I'm one of those people who almost always wants to immediately get on a call to solve a problem rather than typing it out. I get that it's tiring being on calls all the time but it's also much more effective to have a call for most types of work conversations, even as a software dev.
Here's the way I look at it.
If you are asking me a question where my reply isn't time sensitive, and it doesn't need to turn into a conversation about my answer, that doesn't need to be a call.
If you just want a status update on XYZ from me, which may be a short conversation, that probably does not need to be a call.
If you want my help with just about anything code related, that's a call. Screensharing is way easier for me to see what you are talking about, and it's much easier for us to be on the same page if we're both looking at the same thing.
It's also a massive peeve of mine when someone asks a question on messaging, refuses to have a call, and then proceeds to take forever getting back to me. It's one thing it I say something like "Try this, this, and this. Let me know what works" and then I can get back to my work.
But if I'm trying to step you through something and you sometimes reply immediately, sometimes in 5 minutes, sometimes in a half hour, then you get to have calls whenever you want my help from then on
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My only counterpoint to this is that for some folks, particularly at the junior level, forcing them to write out their questions into text helps them focus their ideas and what they are trying to solve. This process often helps them find new avenues to search and helps them answer their own question
Sure.
I don't just offer to have a call when someone says "Hey I need help"
My approach is to have them write out the issue in text, and say what they've tried.
Then I judge the urgency and if it's a barn burner I get on a call immediately. If it's a Junior blocked on something that I think they can solve I will tell them we can have a call in a half hour or something and very often they do solve it on their own.
Essentially I use the async communication methods as the gatekeeper to prioritize the incoming requests for my time, but when I do give people my time it's on a call so I can give them my full attention.
> It's also a massive peeve of mine when someone asks a question on messaging, refuses to have a call, and then proceeds to take forever getting back to me.
I agree. When someone asks for help, I want to give them my undivided attention so we can get the stuff worked out immediately instead of having split attention so I'm not helping you as effectively and I'm not able to focus on my work. I want to sort it with a call because it's MUCH faster. Let me call you so I can return my full attention to my own shit.
I really think "more effective" and "easier" are about communication styles and personality, not incontrovertible truths. I completely believe that to you it's much easier to handle these things on a call. Please believe that for me it's much easier to handle in a written format. Neither of these styles or preferences are wrong, and I reject the premise that either is better or worse. They're just DIFFERENT and people with a given preference proclaiming that it's THE easy way, or _the_ right way, is the source of a lot of conflict. I think we'd all do well to be more understanding and empathetic about the fact that different people are comfortable with different ways of communicating, and both sides (in reality there are many more than two sides) should try to meet each other in the middle more often.
Absolutely agree. For some reason, empathy seems to be above average lacking in successful people, so they struggle to understand that what works for _them_ will not work for _everyone_.
That's probably what happened here, and I see it so often: CEO can work best under pressure, can communicate best in a call, whatever: In an almost selfless gesture, they aim to produce these good (for them!) conditions for others.
And since they are unable to understand that this doesn't work for everybody else, they get (at least a bit) upset because the only remaining explanation is that those people don't _want_ to be productive, or don't _want_ to communicate effectively.
> I think we'd all do well to be more understanding and empathetic about the fact that different people are comfortable with different ways of communicating
This isn't about being comfortable it's about communicating clearly and effectively.
Some (Many?) people are just not good communicators regardless of the medium. However we learn to communicate verbally long before we learn to write, and most people communicate verbally in almost 100% of the interactions in their lives.
Additionally we first learn to talk about things with a lot of visual association. We use the shared ability to point at a visible thing and understand this is what we are talking about. You can even use this to communicate crudely with people who don't speak or read any language that you do.
Beyond all of that, writing clearly and reading comprehension are both additional skills that are needed for good written communication to occur, and all parties involved in the conversation need to have both of those skills to make it an effective communication style.
Given all of that, I'd say that if good communication is your goal, and it should be, then defaulting to verbal communication with a shared context (screen sharing or in-person or something else) is realistically likely to be better than written communication in almost all cases.
I understand what you're saying, but for many of us, the threshold is much higher for a call.
I tend to, and I know I'm not alone here, accomplish most of my work in very focused blocks that often take me multiple hours to get into. Often I'll go a whole work day without being able to get there, and often when I'm in the flow, I'll work 12+ hours because that's how I'm most productive.
Your 5 minute call may cost me 3-6 hours of productivity. Once I've pulled my head out of what I'm working on, it's not a given that I can jump right back in. Sometimes that's worth it. It's possible not having that call may cost you 3 hours of productivity. But because some people have different work styles, people who focus easily (or are working on easier problems) often don't think of the costs for those who don't.
Okay, but in this situation you are the one that asked them for help with your code. There's no "interrupted productivity" here if you're already blocked and waiting for advice or help with something. And besides, if you spend 3-6 hours working on completely the wrong thing because you were "in the zone" and that misunderstanding could have been resolved with a 5 minute call, then the 5 minute call is worth it every single time.
> I'm one of those people who almost always wants to immediately get on a call to solve a problem rather than typing it out. I get that it's tiring being on calls all the time but it's also much more effective to have a call for most types of work conversations, even as a software dev.
I find it interesting that something measurable like this feels (not saying it is) like an opinion.
It's my opinion (maybe because I'm a semi-effective text communicator?) that handling it "async" on chat is more often than not quicker. Maybe I'm wrong/biased? I wonder how something like this is measured. It does feel like people who want to not accept calls are in the minority based on my experience/the response this is getting.
handling it "async" on chat is more often than not quicker.
I'm sure there are times when it is better, and times when it isn't. I generally find that if a question is REALLY simple, then async is fine. Eg:
Q: What's the IP for the bumblefraxx gateway again?
A: 10.0.14.233
Ok, sure. Done, handled in a few seconds. But for anything that goes beyond about 2 Q/A "cycles", I generally find that a call is faster, because I can figure things out a lot faster when I can see all of the relevant details myself. Eg:
Q: The bumblefraxx gateway isn't working, can you help?
A: Did you make sure the IP is right?
Q: Yeah. Do you think the frozgibbit might be wedged?
A: ...
15 minutes later
Let's have a call so I can see this myself
/me looks at screen. Notices some trivial typo in config for bumblefraxx gateway. Problem fixed in 15 minutes and 15 seconds, when it could have been 15 seconds
With async communication you really need to define what quicker means. I suspect you're not defining it the same as people who prefer a quick call.
> I'm one of those people who almost always wants to immediately get on a call to solve a problem rather than typing it out.
I say 'no' to random requests for calls every single time, I'm sure I'm not alone.
But it's not random. The context here is somebody calling person $A for help, and person $A saying "can we have a call to address this?" Saying "no" here is simply declining help from person $A.
So how would you follow up in this situation when its you asking for help? Would you just say no and ask someone else, or try to figure the thing out by yourself?
Yikes. No.
For one, calls don’t result in a searchable log. If I remember I talked to someone about Foo, I can search for that in my Slack history.
If someone else asks me the same question about Foo, I can just send them a screenshot from our earlier conversation and we’re done. I can also talk to 4 different people about four different issues at the same time in chat, but I can only be in a single call at a time.
God, there's nothing worse than going back to find something I remember talking about in Slack and seeing the damn "call ended at..." thing right where I'm pretty sure it should be. Now let me go see if I took notes in some other program. OK even if I did I missed some stuff that would have been there if we'd just used the goddamn chat instead of having a call. Ugh.
For one, calls don’t result in a searchable log.
Yeah but search in Slack and MS Teams both suck IME. The idea of what you're talking about makes sense and I'm sure it works out for somebody sometime or other. But I haven't found having that history particularly useful.
Disclaimer: I work at Slack. Yeah, search could be better sometimes. But for this particular problem, I personally find search useful in two contexts:
* Even if I can't remember the exact phrasing I used for something, I often remember the person I discussed it with and just check my DMs or threads with them.
* Half of my responses to "help me" questions include links to repos in files. So I search for the last time I typed out three paragraphs talking about a a given link and that works pretty well.
The other situation "type it out" is useful is when I think a particular problem is likely to be encountered by multiple people and essentially force someone to ask the question in a public channel so I can answer it there and everyone can see it (we have channels like and #new-eng-questions for this). Even if people don't find it via search, there are enough people checking the recent history of these channels that it's a useful exercise.
I can understand the gripe about people who don't respond promptly during a chat and I too sometimes just call people like that, but in my experience much of the time when someone wants to "hop on a call" they essentially want me to hold their hand through something that can be easily and clearly explained in a few sentences of text (maybe with a link to an article). It seems to be more about personal comfort than any efficiencies in communication. Which is fine ultimately, but it should be recognized as a preference rather than some panacea for communication woes.