone more often than not. Yeah, meeting people is more stressful than sending emails. But in the end, it gets better.
rob74 4y ago
Or otherwise said, "it is your responsibility to be more obnoxious than others, maybe then you get noticed". However being obnoxious is not really a good first impression, so maybe you will be ignored anyway...
VectorLock 4y ago
The most "follow-up" emails I get are from spammy sales people I already hit "Report Spam" on their previous emails. Guess I'm not important enough to be chased until exhaustion, held down, and have my face screamed into.
floverfelt 4y ago
This post crops up enough and annoys me enough that I wrote a full response to it: https://floverfelt.org/posts/it-is-your-responsibility-to-respond https://floverfelt.org/posts/it-is-your-responsibility-to-re... It's pretty sad that we've reached the point of spamming close friends just to get their attention, though I understand exactly what he's talking about. I just don't think it translates at all to a knowledge work setting.
- EddieDante 4y ago
  If you have to spam me to get my attention, you probably aren't actually a friend of mine, just an acquaintance that I continue to tolerate because you haven't done anything egregious enough to deserve being told to fuck off and die. Spamming me will erode my tolerance very quickly. There is really only one person to whom I have a responsibility to respond, and we've been married twenty years. Everybody else can damn well wait -- possibly until the first Tuesday after Ragnarok.
can16358p 4y ago
It works the opposite for me: If someone constantly sends me emails and follow-ups my brain automatically flags them as unsolicited spam and usually I reply with the word "unsubscribe" (even if they were a real person). I'm just a random dude, and I don't want to imagine it for people who remotely have some attention. In a world with 8 billion people, we should simply accept that not everyone has the luxury of reaching another random person from those 8 billion people.
brownwolf 4y ago
Interesting...
13113 4y ago
asadkn 4y ago
Anyone who tries to follow-up more than twice comes off as desperate or an automated spambot. I don't appreciate that hustle. 2 follow-ups should be the absolute limit (preferably, a single follow up).
- Hizonner 4y ago
  On a lot of subjects, sending cold email AT ALL is pushing the envelope. It might be convenient for you to communicate with somebody, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable for you to waste their time. Unless you have a specific reason to believe that there's been some error in the way your email was handled, or unless you have some positive right to a claim on the person's attention, following up IN ANY WAY is beyond the pale.
  - TillE 4y ago
    Yeah, unless you have some kind of prior relationship with the person, it seems extremely weird and annoying to send follow-ups when they haven't answered. Unless you work in PR and that's your job or something.
jrochkind1 4y ago
Gross. If the problem is email overload, everyone sending you 2-4 emails instead of one is actually making the problem worse, right? But yeah, in contemporary society it's hard to get in touch with people, unclear what the etiquette is, and it may take multiple attempts. Is just a fact, sure. I'm not sure about "responsibility". If OP is actually about how to be effective making sales emails (recruiters included), then I have no experience to have an opinion on that, but I would unfortunately believe that when doing sales communications, the venn diagram of effectiveness and annoyingness may have a lot of overlap.
gorbachev 4y ago
Sending four emails to someone who doesn't even open the emails is not going to help. The author should've advised people trying to reach Travis to ambush him somewhere, or get the attention of someone he interacts regularly and ask them to act as an intermediary.
bombela 4y ago
I wonder if a secretary would reduce the friction. First, let's agree that we almost all do this. As soon as we have a bit of power, we allow ourselves to forget replying. You really need this plumber right now? The plumber suddenly ignores you. They know they can let you work for it, you are the one in need. A new bug report comes in and you are the only one that can fix it? They better get going sending those follow up emails already. When I was a wee programmer in search of a job, I would beg to be considered and would reply to any email in mere minutes. Now that the tables have turned, I can just wait for recruiters to follow up few times until I grace them with an answer. The ones that do not follow up? No need to reply. At work I got some high ranked title? The juniors better be honing theirs ping skills. My point is, as soon as we have a bit of power, it is easy to drop the ball. Because you can simply ignore the issue as you don't need the resolution as much as the person asking. Anytime you want or need something, you must be ready to spend time asking over and over again. What a colossal waste of time for all humans. And so I wonder, is this what a secretary solves by being paid to be conscientious for you?
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  > I wonder if a secretary would reduce the friction. Yes, also because any secretary worth his/her salt has a hidden unique power: forwarding emails to the correct people who can handle them.
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  > I wonder if a secretary would reduce the friction. Every CEO I worked with that had a PA did a much better job of handling email, reviewing documents and meetings. Not that they were necessarily better CEOs ... but at least they didn't miss/ignore important emails and came to meetings prepared.
- SyneRyder 4y ago
  > You really need this plumber right now? The plumber suddenly ignores you. They know they can let you work for it, you are the one in need. Plumbers have an even better way of dealing with this. If you really, absolutely need them right now, they provide an emergency service - but you have to pay $250 extra. Turns out that $250 cost filters out most people who decide their dripping tap doesn't actually need following up after all. Plumbers often have a secretary / screener handle their incoming calls. Maybe instead of repeated "follow up" emails, actually hiring someone and paying the consulting fee for their time is more likely to get through. Time is valuable, and most of these "follow up" emails are from people who do not respect or value your time. It's even part of default spam scripts: "Following Up On My Email From Last Week" is the subject line of a Chinese quadcopter spam email that went direct to my spam folder today.
Hizonner 4y ago
If you "follow up" like that, you are, in fact, a rude piece of shit. Maybe you just don't get to have a conversation with just anybody you feel like talking to.
abledon 4y ago
So when do inboxes evolve into having a second layer that only filters emails with follow ups as real ones, and everyone sending emails has an AI that follows up x3 or more lol
tpoacher 4y ago
> I live by the rule that if it’s important, the sender will follow up. And I live by the rule that narcissistic assholes who don't value my time don't deserve that second email. You can at least acknowledge the email to say you'll reply later, saving everyone grief (not to mention another 4 followup emails cramming up your inbox even further, if Alex Guzey is to be believed).
- tpoacher 4y ago
  This is classic bottleneck theory btw. Address the bottleneck in your workflow, not pre/post bottleneck problems. It's not just common decency, it's actually the most efficient way to deal with your email backlog.
- vecter 4y ago
  This is entirely unrealistic and totally detached from reality. Someone like Travis Kalanick simply cannot reply to everyone who emails him. He literally wouldn't have enough time to do that if he just replied to emails 24/7/365, along with the work associated with replying to those emails, which is often way more than the time to write a response. The truth is, most people don't value your time because you don't deserve their time. I don't mean this in a judgmental way. It's a cold hard fact of reality. If I emailed Mark Cuban, the President of the United States, or Jeff Bezos and they didn't respond to me, that doesn't logically make them narcissistic assholes (they may or may not be, I don't know, but whether they are or aren't is entirely independent of their responsiveness to my cold outreach email). The fact that they didn't respond to my email doesn't make them assholes and it doesn't make me any less of a human being. There's no need to get emotional or moralistic about this. Your suggestion to acknowledge the email is even worse, because they'd be dishonest by saying that they'd get back to you later. As I pointed out earlier, they literally do not have the time to respond to every email if they spent every minute of their lives doing so. When it comes to trying to get in touch with someone whose attention is valuable, it's best to put your ego aside.
  - tpoacher 4y ago
    Context is important here. The article starts by mentioning Travis Kalanick, but the quote itself appears in the context of it being presented as a general rule for handling email queues, and a good idea at that: > The moral here is the following: whenever you send an email to somebody (especially to somebody busy), imagine that this is what their inbox looks like. Unless you send a follow up, you’re not even trying. And they know it, so unless you follow up, they will probably just ignore you, correctly believing that you do not even want to talk to them so much. As Jennifer Doleac notes: I live by the rule that if it’s important, the sender will follow up. In that context, where the expectation is that you should reply (and you're not Jeff Bezos), then acting like this is simply being an asshole. You are explicitly saying "my time is more valuable than yours so I expect you to waste more of yours repeatedly until I decide to deign you with a response." Note I'm not even disputing the main point of the article, that it's your responsibility as the sender to follow up. That's actually good advice. But if you as the receiver, are systematically ignoring email because you expect people to email repeatedly until you feel like answering? That's not "efficient email practices". That's just being a dick on a power trip. In the context that you are emailing Jeff Bezos, of course, then naturally I agree with you: one sucks it up and accepts that realistically Jeff probably gets a million of these a day, probably going straight to spam, and chances are you're not gonna get a response and shouldn't take it personally.
deleted 4y ago
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devmor 4y ago
On the flip side, I get about ~2.3k emails a day. If I've not responded to your first email - I could have passed over it. If I haven't responded to your second and third emails, I'm not interested and continuing to contact me is just spam. I use filters and tags to categorize my email so its very unlikely that I'd ever miss an email I wanted to read. The person in the article seems like they have some kind of executive disfunction when it comes to dealing with communications - which is entirely understandable, many people do. But it's on them to find the methodology to cope with that, not on other people to keep re-sending reminders to read a message they've already sent.
gk1 4y ago
Cool to see my quote in there... Since I wrote that post, I took a VP role at a startup and am now living on the other side of this. I'm constantly getting emails from people wanting to sell to / partner with / work with / work for Pinecone. I try to reply within 48 hours but the reality is that these emails are competing with those of my team, the CEO, other departments in the company, big partners, big customers, candidates I'm trying to hire, contractors that are blocked on me... And all those compete with time for deep work, family, and recharging. I actually appreciate a few follow-ups for important or urgent things. And I do sometimes interpret a lack of follow-ups to mean the matter isn't all that important anyway.
jovial_cavalier 4y ago
I'm thinking too much of myself if I assume that you will read an email I send to you and follow up with me at some point if it's appropriate? I guess that reveals what is thought of me...
HWR_14 4y ago
It's the responsibility of the party with more to gain to follow up/ensure they see the emails. Anything else is just sugar coating the power dynamic. But telling people they are expected to follow up is important for people who think that they aren't supposed to. I think it's universal that anyone who would have questions about following up should.
Ensorceled 4y ago
This kind of thinking is why I'm always on 10-20 different drip campaigns from random strangers on the internet.
mhb 4y ago
Hello. Amazon here. I see you bought some diapers but didn't reply when I asked if you wanted more diapers. Perhaps you missed my inquiry...
seqizz 4y ago
What? This is greylisting on mental level. If I say "hi" to you and you ignore me, I won't repeat it. It's your responsibility to get your "things" together..
jordanpg 4y ago
This reminds me of people who spend an inordinate amount of time talking about and reminding everyone of how busy they are.
udev 4y ago
[flagged]
yakkityyak 4y ago
I think I am the only person in my office who religiously keeps their unread message count to 0.
- april_22 4y ago
  I get anxious when my unread message count is not at 0.
kerblang 4y ago
Idealism: You don't manage your inbox! Shame on you! I deserve to be angry with you! I shall now grow a long and angry beard of indignation Pragmatism: Fuck it I'm gonna jam some more emails up your ass
wly_cdgr 4y ago
No and furthermore, fuck you
BLO716 4y ago
Unfortunately, email is not a business process. I'll leave it at that. I may be on my own little island over here in the middle of the sea of internets - but, going to hold that opinion till I die.
chrismarlow9 4y ago
I bet if I cc Travis boss on the email I get a response. :) . I always have a backup plan for emails not getting read, and typically state it in the email. Things like, "if I don't hear back I'll assume you want me to make this a ticket and assign it to you". Then it's out of my hands.
jwie 4y ago
I think this is not only wrong, but harmful advice. Speaking louder or more frequently does not cause attention. The opposite is true. Speaking less, and softer, causes your interlocutor to focus on what you're saying. He has to try harder to hear, and thus values it more.
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
  > Speaking louder or more frequently does not cause attention. The opposite is true. Speaking less, and softer, causes your interlocutor to focus on what you're saying. He has to try harder to hear, and thus values it more. This presupposes attention given in the form if reading your email which isn't a given for the email disorganized.
- nnoitra 4y ago
  Actually there are tons of techniques that one can use if they are willing to abandon integrity. As a matter of fact I've consistently seen bootlickers and shady tacticians advance really fast in their careers and lives.
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
I literally don't read (work) email unless personally asked to or unless I expect an important email. I haven't missed anything.
ilikehurdles 4y ago
This applies if the masses' perception of your importance is as inflated as your own. It fails in contexts where the person messaging you can just move on without your input. ie., I'm making a decision and I'm informing you as a likely-interested party. I'm not going to force you to be included if you're not actively including yourself, and if the decision doesn't have the outcome you desired, that's on you. And this doesn't work for my inbox. If you're cold-emailing multiple times, your emails are already going to spambox, and each is just earning you another negative ding. This goes for all tech recruiters and anyone who succeeds at guessing my work email using context clues from LinkedIn. I don't owe you my attention any more than I owe it to any other stranger on the street.
Perseids 4y ago
One way to understand why this article produces so deeply emotional responses, is that it says "it is right and proper to defect in this prisoner's dilemma"[1]. Why is it a prisoner's dilemma? - Nobody writes follow-ups: everyone has an equal chance of being noticed and only has to write one email (and the recipient gets relatively little mail). - You write follow-ups, but nobody else does: you get an overproportional chance of being viewed at the expense of everyone writing just one mail. Also you have to put up more work to organise and write the follow-ups, but that is very much worth the extra benefit for you. - You write one mail, and everybody writes follow-ups: you get an under-proportional chance of being found in the sea of mails, much to your dismay. - Everybody writes follow-ups (what TFA suggests): everyone has equal chances of being noticed, but everyone has to put up the extra work for the follow-ups (and the recipient gets a factor of three more mails). My personal opinion on the article is that it is greatly damaging, as it is difficult as hell for society to effectively normalize "cooperate" behavior in such situations, even without voices suggesting "defecting" is your moral responsibility. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
- MrBlueIncognito 4y ago
  The alternative is to encourage people to not overdo follow-ups. Those with a strong moral compass with understand your words and play fair, others won’t. This will place the former group at a severe disadvantage. The only practical way to level the playing field is what the article suggests. Edit: now that I come to think of it, another potential solution might be to encourage the people who receive a lot of emails/messages to ignore follow-ups and only recognize the first piece of communication that was sent to them.
- _dain_ 4y ago
  i think this is a preposterous over-exaggeration of the situation. it's just people sending emails to each other for goodness sake.
  - rexpop 4y ago
    Our society runs on people sending emails to each other, as it happens. What could have higher stakes?
sfriedr 4y ago
A lot of facets of this power balance have been mentioned. Here's a new one (I think): Imagine busy CEO B that doesn't care about your time, that you need to pester with emails to get his attention. Now imagine thinking-along CEO T that tries to have a well organized inbox, possibly assisted by a secretary, so that when you send him an email you receive an auto-response telling you when and if you should get a response and how you should interpret a no-response; this may include letting people know that too complicated or unclear messages will go unresponded. (Richard Stallmann had this approach when I mailed him years ago, before his scandal, where I'd get a response with an average waiting time in hours, pretty neat. Using NLP probably anyone could filter his/her mail quite efficiently these days.) Who would you want to have as a boss? Yes, it's a power balance. But all parties should wield their power responsibly.
- poslathian 4y ago
  It sounds like you are saying Stallman is supposed to be the more desirable boss. Is that really what you meant? If so, then I would pick a different public figure for your example. I have first hand experience with this, and, lol.
JamesSwift 4y ago
Yeah.. I'm definitely in the camp of "follow up more than once and I instantly mark you as spam". If its an urgent message you are sending me then fine, whatever (although you should have alternate means of contacting me as well). If you are just "hustling" then no, absolutely do not badger me in any communication channel. Its like a telemarketer saying "just keep leaving voicemails until they call you back", or a door-to-door person saying "you have to knock for several minutes to be sure they heard you". No way! One follow up, no exceptions. Work on your pitch instead of spamming the void.
hoseja 4y ago
A major problem is you still can't mark an email as read from GMail android notification.
MathMonkeyMan 4y ago
It's your responsibility to follow up in the sense that if you need them and they don't need you, then it's on you. But if you're reaching out to them about one of their responsibilities in the organization, then it's on them. "He dropped the ball" is a perfect reason for my not having accomplished a goal. Nagging might help, but it does not address the problem. On the other hand, "avoid regression to the weakest" is something to avoid. Not sure how to avoid that without "managing" people.

194 points by dbrereton 4y ago

Email will go the way of ticketing systems and have a status for each message so you (or the system) can keep following up with a delightful series of canned messages. "Just circling back" "Any ETA on this?" "Checking in to see were we're up to" The other end can then color the messages depending on what reminder number you're on.

toxik 4y ago
Email is fundamentally different from ticketing systems in that the primary goal is communication, though email often serves as an ephemeral database also. With ticketing systems it’s the reverse, communication is incidental instead. Addendum: It’s actually better, in my experience, to treat ticketing systems like communication tools instead of issue tracking databases. In fact one of the more common sources of contention is engineers coming from a documenting/databasing point of view, and other system users approaching it more like a web forum.

meowzero 4y ago

Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

johnathandos 4y ago

Agree with the premise, and it can be more effective to choose a different medium for your follow-up communication. Someone not responding to email? Try sending an IM or giving them a phone call.

johnathandos 4y ago
To be clear, I don’t mean when you’re cold-emailing someone for an intro or a favor you don’t need. I mean when you have a dependency at work and can’t move forward without information from someone else.

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xnickb 4y ago

It's a very shaky premise. Using that same logic I can derive: "If you want to meet with me, it's your responsibility to set up your mailbox filters" In fact if one cares about the said mailbox, there would never be any significant number of unread emails in the mailbox. This article is just a lame attempt to excuse self-centered people who couldn't be bothered

ginja 4y ago
>In fact if one cares about the said mailbox, there would never be any significant number of unread emails in the mailbox. I don't care about the mailbox and suck at managing it, but I do care about the people who reach out (if you give me a call or follow up I will always apologize and get you what you need). Usually I manage to get to everything, but when I'm swamped or when my mental health is not doing so well things start descending into chaos pretty fast. Recently it's been bad enough that I am considering just hiring a part-time secretary to organize things, reply to the trivial stuff and keep me in check so others don't have to.
csydas 4y ago
I'm not sure this follows. I have easily millions of emails per year controlled with excessive filtering to get through my day in a very organized way, and I still end up with messages that I just skip over if the apparent need/involvement from me isn't clear quickly. Time is very precious and especially in situations where someone wants something from you without any specific requirement for you to act, it's just common sense that these get deprioritized or ignored. > In fact if one cares about the said mailbox, there would never be any significant number of unread emails in the mailbox. I looked away from my laptop for about 15 minutes just a bit ago to take a fresh air break and came back with 80 emails that evaded filters ;) I'm not complaining "oh woe is me I am to be pitied", I'm just saying that not all inboxes and positions have the same email habits and patterns for filtering. Some critical things did sneak by because the senders have a different communication style than I planned for and the usual triggers I rely on failed. We're from different teams so none of us are responsible towards the other in any fashion, but there were critical issues to be addressed. People are very creatively complex, and when you hit a high mail volume, there just isn't enough waking time in the day to get every single item. Despite mailing lists/distribution lists, far far too many people are shy to write these for fear of looking stupid and prefer the "human" approach of 1 on 1 conversations. I don't blame such persons, and at the same time I don't feel bad that I'll absolutely deprioritize a 1 on 1 that could easily be delegated to my team, but the sender decided not to use the distribution list as we require. Absolutely I'm selfishly protecting my time; I'll gladly help people, but if it's not my specific job requirement or obligation to do so, then my help comes on my terms. Any other way and I'll likely be drinking to an early grave ;)

Group_B 4y ago

But what happens once everyone is sending 4+ follow up emails?

datadata 4y ago

This feels like a tragedy of the commons. The person being emailed has a finite amount of attention. Sending additional emails will only prioritize your topic for their attention until everyone does this trick, at which point the advantage of multiple emails will converge back to zero.

31835843 4y ago
That is until the inflation forces a shift to another medium of higher value. It goes like this at my work: email -> Slack -> Meeting invite > Text Message(!) -> phone call (!!). If it gets to a phone call it better be the CEO stuck in a well and I’m the only person limber enough to pull him out, otherwise I’m just going to be mad.
- throw10920 4y ago
  Still a tragedy of the commons situation. Slack, text messages, and phone calls are more synchronous media that demand more attention from the recipient - attention which you usually have no right to ask for - and escalation of everyone using email to Slack/meeting invite/text/phone call is worse off for everyone.
  - 31835843 4y ago
    Agreed. I wish I knew what the solution was. I used to be very anxious about following up on everything. But burn out has made me more resigned to the fact that it’s just impossible
    - throw10920 4y ago
      I haven't found a way of fixing this problem individually - I believe that the only solution is systemic/cultural, where the work culture has to change to one where initiators of communication are more restrained and receivers are more diligent about following up. I believe that the fact that senders are trigger-happy and receivers aren't great at reading suggests that the root problem behind both symptoms is that both groups don't value the time of others very well, which would explain both sides of the problem - although I'm open to alternative explanations.

ninkendo 4y ago

Does anyone else have trouble paying attention to email at all nowadays? Particularly in workplaces that use Slack or other chat software. I only have the focusing capacity to use one communication medium. I spend tons of mental energy making sure I reply to Slack threads and DM's, but at the end of all of it, my email inbox is sitting with thousands of unreads. The article says "if it's important, they'll follow up [again over email]", but in my mind at this point, it's more like "if it's important, they'll hit me up on slack." I think more generally, I hate having multiple communications systems. If we (at the workplace) generally move to Slack for communications, stop emailing me. I won't see it.

kome 4y ago
I do the contrary, i never even open slack, but i keep a 0 mail inbox. Slack is de facto, a way more annoying version of the email.
31835843 4y ago
I go days without opening my inbox. When people send me emails I assume it’s like, FYI type stuff that I’ll find… someday?
121789 4y ago
Depends on the company, I think. Current company barely uses email, but my old company was primarily email for anything important (mainly sharing deliverables and external communication)
remram 4y ago
I'm the opposite, my email is where the important stuff is. If you Slack me, GChat me, or contact me in any IM that doesn't have threads that I can mark back as "unread" if I'm busy or on the go... At best it's important enough that I send myself an email about it, to handle asynchronously. At worst I will never get back to you.

sjburt 4y ago

Tech recruiters seem to have some kind of god-awful candidate management software that sends follow ups automatically now. It's always the worst recruiters.

bpicolo 4y ago
The irony sometimes is that automating the best practice can make it so ubiquitous that it loses effectiveness. Bunch of tools for this. gem.com is a big one (it's also a data broker feast which is how they get your email in the first place)
- throw10920 4y ago
  > automating the best practice can make it so ubiquitous that it loses effectiveness I believe that this is just tragedy of the commons.

billyjobob 4y ago

Whether I “follow up” depends on the purpose of the communication. If I’m asking to borrow money from someone then that clearly benefits me more than him so I will follow up if necessary. If I’m asking my friend to come to my party then no I won’t follow up. If his misses the party because he couldn’t be bothered to read all of his emails then that’s his loss, no skin off my nose.

throwaway98797 4y ago

it is, but never forget who is bad at email they don’t value you no one misses emails from high status people

AlwaysRock 4y ago

Most responses comes from the 2nd or 3rd email. For any external (not at my current company) outreach I expect to have to follow up 3 times at least to get a response.

cruano 4y ago

> Now, if he didn’t reply to you after having 4 chances to do so, that’s a pretty good indication that he doesn’t want to talk to you. But before that - it’s just you being stupid and thinking too much of yourself. Or, you should learn to use email instead of thinking too much of yourself. Unless you are CEO of a Fortune 500 you have no excuse to have 100K unread emails

31835843 4y ago
Hm, not quite. Email at my company is also used as a catch-all notification bucket. That’s what the filters are for.
ketzo 4y ago
I dunno. I have learned that I truly have no sense for the amount of e-mail some people get. When I started working at a big company, I felt like a big kid because I was getting 20ish emails a day, many of them automated. Then I learned that my relative who runs a non-profit can get 1,000 emails from actual human beings in a single day. Her normal day is composing at least 250 individual, non-templates responses. And now scale that up to one of the biggest/hottest startups in the country at the time. I’m gonna say that’s kind of an excuse.
- daydream 4y ago
  A 10 hour workday is 600 minutes. (Who works an 8 hour workday anymore? So 2019.) To write 250 individual non response template emails every day. It means she sits down at her desk at 8am, writes an email every 2.4 minutes for 10 hours straight, and then stops working at 6pm. Seems unlikely.
prepend 4y ago
I disagree. I have the same same mailbox I’ve had for 20 years and have lots of unread emails. I have to prioritize time and use the time that I would spend on 100k unread emails to better purposes. I think there’s probably zero important unread but tons of unimportant stuff. I think people have very individualized email coping mechanisms and I work on not assuming that my method works for everyone or thinking that someone has “no excuse.” If you are gainfully employed and produce good work and are professional to me, I don’t judge your email.

jongold 4y ago

fuck this - if you send me even one unsolicited follow up I'm setting up a filter to report all of your messages as spam if you text me once/day until you get a reply, I'm getting a restraining order have some respect

marban 4y ago

Simple rule of thumb: Only follow up with people you've been in touch previously.

perryizgr8 4y ago

> so unless you follow up, they will probably just ignore you, correctly believing that you do not even want to talk to them so much This is just bs. They are not "correctly believing", they are just assuming my time is worth less than theirs. Unless they are my direct boss, I won't be "following up" at all. I will just say I am blocked on action so-and-so by person so-and-so who is not responding.

tssva 4y ago
If I were your direct report and you said you were blocked on action so-and-so by person so-and-so who is not responding I would accept that for a brief period and then ask what you have done to follow up with the person including the use of alternative communication channels. If the answer was nothing the following conversation would not be a comfortable one.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ivanche 4y ago
  I had a team lead like that once. I ran away screaming ASAP at the first opportunity. How is that fair that I can reply within minutes to every email/slack/phone call, but multiple persons within the company don't ever reply and it's my fault???
  - tssva 4y ago
    Them not replying to an email is not your fault. What I would consider someone's responsibility is to follow up and try alternative communications to just sending an email. If that doesn't work then escalate it on your own accord to your team lead. What I would consider not acceptable is sending one email and just blocking any attempts at forward action because you didn't get a response. Quite honestly that type of behavior would make me happy to see you run away screaming.
    - ivanche 4y ago

political12345 4y ago

the lion, the witch, and the audacity of this ...

ormaaj 4y ago

It is _your_ responsibility to configure your mail filters and use your tools to organize your workflow in such a way that you do not miss important emails. Your failure to do so is your own failure. If you fail to see my email because you have a laughably amateaurish gmail-based workflow consisting of a single 100k-message inbox, then please, kindly fuck off. You're not worth my time. The notion that a message "must not be important because they only sent one" is absolutely hilarious! If I don't reply to your message, it's because I feel there is no need to reply or because I'm ignoring you. Sending multiple such "did you get my email?" followups will land you in the kill file. protip: I whitelist signed and / or encrypted emails and they go to the top of the queue. Spammers never PGP. Marketers and slimy recruiters can't be bothered to look up a public key. Easy way to get my attention.

blairbeckwith 4y ago
I think the problem is that what is important to the sender is not necessarily important to the receiver. I am not Travis of Uber, but I do have expertise in a domain such that I frequently get people reaching out to me to solicit advise or answers to a question. It is very important to the person asking the question that they get an answer. It is less important to me that they get an answer, and so if I'm busy at the moment those emails won't get a response. I do wish more people followed up though, because I do wish to help; the more they follow up without getting angry or hurt, the more likely they are to reach me at a time when I am able to help.
- mbg721 4y ago
  That principle certainly applies to spam. The messages there are "I want to sell you something," and "I am not particularly interested in buying that thing."
- ErrantX 4y ago
  This is an important distinction I think. I generally coach people who email regularly to explain the why behind a question or the value to them of me answering. If your consistently failing an audit because I am ignoring you then you you can have an answer.

dobin 4y ago

100k unread mails, of which 75k are "hey have you got my previous emails" ? If someone doesnt answer me after the first email, too bad for him - i will go somewhere else.

Claude_Shannon 4y ago

I disagree. On contrary, if you do follow-ups, the recipient may think you're too pushy and entitled. I'd never dare send follow-up in my university.

jefftk 4y ago

If you respond only to people who follow up, you're filtering for more dedicated senders. On the other hand, even if you're a very busy person who gets a ton of email, dedication is a very rough proxy for importance.

Hizonner 4y ago
No, you're filtering for assholes.
- jefftk 4y ago
  If not receiving a response is strong evidence that they're not interested then yes, but with how the majority of people use email it isn't. A lot of people just miss a large fraction of incoming email. This approach to filtering does give you a higher level of jerks, but not overwhelmingly so.
  - Hizonner 4y ago
    It also gives you a lower level of non-jerks. Basically if you do not act like a jerk, you will get ignored. Norms that actively punish being reasonable and considerate are bad norms, and people who promote norms like that should feel bad.

duxup 4y ago

Isn't this encouraging spamming MORE communication because the inbox or whatever channel is full? Now what? I half suspect the just "hello" messages are a form of this whole game, rather than write a whole long block of text that might be ignored, they think they have to spam someone so they just fire off a hello... and maybe another ... https://nohello.net/en/ https://nohello.net/en/ Great job guys... Depends on the context but I really don't want to have to follow up with everyone. It happens in some cases so I will, but as a rule having to repeatedly follow up means I stop caring. If someone is so busy I always have to follow up I'm not wasting my time just to hope to get their attention ... maybe.

kstrauser 4y ago
Huh, I think you just described bufferbloat.

zhte415 4y ago

Perhaps Travis would only have 25k emails if not everyone was expected to send him 4 emails where 1 would have sufficed. Or to manage his inbox rather than spending time reading self-help and 'art of productivity' thought pieces from 'very important' people / his self-selection of 'influencers'. No sarcasm is intended here. I'm reminded of an article entitled 'Wanted: employees who are good at getting things done' https://www.ft.com/content/d77f4d06-4fc0-11e4-908e-00144feab7de https://www.ft.com/content/d77f4d06-4fc0-11e4-908e-00144feab... The 'getting things done' take-away was, conscientiousness.

hombre_fatal 4y ago
I have 30,000 unread emails in Gmail. I don't see why I need to do anything about it as long as I'm not missing emails. In fact, email management would entail that I do more work (like delete vs archive every message) for the same end result even if it would feel like productivity.
- rexpop 4y ago
  > as long as I'm not missing emails From the article, it sounds like Travis was missing 75% of emails.
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    I don't think you can say that, and that's why I don't think it's really an email issue but a more general one about async communication. I'd liken it to any time you click into a chat/SMS/WhatsApp notification, read it, but don't respond. Maybe you just don't want to deal with it at the moment. Maybe you're busy. Maybe a response takes some thought and you aren't ready. You didn't miss the message. You just didn't do the extra work of ensuring you'd deal with it. Just think of how few notifications you get that demand that kind of action. This is how a lot of personal/social stuff goes. But especially for the sort of "cold call" emails in TFA. Frankly, I don't see inbox-zero vs inbox-30000 much related to this. Just because you have inbox-zero certainly doesn't mean you respond to every email on the spot. Nor does it mean you treat every email with the same priority. Those two things are all you need for emails to slip through. It's all the same result and it doesn't matter because the point is about the email sender, not the receiver.

TameAntelope 4y ago

Hey look, it's the very same bro culture that caused Travis Kalanick to have to step down from Uber in the first place! Maybe it's true, but acting like it should be true, and insulting the people reading the article for apparently not knowing it's true is toxic masculinity. Is the author an early Uber employee? That would make a ton of sense, and if not he would have fit right in.

3pt14159 4y ago

This is one option, and I'm sure it works for some people, but I prefer to overdeliver for the trusted contacts that I actually have then get introductions slowly over time to more important people. Not my only tactic, but by far the best one. I don't really care about status or wealth, but I've had calls with multiple billionaires and world renowned subject area experts. None of these were from cold calling or cold emailing. Honestly, I've found cold contacting to be such a slog that it demoralizes me more than the meagre amount of work it brings in. Sometimes the front door works and its the only option for some circumstance or another, but if you have enough time and enough of a buffer there's always a better way. Even something as simple as finding, say, the person's philanthropic foundation and showing up to a $500 fundraising dinner is far, far more effective. But for some, the sales grind works just fine and they like the fact that they can set up funnels and process around it. I prefer a more fortuitous, organic life. I find it more fulfilling and authentic.

nnoitra 4y ago

Yeah, just pester them. Show up at their doorstep while you're at it.

haolez 4y ago

Oh. That might explain why I've started receiving lots of follow up spam e-mails that are obviously sent by automated Crams and often doesn't even get my name or the company's correctly.

bluepizza 4y ago

> I live by the rule that if it’s important, the sender will follow up. This is a silly rule. Maybe the sender will reach out to a competitor.

Railsify 4y ago

If you sent a personal friend 2 twitter DMs, then 2 emails, and then 3 text messages and they don't reply, I don't think they are a friend. My inbox gets pounded as well but if a personal friend emails I skip all the other emails and reply to that one first.

MiddleEndian 4y ago
Yeah my friends know how to reach me, doesn't matter how busy my work email is. I'd be really surprised if the CEO of Uber didn't have a way for his actual friends to reach him that was unrelated to his 100,000 new email work inbox.
ryanbrunner 4y ago
Absolutely agreed. I think the parent article is decent advice for cold e-mails, but for personal interactions not responding is a good way to lose friends over time.

einpoklum 4y ago

You should: 1. Create an email subfolder hierarchy. 2. Automate a categorization of messages to said folders Now you have a much more managable set of email backlogs. Spend some time getting to "0 unread" in all important categories (and in "uncategorized") - and then you can live like a king _keeping_ those subfolders at 0 unread.

pdimitar 4y ago

"If you want to connect to famous and busy people, you should keep trying N number of times". "I am too important and you should pester me until I reply because did I mention I am important?" Yeah, very profound insights, lol.

scarface74 4y ago

This is really bad take especially the part about him wanting to meet his friend when he is town. With a close “friend”, I’m going to text him once or twice to his personal phone, then call him. If he doesn’t answer my text or phone calls, I’m calling his wife to see if everything is okay. Because after us being friends for 30 years, I know some of his people. I can at least reach out to them on FB messenger. If it is someone I don’t know that well, I’m playing 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon until I can reach them through my network if it’s business related.

hitovst 4y ago

This is a foolish waste of time.

wiz21c 4y ago

My strategy is simple: I just walk to the person's desk, have a chat and kindly ask if he can help me. Health point : I walk. Social point: you get to understand the person better and feel if he/she's under pressure. It doesn't scale. But I work only with people I need to meet. Customer is different. I'll pick the phone more often than not. Yeah, meeting people is more stressful than sending emails. But in the end, it gets better.

rob74 4y ago

Or otherwise said, "it is your responsibility to be more obnoxious than others, maybe then you get noticed". However being obnoxious is not really a good first impression, so maybe you will be ignored anyway...

VectorLock 4y ago

The most "follow-up" emails I get are from spammy sales people I already hit "Report Spam" on their previous emails. Guess I'm not important enough to be chased until exhaustion, held down, and have my face screamed into.

floverfelt 4y ago

This post crops up enough and annoys me enough that I wrote a full response to it: https://floverfelt.org/posts/it-is-your-responsibility-to-respond https://floverfelt.org/posts/it-is-your-responsibility-to-re... It's pretty sad that we've reached the point of spamming close friends just to get their attention, though I understand exactly what he's talking about. I just don't think it translates at all to a knowledge work setting.

EddieDante 4y ago
If you have to spam me to get my attention, you probably aren't actually a friend of mine, just an acquaintance that I continue to tolerate because you haven't done anything egregious enough to deserve being told to fuck off and die. Spamming me will erode my tolerance very quickly. There is really only one person to whom I have a responsibility to respond, and we've been married twenty years. Everybody else can damn well wait -- possibly until the first Tuesday after Ragnarok.

can16358p 4y ago

It works the opposite for me: If someone constantly sends me emails and follow-ups my brain automatically flags them as unsolicited spam and usually I reply with the word "unsubscribe" (even if they were a real person). I'm just a random dude, and I don't want to imagine it for people who remotely have some attention. In a world with 8 billion people, we should simply accept that not everyone has the luxury of reaching another random person from those 8 billion people.

brownwolf 4y ago

Interesting...

13113 4y ago

asadkn 4y ago

Anyone who tries to follow-up more than twice comes off as desperate or an automated spambot. I don't appreciate that hustle. 2 follow-ups should be the absolute limit (preferably, a single follow up).

Hizonner 4y ago
On a lot of subjects, sending cold email AT ALL is pushing the envelope. It might be convenient for you to communicate with somebody, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable for you to waste their time. Unless you have a specific reason to believe that there's been some error in the way your email was handled, or unless you have some positive right to a claim on the person's attention, following up IN ANY WAY is beyond the pale.
- TillE 4y ago
  Yeah, unless you have some kind of prior relationship with the person, it seems extremely weird and annoying to send follow-ups when they haven't answered. Unless you work in PR and that's your job or something.

jrochkind1 4y ago

Gross. If the problem is email overload, everyone sending you 2-4 emails instead of one is actually making the problem worse, right? But yeah, in contemporary society it's hard to get in touch with people, unclear what the etiquette is, and it may take multiple attempts. Is just a fact, sure. I'm not sure about "responsibility". If OP is actually about how to be effective making sales emails (recruiters included), then I have no experience to have an opinion on that, but I would unfortunately believe that when doing sales communications, the venn diagram of effectiveness and annoyingness may have a lot of overlap.

gorbachev 4y ago

Sending four emails to someone who doesn't even open the emails is not going to help. The author should've advised people trying to reach Travis to ambush him somewhere, or get the attention of someone he interacts regularly and ask them to act as an intermediary.

bombela 4y ago

I wonder if a secretary would reduce the friction. First, let's agree that we almost all do this. As soon as we have a bit of power, we allow ourselves to forget replying. You really need this plumber right now? The plumber suddenly ignores you. They know they can let you work for it, you are the one in need. A new bug report comes in and you are the only one that can fix it? They better get going sending those follow up emails already. When I was a wee programmer in search of a job, I would beg to be considered and would reply to any email in mere minutes. Now that the tables have turned, I can just wait for recruiters to follow up few times until I grace them with an answer. The ones that do not follow up? No need to reply. At work I got some high ranked title? The juniors better be honing theirs ping skills. My point is, as soon as we have a bit of power, it is easy to drop the ball. Because you can simply ignore the issue as you don't need the resolution as much as the person asking. Anytime you want or need something, you must be ready to spend time asking over and over again. What a colossal waste of time for all humans. And so I wonder, is this what a secretary solves by being paid to be conscientious for you?

908B64B197 4y ago
> I wonder if a secretary would reduce the friction. Yes, also because any secretary worth his/her salt has a hidden unique power: forwarding emails to the correct people who can handle them.
Ensorceled 4y ago
> I wonder if a secretary would reduce the friction. Every CEO I worked with that had a PA did a much better job of handling email, reviewing documents and meetings. Not that they were necessarily better CEOs ... but at least they didn't miss/ignore important emails and came to meetings prepared.
SyneRyder 4y ago
> You really need this plumber right now? The plumber suddenly ignores you. They know they can let you work for it, you are the one in need. Plumbers have an even better way of dealing with this. If you really, absolutely need them right now, they provide an emergency service - but you have to pay $250 extra. Turns out that $250 cost filters out most people who decide their dripping tap doesn't actually need following up after all. Plumbers often have a secretary / screener handle their incoming calls. Maybe instead of repeated "follow up" emails, actually hiring someone and paying the consulting fee for their time is more likely to get through. Time is valuable, and most of these "follow up" emails are from people who do not respect or value your time. It's even part of default spam scripts: "Following Up On My Email From Last Week" is the subject line of a Chinese quadcopter spam email that went direct to my spam folder today.

Hizonner 4y ago

If you "follow up" like that, you are, in fact, a rude piece of shit. Maybe you just don't get to have a conversation with just anybody you feel like talking to.

abledon 4y ago

So when do inboxes evolve into having a second layer that only filters emails with follow ups as real ones, and everyone sending emails has an AI that follows up x3 or more lol

tpoacher 4y ago

> I live by the rule that if it’s important, the sender will follow up. And I live by the rule that narcissistic assholes who don't value my time don't deserve that second email. You can at least acknowledge the email to say you'll reply later, saving everyone grief (not to mention another 4 followup emails cramming up your inbox even further, if Alex Guzey is to be believed).

tpoacher 4y ago
This is classic bottleneck theory btw. Address the bottleneck in your workflow, not pre/post bottleneck problems. It's not just common decency, it's actually the most efficient way to deal with your email backlog.
vecter 4y ago
This is entirely unrealistic and totally detached from reality. Someone like Travis Kalanick simply cannot reply to everyone who emails him. He literally wouldn't have enough time to do that if he just replied to emails 24/7/365, along with the work associated with replying to those emails, which is often way more than the time to write a response. The truth is, most people don't value your time because you don't deserve their time. I don't mean this in a judgmental way. It's a cold hard fact of reality. If I emailed Mark Cuban, the President of the United States, or Jeff Bezos and they didn't respond to me, that doesn't logically make them narcissistic assholes (they may or may not be, I don't know, but whether they are or aren't is entirely independent of their responsiveness to my cold outreach email). The fact that they didn't respond to my email doesn't make them assholes and it doesn't make me any less of a human being. There's no need to get emotional or moralistic about this. Your suggestion to acknowledge the email is even worse, because they'd be dishonest by saying that they'd get back to you later. As I pointed out earlier, they literally do not have the time to respond to every email if they spent every minute of their lives doing so. When it comes to trying to get in touch with someone whose attention is valuable, it's best to put your ego aside.
- tpoacher 4y ago
  Context is important here. The article starts by mentioning Travis Kalanick, but the quote itself appears in the context of it being presented as a general rule for handling email queues, and a good idea at that: > The moral here is the following: whenever you send an email to somebody (especially to somebody busy), imagine that this is what their inbox looks like. Unless you send a follow up, you’re not even trying. And they know it, so unless you follow up, they will probably just ignore you, correctly believing that you do not even want to talk to them so much. As Jennifer Doleac notes: I live by the rule that if it’s important, the sender will follow up. In that context, where the expectation is that you should reply (and you're not Jeff Bezos), then acting like this is simply being an asshole. You are explicitly saying "my time is more valuable than yours so I expect you to waste more of yours repeatedly until I decide to deign you with a response." Note I'm not even disputing the main point of the article, that it's your responsibility as the sender to follow up. That's actually good advice. But if you as the receiver, are systematically ignoring email because you expect people to email repeatedly until you feel like answering? That's not "efficient email practices". That's just being a dick on a power trip. In the context that you are emailing Jeff Bezos, of course, then naturally I agree with you: one sucks it up and accepts that realistically Jeff probably gets a million of these a day, probably going straight to spam, and chances are you're not gonna get a response and shouldn't take it personally.

deleted 4y ago

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devmor 4y ago

On the flip side, I get about ~2.3k emails a day. If I've not responded to your first email - I could have passed over it. If I haven't responded to your second and third emails, I'm not interested and continuing to contact me is just spam. I use filters and tags to categorize my email so its very unlikely that I'd ever miss an email I wanted to read. The person in the article seems like they have some kind of executive disfunction when it comes to dealing with communications - which is entirely understandable, many people do. But it's on them to find the methodology to cope with that, not on other people to keep re-sending reminders to read a message they've already sent.

gk1 4y ago

Cool to see my quote in there... Since I wrote that post, I took a VP role at a startup and am now living on the other side of this. I'm constantly getting emails from people wanting to sell to / partner with / work with / work for Pinecone. I try to reply within 48 hours but the reality is that these emails are competing with those of my team, the CEO, other departments in the company, big partners, big customers, candidates I'm trying to hire, contractors that are blocked on me... And all those compete with time for deep work, family, and recharging. I actually appreciate a few follow-ups for important or urgent things. And I do sometimes interpret a lack of follow-ups to mean the matter isn't all that important anyway.

jovial_cavalier 4y ago

I'm thinking too much of myself if I assume that you will read an email I send to you and follow up with me at some point if it's appropriate? I guess that reveals what is thought of me...

HWR_14 4y ago

It's the responsibility of the party with more to gain to follow up/ensure they see the emails. Anything else is just sugar coating the power dynamic. But telling people they are expected to follow up is important for people who think that they aren't supposed to. I think it's universal that anyone who would have questions about following up should.

Ensorceled 4y ago

This kind of thinking is why I'm always on 10-20 different drip campaigns from random strangers on the internet.

mhb 4y ago

Hello. Amazon here. I see you bought some diapers but didn't reply when I asked if you wanted more diapers. Perhaps you missed my inquiry...

seqizz 4y ago

What? This is greylisting on mental level. If I say "hi" to you and you ignore me, I won't repeat it. It's your responsibility to get your "things" together..

jordanpg 4y ago

This reminds me of people who spend an inordinate amount of time talking about and reminding everyone of how busy they are.

udev 4y ago

[flagged]

yakkityyak 4y ago

I think I am the only person in my office who religiously keeps their unread message count to 0.

april_22 4y ago
I get anxious when my unread message count is not at 0.

kerblang 4y ago

Idealism: You don't manage your inbox! Shame on you! I deserve to be angry with you! I shall now grow a long and angry beard of indignation Pragmatism: Fuck it I'm gonna jam some more emails up your ass

wly_cdgr 4y ago

No and furthermore, fuck you

BLO716 4y ago

Unfortunately, email is not a business process. I'll leave it at that. I may be on my own little island over here in the middle of the sea of internets - but, going to hold that opinion till I die.

chrismarlow9 4y ago

I bet if I cc Travis boss on the email I get a response. :) . I always have a backup plan for emails not getting read, and typically state it in the email. Things like, "if I don't hear back I'll assume you want me to make this a ticket and assign it to you". Then it's out of my hands.

jwie 4y ago

I think this is not only wrong, but harmful advice. Speaking louder or more frequently does not cause attention. The opposite is true. Speaking less, and softer, causes your interlocutor to focus on what you're saying. He has to try harder to hear, and thus values it more.

ParetoOptimal 4y ago
> Speaking louder or more frequently does not cause attention. The opposite is true. Speaking less, and softer, causes your interlocutor to focus on what you're saying. He has to try harder to hear, and thus values it more. This presupposes attention given in the form if reading your email which isn't a given for the email disorganized.
nnoitra 4y ago
Actually there are tons of techniques that one can use if they are willing to abandon integrity. As a matter of fact I've consistently seen bootlickers and shady tacticians advance really fast in their careers and lives.

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

I literally don't read (work) email unless personally asked to or unless I expect an important email. I haven't missed anything.

ilikehurdles 4y ago

This applies if the masses' perception of your importance is as inflated as your own. It fails in contexts where the person messaging you can just move on without your input. ie., I'm making a decision and I'm informing you as a likely-interested party. I'm not going to force you to be included if you're not actively including yourself, and if the decision doesn't have the outcome you desired, that's on you. And this doesn't work for my inbox. If you're cold-emailing multiple times, your emails are already going to spambox, and each is just earning you another negative ding. This goes for all tech recruiters and anyone who succeeds at guessing my work email using context clues from LinkedIn. I don't owe you my attention any more than I owe it to any other stranger on the street.

Perseids 4y ago

One way to understand why this article produces so deeply emotional responses, is that it says "it is right and proper to defect in this prisoner's dilemma"[1]. Why is it a prisoner's dilemma? - Nobody writes follow-ups: everyone has an equal chance of being noticed and only has to write one email (and the recipient gets relatively little mail). - You write follow-ups, but nobody else does: you get an overproportional chance of being viewed at the expense of everyone writing just one mail. Also you have to put up more work to organise and write the follow-ups, but that is very much worth the extra benefit for you. - You write one mail, and everybody writes follow-ups: you get an under-proportional chance of being found in the sea of mails, much to your dismay. - Everybody writes follow-ups (what TFA suggests): everyone has equal chances of being noticed, but everyone has to put up the extra work for the follow-ups (and the recipient gets a factor of three more mails). My personal opinion on the article is that it is greatly damaging, as it is difficult as hell for society to effectively normalize "cooperate" behavior in such situations, even without voices suggesting "defecting" is your moral responsibility. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

MrBlueIncognito 4y ago
The alternative is to encourage people to not overdo follow-ups. Those with a strong moral compass with understand your words and play fair, others won’t. This will place the former group at a severe disadvantage. The only practical way to level the playing field is what the article suggests. Edit: now that I come to think of it, another potential solution might be to encourage the people who receive a lot of emails/messages to ignore follow-ups and only recognize the first piece of communication that was sent to them.
_dain_ 4y ago
i think this is a preposterous over-exaggeration of the situation. it's just people sending emails to each other for goodness sake.
- rexpop 4y ago
  Our society runs on people sending emails to each other, as it happens. What could have higher stakes?

sfriedr 4y ago

A lot of facets of this power balance have been mentioned. Here's a new one (I think): Imagine busy CEO B that doesn't care about your time, that you need to pester with emails to get his attention. Now imagine thinking-along CEO T that tries to have a well organized inbox, possibly assisted by a secretary, so that when you send him an email you receive an auto-response telling you when and if you should get a response and how you should interpret a no-response; this may include letting people know that too complicated or unclear messages will go unresponded. (Richard Stallmann had this approach when I mailed him years ago, before his scandal, where I'd get a response with an average waiting time in hours, pretty neat. Using NLP probably anyone could filter his/her mail quite efficiently these days.) Who would you want to have as a boss? Yes, it's a power balance. But all parties should wield their power responsibly.

poslathian 4y ago
It sounds like you are saying Stallman is supposed to be the more desirable boss. Is that really what you meant? If so, then I would pick a different public figure for your example. I have first hand experience with this, and, lol.

JamesSwift 4y ago

Yeah.. I'm definitely in the camp of "follow up more than once and I instantly mark you as spam". If its an urgent message you are sending me then fine, whatever (although you should have alternate means of contacting me as well). If you are just "hustling" then no, absolutely do not badger me in any communication channel. Its like a telemarketer saying "just keep leaving voicemails until they call you back", or a door-to-door person saying "you have to knock for several minutes to be sure they heard you". No way! One follow up, no exceptions. Work on your pitch instead of spamming the void.

hoseja 4y ago

A major problem is you still can't mark an email as read from GMail android notification.

MathMonkeyMan 4y ago

It's your responsibility to follow up in the sense that if you need them and they don't need you, then it's on you. But if you're reaching out to them about one of their responsibilities in the organization, then it's on them. "He dropped the ball" is a perfect reason for my not having accomplished a goal. Nagging might help, but it does not address the problem. On the other hand, "avoid regression to the weakest" is something to avoid. Not sure how to avoid that without "managing" people.