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Ultimately this is a culture that requires leadership to establish and maintain. I have tried without success as I was not seen as a leader in the area. What

Ultimately this is a culture that requires leadership to establish and maintain. I have tried without success as I was not seen as a leader in the area. What I have done successfully is boil down my requests to allow async responses that do not require an exchange. The template is generically: * Set context (what/when) * Establish reasoning (what/why) * Describe desired outcome (what/when) * Request binary response (what/who) fulfill request or direct me to whom can. Mx. Password Resetter, I got locked out of my account after 3 attempts, the self password resetter is currently down. I need to have my password reset by tomorrow morning. I am requesting either a reset of my account, let me know when the self reset will be online, or in the event you cannot please direct me to who can. My contact info is below in the event you want to verify my identity. Thank you With enough context, an ability for them to tell me to gtfo or fix it, or pass the buck, the responses is generally < 20 minutes for most requests.

ninkendo 3y ago
It’s funny because your sample communication reads exactly like an email. Normally when it comes to remote work we like to talk about chat (slack, etc) and how to communicate in a way that lends itself well to asynchronous replies, but when you think about it, email is already perfect for this: - Email generally doesn’t carry the expectation that the recipient will reply immediately - Nobody emails with just “Hi” and waits for a response - People already know how to craft email in a way that is self contained and doesn’t require a ton of back and forth - Major open source projects, particularly the Linux kernel, are done entirely over email to great success. Sometimes I wish typical remote companies would embrace email (with a searchable web archive) instead of chat. Mailing lists replace channels, you can always reply directly to take things off-thread, mail is an open protocol where you can use your own client… the advantages are enormous.
- digging 3y ago
  Chat apps like Teams, Slack should be used as essentially internal email with the option to drop into real-time synchronous chat. The main difference is that you have to be on the same instance so there are cases where email is still more appropriate, though.
  - pc86 3y ago
    Is this something the folks at Microsoft or Slack are actually saying "this is how our product is intended to be used" or is this just you saying "I wish these apps were different?" I ask because approximately 0% of the people I've met have ever used Teams/Slack/etc. as email, and approximately 100% of them use it as real-time synchronous chat first, and archive of past real-time chats second, and asynchronous chat a distant third.
    - maroonblazer 3y ago
      I, and nearly everyone I've worked with, use Teams/Slack as async comms. Most of my colleagues are incredibly busy, so there's no expectation that we'll get an immediate, real-time, response. Generally, if real-time comms is needed, and the other party didn't respond via chat immediately, we ask "Can you jump on a quick call?"
      - ghaff 3y ago
        What I've seen over the past 2-3 years is (company) email increasingly devolve most, though not all of the time, into announcements, automated workflow, and other FYI. If you're actually looking for a personalized response, even not immediate, the channel is chat in some form. I don't like it really. Email was a respond in a day medium. Chat is now at least same day/hours. In general, people don't call out of the blue any longer though so chat is inevitably repurposed for pretty soon. I'm having to readjust workflows to that. >the other party didn't respond via chat immediately, we ask "Can you jump on a quick call?" That still asssumes they're always monitoring chat in near-real-time.
        scott_w 3y ago
        Not exactly, the “can we call” is usually to create a space to have that sync communication with someone but doesn’t always need to be immediate.
        ghaff 3y ago
- out-of-ideas 3y ago
  sort of; the idea of having a phone and 'instant message' to always grab attention is ridiculous; text-chat all the same to me; if i have an emergency, blow me up with an audible alert ( a call of some sort, a mention with particular rules in place to not get over-mentioned ). Email is crap-tier for internal communications IMO in that companies have 1 email for folks and it allows external entities to spam users (even if its internal spam). internal communication should be separated from external communication, this will help lower the phishing attack surface. i'd argue people should treat "IM" like emails; get a response eventually; if you want immediate attention, schedule a calendar/meeting with somebody. The biggest problem i see with chat-software is the attention-grabbing-notifications; silence all that stuff, and check on IM's every hour or so - set it up so that @mentions _might_ notify you in select channels. I find it sad when doing a paired programing session, on a scheduled-meeting, that folks get _so_ distracted by the pings, popups, ect of notifications for queries that are not urgent. They need to practice 1) patience and 2) diligence in responding to things they've been directly mentioned or have knowledge about
- pizzafeelsright 3y ago
  All Communications are this way. I have no expectation on response time because those generally do not exist. I have my deadline and SLA. How is make sure that these are well defined prior to taking on any task. The ability to say to any level of management, I can do X and I can do y but I cannot do them both within your time constraints, is the superpower I wish I learned many years ago. Yelling and screaming will not get it done. Let's discuss your priority and get it done.
- chrisweekly 3y ago
  > "Nobody emails with just “Hi” and waits for a response" I have to say, the zero-context "hi" in a Teams message has to be one of the worst violations of what we used to call netiquette.
  - TuringNYC 3y ago
    > > "Nobody emails with just “Hi” and waits for a response" > I have to say, the zero-context "hi" in a Teams message has to be one of the worst violations of what we used to call netiquette. I am guilty of this, but only on MS Teams. If you want to setup an audio call where Person A wants Persons B and C on a call together, you set up a new group chat. On MS Teams, the Start Call is disabled until the first message. So I will often put "hi" as a chat starter. MS Teams doesnt seem to see a chat as a bona fide chat until there is some spark of conversation, hence "hi"
    - chasd00 3y ago
      What I do is call person B and then when the call is started add person C. Usually in a group chat if I hit the call everyone button it’s by mistake haha
    - chrisweekly 3y ago
      Ok sure, but your use case doesn't necessarily imply that the "hi" message is sent without any surrounding context (ie, a previous message(s) preparing recipient for a call). My complaint was about a lone "hi", preceded by nothing, and followed by nothing (ie, putting the onus on recipient to respond to signal readiness to discuss... who knows what). It interrupts potential flowstate, creates an open loop, provides no hint as to priority, eliminates possibility of leveraging power of async comms to close a loop, and guarantees recipient comes into the future interaction unprepared. It only takes a few extra seconds to provide context ("hi, I could use help understanding X when you get a moment, ideally today"), so NOT doing that is, IMHO, either ignorant or rude.
- kylestlb 3y ago
  "Major open source projects, particularly the Linux kernel, are done entirely over email to great success." This is a good model of how to collaborate, but it's also a bit self selecting don't you think? Unfortunately the reality at most day jobs is that a lot of people you work with are simply trying to get by.
dheera 3y ago
> My contact info is below in the event you want to verify my identity You could take this a step further by proving who you are and a hash of the password you would like your password reset to. Like for example supplying a Yubikey TOTP as of the time of the e-mail should theoretically be sufficient; the IT people should be able to match that code against the e-mail time. Unfortunately they may not be competent enough to know how to reset your password given the hash.
digging 3y ago
I've had almost the exact situation at my work. I eventually even put nohello.net in my status message and forced it to show up whenever someone messages me (which felt rude! but important). Wrote up a pros/cons document of async standup which referenced many of the benefits of properly practiced async communication, with the implication that we could adopt those principles in our regular communications. I still get a "Hi" at least once a week. I've completely stopped responding to those. The cycle of grueling standups growing longer week by week until some form of reorganization cuts them back down continues. If leadership says they're remote-first but doesn't understand the practice of async communication, I don't believe a job at that org can be good.
- laserlight 3y ago
  > I still get a "Hi" at least once a week. I've completely stopped responding to those. A funny behavior I observed from those only-“Hi” people is that they will write their request after they don't get a response for a long-enough time.
  - pizzafeelsright 3y ago
    "If I am available or not, please include your request in future messages so that I may fully respond in the event you're also not available" Hi, bye, and thank you are implied. No need to say them in the course of business.
sublinear 3y ago
It goes both ways. Everyone is busy. Consider the following result: Helpdesk is typing... Helpdesk: "Hi" (entitled to ignore you forever if you don't say hi back) (... you finally do so more than 20 minutes later) Helpdesk: "what's the servicenow ticket number?" (you create a ticket and then after some lengthy amount of time getting escalated/reassigned your ticket status is blocked and you're asked to call the helpdesk number at hours that suit them and not you)

ninkendo 3y ago

It’s funny because your sample communication reads exactly like an email. Normally when it comes to remote work we like to talk about chat (slack, etc) and how to communicate in a way that lends itself well to asynchronous replies, but when you think about it, email is already perfect for this: - Email generally doesn’t carry the expectation that the recipient will reply immediately - Nobody emails with just “Hi” and waits for a response - People already know how to craft email in a way that is self contained and doesn’t require a ton of back and forth - Major open source projects, particularly the Linux kernel, are done entirely over email to great success. Sometimes I wish typical remote companies would embrace email (with a searchable web archive) instead of chat. Mailing lists replace channels, you can always reply directly to take things off-thread, mail is an open protocol where you can use your own client… the advantages are enormous.

digging 3y ago
Chat apps like Teams, Slack should be used as essentially internal email with the option to drop into real-time synchronous chat. The main difference is that you have to be on the same instance so there are cases where email is still more appropriate, though.
- pc86 3y ago
  Is this something the folks at Microsoft or Slack are actually saying "this is how our product is intended to be used" or is this just you saying "I wish these apps were different?" I ask because approximately 0% of the people I've met have ever used Teams/Slack/etc. as email, and approximately 100% of them use it as real-time synchronous chat first, and archive of past real-time chats second, and asynchronous chat a distant third.
  - maroonblazer 3y ago
    I, and nearly everyone I've worked with, use Teams/Slack as async comms. Most of my colleagues are incredibly busy, so there's no expectation that we'll get an immediate, real-time, response. Generally, if real-time comms is needed, and the other party didn't respond via chat immediately, we ask "Can you jump on a quick call?"
    - ghaff 3y ago
      What I've seen over the past 2-3 years is (company) email increasingly devolve most, though not all of the time, into announcements, automated workflow, and other FYI. If you're actually looking for a personalized response, even not immediate, the channel is chat in some form. I don't like it really. Email was a respond in a day medium. Chat is now at least same day/hours. In general, people don't call out of the blue any longer though so chat is inevitably repurposed for pretty soon. I'm having to readjust workflows to that. >the other party didn't respond via chat immediately, we ask "Can you jump on a quick call?" That still asssumes they're always monitoring chat in near-real-time.
      - scott_w 3y ago
        Not exactly, the “can we call” is usually to create a space to have that sync communication with someone but doesn’t always need to be immediate.
        ghaff 3y ago
out-of-ideas 3y ago
sort of; the idea of having a phone and 'instant message' to always grab attention is ridiculous; text-chat all the same to me; if i have an emergency, blow me up with an audible alert ( a call of some sort, a mention with particular rules in place to not get over-mentioned ). Email is crap-tier for internal communications IMO in that companies have 1 email for folks and it allows external entities to spam users (even if its internal spam). internal communication should be separated from external communication, this will help lower the phishing attack surface. i'd argue people should treat "IM" like emails; get a response eventually; if you want immediate attention, schedule a calendar/meeting with somebody. The biggest problem i see with chat-software is the attention-grabbing-notifications; silence all that stuff, and check on IM's every hour or so - set it up so that @mentions _might_ notify you in select channels. I find it sad when doing a paired programing session, on a scheduled-meeting, that folks get _so_ distracted by the pings, popups, ect of notifications for queries that are not urgent. They need to practice 1) patience and 2) diligence in responding to things they've been directly mentioned or have knowledge about
pizzafeelsright 3y ago
All Communications are this way. I have no expectation on response time because those generally do not exist. I have my deadline and SLA. How is make sure that these are well defined prior to taking on any task. The ability to say to any level of management, I can do X and I can do y but I cannot do them both within your time constraints, is the superpower I wish I learned many years ago. Yelling and screaming will not get it done. Let's discuss your priority and get it done.
chrisweekly 3y ago
> "Nobody emails with just “Hi” and waits for a response" I have to say, the zero-context "hi" in a Teams message has to be one of the worst violations of what we used to call netiquette.
- TuringNYC 3y ago
  > > "Nobody emails with just “Hi” and waits for a response" > I have to say, the zero-context "hi" in a Teams message has to be one of the worst violations of what we used to call netiquette. I am guilty of this, but only on MS Teams. If you want to setup an audio call where Person A wants Persons B and C on a call together, you set up a new group chat. On MS Teams, the Start Call is disabled until the first message. So I will often put "hi" as a chat starter. MS Teams doesnt seem to see a chat as a bona fide chat until there is some spark of conversation, hence "hi"
  - chasd00 3y ago
    What I do is call person B and then when the call is started add person C. Usually in a group chat if I hit the call everyone button it’s by mistake haha
  - chrisweekly 3y ago
    Ok sure, but your use case doesn't necessarily imply that the "hi" message is sent without any surrounding context (ie, a previous message(s) preparing recipient for a call). My complaint was about a lone "hi", preceded by nothing, and followed by nothing (ie, putting the onus on recipient to respond to signal readiness to discuss... who knows what). It interrupts potential flowstate, creates an open loop, provides no hint as to priority, eliminates possibility of leveraging power of async comms to close a loop, and guarantees recipient comes into the future interaction unprepared. It only takes a few extra seconds to provide context ("hi, I could use help understanding X when you get a moment, ideally today"), so NOT doing that is, IMHO, either ignorant or rude.
kylestlb 3y ago
"Major open source projects, particularly the Linux kernel, are done entirely over email to great success." This is a good model of how to collaborate, but it's also a bit self selecting don't you think? Unfortunately the reality at most day jobs is that a lot of people you work with are simply trying to get by.

dheera 3y ago

> My contact info is below in the event you want to verify my identity You could take this a step further by proving who you are and a hash of the password you would like your password reset to. Like for example supplying a Yubikey TOTP as of the time of the e-mail should theoretically be sufficient; the IT people should be able to match that code against the e-mail time. Unfortunately they may not be competent enough to know how to reset your password given the hash.

digging 3y ago

I've had almost the exact situation at my work. I eventually even put nohello.net in my status message and forced it to show up whenever someone messages me (which felt rude! but important). Wrote up a pros/cons document of async standup which referenced many of the benefits of properly practiced async communication, with the implication that we could adopt those principles in our regular communications. I still get a "Hi" at least once a week. I've completely stopped responding to those. The cycle of grueling standups growing longer week by week until some form of reorganization cuts them back down continues. If leadership says they're remote-first but doesn't understand the practice of async communication, I don't believe a job at that org can be good.

laserlight 3y ago
> I still get a "Hi" at least once a week. I've completely stopped responding to those. A funny behavior I observed from those only-“Hi” people is that they will write their request after they don't get a response for a long-enough time.
- pizzafeelsright 3y ago
  "If I am available or not, please include your request in future messages so that I may fully respond in the event you're also not available" Hi, bye, and thank you are implied. No need to say them in the course of business.

sublinear 3y ago

It goes both ways. Everyone is busy. Consider the following result: Helpdesk is typing... Helpdesk: "Hi" (entitled to ignore you forever if you don't say hi back) (... you finally do so more than 20 minutes later) Helpdesk: "what's the servicenow ticket number?" (you create a ticket and then after some lengthy amount of time getting escalated/reassigned your ticket status is blocked and you're asked to call the helpdesk number at hours that suit them and not you)