5 ms·

I disagree. I start text chats with "hello" all the time. It basically relates to channel choice. For some kinds of messages a near-real-time text chat is th

by gyulai 4y ago

I disagree. I start text chats with "hello" all the time. It basically relates to channel choice. For some kinds of messages a near-real-time text chat is the right channel but async email-like flow would be entirely the wrong channel. So I start a convo with "hello" to probe if the other party is available for near-real-time text chat, because away-status indicators are frequently unreliable. There are also special kinds of communication needs like if I need help with something and there are 3 people who could potentially help me out on something that's a blocker for me. I then just want to probe for the first person capable of unblocking me. The protocol is then something like: "me-to-person-a: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no respone. "me-to-person-b: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no response. "me-to-person-c: hello" wait for 5 minutes. all of a sudden person b has become available and replies "person-b-to-me: hello, what can i do for you?" ...now i start chatting with person b. meanwhile, 20 minutes after my initial prompt when I'm already well into my way, discussing my blocker with person b, person c comes online and says "hello". I respond "oh, never mind: person b is already helping me out". ...person a, as it happens, is fighting a production issue and not responding to me right now, knowing that i'm a newbie developer who likely has newbie questions. fair enough, he's entirely within his rights to ignore me. If instead, I just open the convo with a drawn-out description of the issue i need help with, I'm kind of stuck after firing off a message to the first person. Because now, I don't want to start wasting another person's time by "cross-posting" to a second 1-on-1 chat, as that is likely to duplicate work. In that case, to be polite, I'd have to at least wait a few hours, cross-post to a second person, and then say to the first person something like "oh, it seems like you're unavailable. actually never mind, I guess person-b might be able to help me out faster". ...this latter kind of communication is kind of awkward, and in any case inefficient.

gryfft 4y ago
I think you're still missing the point that the question isn't about what kind of conversation the initiator is ready and willing to have, but rather about the information asymmetry and time/emotional costs imposed on the recipient. When you open a conversation with "Hello," *you* know generally what you want to have a conversation about and that this is a good time for you to have it. The recipient receives only the notification that you would like to talk about something and is left to imagine what that might be as you type, or wait for a reply to begin typing. Beginning a text chat with "Hello, I have a few questions about xyz and was wondering if now would be a good time to talk?" is considerate of the other party's time and attention, and it does not cost you anything but seconds to provide this context up front. Edit: you edited and lengthened your comment. > The protocol is then something like: "me-to-person-a: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no respone. "me-to-person-b: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no response. "me-to-person-c: hello" I'm sorry, this is _insane_! That's 10 minutes to send out 3 words of communication, and the people who don't get back to you right away will now be getting back to you later to clarify, further worsening your signal to noise ratio! You could have spent 20 _seconds_ composing the first message with a one sentence synopsis. "Don't worry, no one is dead" or "The factory is on fire" are useful to know up front. You could copy and paste it to the next two people if they don't get back to you.
- gyulai 4y ago
  ...I really don't think there's "emotional cost" on the part of the recipient in entertaining a "hello", at least not in peer-to-peer scenarios. Now, if you're someone's boss and hitting up a subordinate with whom there is known "bad blood" then I get the point about the "emotional cost" of a scenario where you write, close to the end of the business day, "hello", then your subordinate doesn't respond for 10 minutes. Then you go home, or get into a block of meetings that will make you unavailable to continue the convo for several hours. But if you have that little emotional intelligence, you shouldn't be anyone's boss, and if a mere "hello" from your boss freaks you out, you should probably just quit then and there.
  - gryfft 4y ago
    Again, this is not about you and your personal experience. You do not know what kind of day someone else has had, and when Slack has 25+ notifications and you have deadlines, little failures to be considerate DO take a toll, just like when someone honks their car horn at you for no reason or refuses to hold the elevator for you. Sure, it's not genocide, but it's inconsiderate. Just because littering isn't murder doesn't mean it's fine.
  - flagsrule 4y ago
    I think there is an emotional cost in receiving a work-related message that only says "hello". My data point: it enrages everyone I know. And they lose respect for the person who said "hello" and wasted their time.
    - treewalking 4y ago
      I can’t conceive of working in an environment where coworkers are enraged by minor communication differences. Like wow you just work with a bunch of assholes. Probably that’s the thing to solve for, not “hello”, “query” vs “hello, query”.
      - geraldwhen 4y ago
        No. It completely disrespects the recipients work and time by demanding a meeting with no agenda. Everyone I work with feels the same. The “hello” people are the outliers and the rest of the office knows it.
rglullis 4y ago
> If instead, I just open the convo with a drawn-out description of the issue i need help with, I'm kind of stuck after firing off a message to the first person. Succinctly, your whole strategy is wrong. Instead of round-robin'ing your way around the people, you should be broadcasting your message to an appropriate channel set to the group of people that can respond to your query.
- gyulai 4y ago
  Group chats have a problem with "diffusion of responsibility" [1], and sometimes you have reasons for not wanting to broadcast whatever it is you're about to say (e.g. you're in a toxic culture where your bosses will use the fact that you need help from others against you). I wouldn't round-robin my way through 10 people, but with 3 people it kind of seems fine to me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility
  - rgoulter 4y ago
    I think if you're the kind of person who often asks for help, I'd strongly advise you to listen to advice like "no hello" (because "no hello" is broadcasted by people who are often asked for help). Rather, you can't have both "I often ask for help" and "I don't need to listen to advice".
    - gyulai 4y ago
      ...this is some rando posting something on github. Advice that's binding on the recipient is not advice, it's a command. And I don't take commands from randos on github. I also don't understand how this thread got so ad-hominem so quickly, with you acting like you know me well enough to put me in a category of people "who often ask for help", and then imply that those people are less entitled to autonomous choices on how to conduct themselves.
      - rgoulter 4y ago
        > this is some rando posting something on github Sure, but it's a post which strongly resonates with many people.
padjo 4y ago
I’m guessing people seem to not answer you over IM a lot?
NikolaNovak 4y ago
I fully understand your predicament. If you type all of the problem to a person, and they don't respond, you don't know when to switch it to another. I must confess though that by default I am very slow to respond to message that starts with hello. I just don't know if they have a 5s question or 2hr problem. So I don't respond until I can commit the upper bound of time. This will result sometimes in slow responses to quick questions - but over years I started to feel the asker should take some responsibility for their own success. A dangling Hello is just insufficient offer. Perhaps a good compromise is "hey, can you help me troubleshoot this webserver log?" (30min ask) or "hey do you know who's on shift today" (5s ask) or "hey I need to create a new ops manual for payroll processing, when can we Get together" (4hr ask) . It's polite, not assumptive, still inquires on whether they can help in needed timeframe without committing them, but it provides receiver something to help them reply on their own terms.
gardenhedge 4y ago
You're wasting so much time and annoying people by doing that. This whole nohello thing was made exactly for people like you.
grog454 4y ago
> For some kinds of messages a near-real-time text chat is the right channel but async email-like flow would be entirely the wrong channel. What's an example? I encounter maybe one situation per month where I'd consider asynchronous communication "wrong", despite having multiple synchronous meetings per day. In the situations where it is wrong, no one (IME) pings anyone with "hello......", They schedule time on a calendar (asynchronously).

by gyulai 4y ago

gryfft 4y ago

I think you're still missing the point that the question isn't about what kind of conversation the initiator is ready and willing to have, but rather about the information asymmetry and time/emotional costs imposed on the recipient. When you open a conversation with "Hello," *you* know generally what you want to have a conversation about and that this is a good time for you to have it. The recipient receives only the notification that you would like to talk about something and is left to imagine what that might be as you type, or wait for a reply to begin typing. Beginning a text chat with "Hello, I have a few questions about xyz and was wondering if now would be a good time to talk?" is considerate of the other party's time and attention, and it does not cost you anything but seconds to provide this context up front. Edit: you edited and lengthened your comment. > The protocol is then something like: "me-to-person-a: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no respone. "me-to-person-b: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no response. "me-to-person-c: hello" I'm sorry, this is _insane_! That's 10 minutes to send out 3 words of communication, and the people who don't get back to you right away will now be getting back to you later to clarify, further worsening your signal to noise ratio! You could have spent 20 _seconds_ composing the first message with a one sentence synopsis. "Don't worry, no one is dead" or "The factory is on fire" are useful to know up front. You could copy and paste it to the next two people if they don't get back to you.

gyulai 4y ago
...I really don't think there's "emotional cost" on the part of the recipient in entertaining a "hello", at least not in peer-to-peer scenarios. Now, if you're someone's boss and hitting up a subordinate with whom there is known "bad blood" then I get the point about the "emotional cost" of a scenario where you write, close to the end of the business day, "hello", then your subordinate doesn't respond for 10 minutes. Then you go home, or get into a block of meetings that will make you unavailable to continue the convo for several hours. But if you have that little emotional intelligence, you shouldn't be anyone's boss, and if a mere "hello" from your boss freaks you out, you should probably just quit then and there.
- gryfft 4y ago
  Again, this is not about you and your personal experience. You do not know what kind of day someone else has had, and when Slack has 25+ notifications and you have deadlines, little failures to be considerate DO take a toll, just like when someone honks their car horn at you for no reason or refuses to hold the elevator for you. Sure, it's not genocide, but it's inconsiderate. Just because littering isn't murder doesn't mean it's fine.
- flagsrule 4y ago
  I think there is an emotional cost in receiving a work-related message that only says "hello". My data point: it enrages everyone I know. And they lose respect for the person who said "hello" and wasted their time.
  - treewalking 4y ago
    I can’t conceive of working in an environment where coworkers are enraged by minor communication differences. Like wow you just work with a bunch of assholes. Probably that’s the thing to solve for, not “hello”, “query” vs “hello, query”.
    - geraldwhen 4y ago
      No. It completely disrespects the recipients work and time by demanding a meeting with no agenda. Everyone I work with feels the same. The “hello” people are the outliers and the rest of the office knows it.

rglullis 4y ago

> If instead, I just open the convo with a drawn-out description of the issue i need help with, I'm kind of stuck after firing off a message to the first person. Succinctly, your whole strategy is wrong. Instead of round-robin'ing your way around the people, you should be broadcasting your message to an appropriate channel set to the group of people that can respond to your query.

gyulai 4y ago
Group chats have a problem with "diffusion of responsibility" [1], and sometimes you have reasons for not wanting to broadcast whatever it is you're about to say (e.g. you're in a toxic culture where your bosses will use the fact that you need help from others against you). I wouldn't round-robin my way through 10 people, but with 3 people it kind of seems fine to me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility
- rgoulter 4y ago
  I think if you're the kind of person who often asks for help, I'd strongly advise you to listen to advice like "no hello" (because "no hello" is broadcasted by people who are often asked for help). Rather, you can't have both "I often ask for help" and "I don't need to listen to advice".
  - gyulai 4y ago
    ...this is some rando posting something on github. Advice that's binding on the recipient is not advice, it's a command. And I don't take commands from randos on github. I also don't understand how this thread got so ad-hominem so quickly, with you acting like you know me well enough to put me in a category of people "who often ask for help", and then imply that those people are less entitled to autonomous choices on how to conduct themselves.
    - rgoulter 4y ago
      > this is some rando posting something on github Sure, but it's a post which strongly resonates with many people.

padjo 4y ago

I’m guessing people seem to not answer you over IM a lot?

NikolaNovak 4y ago

I fully understand your predicament. If you type all of the problem to a person, and they don't respond, you don't know when to switch it to another. I must confess though that by default I am very slow to respond to message that starts with hello. I just don't know if they have a 5s question or 2hr problem. So I don't respond until I can commit the upper bound of time. This will result sometimes in slow responses to quick questions - but over years I started to feel the asker should take some responsibility for their own success. A dangling Hello is just insufficient offer. Perhaps a good compromise is "hey, can you help me troubleshoot this webserver log?" (30min ask) or "hey do you know who's on shift today" (5s ask) or "hey I need to create a new ops manual for payroll processing, when can we Get together" (4hr ask) . It's polite, not assumptive, still inquires on whether they can help in needed timeframe without committing them, but it provides receiver something to help them reply on their own terms.

gardenhedge 4y ago

You're wasting so much time and annoying people by doing that. This whole nohello thing was made exactly for people like you.

grog454 4y ago

> For some kinds of messages a near-real-time text chat is the right channel but async email-like flow would be entirely the wrong channel. What's an example? I encounter maybe one situation per month where I'd consider asynchronous communication "wrong", despite having multiple synchronous meetings per day. In the situations where it is wrong, no one (IME) pings anyone with "hello......", They schedule time on a calendar (asynchronously).