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"email just isn’t scalable." Well of course not! But is that a reason not to respond to people? No. One of the rudest behaviors I've seen from people is not res

"email just isn’t scalable." Well of course not! But is that a reason not to respond to people? No. One of the rudest behaviors I've seen from people is not responding to email. I get just as much email as you - promise! - but I really do try to respond to everything. If you're not going to respond, then for the love of god, have an auto-reply that says so. Note: I'm not accusing Mr. Cutts of not responding to emails... only that I notice it happening a lot with other people, ESPECIALLY googlers for some reason.

PakG1 14y ago
How much email do you receive? Some people truly do receive too much email. Especially during peak operations time for whatever might be happening (maybe some crisis, maybe seasonal business, whatever), I've many times heard someone say to some complainer, "Sorry, but I have close to a thousand in my inbox right now, and yours is just buried somewhere where I haven't seen it." I've experienced it too, and said similar things. I don't think anyone is rude for not replying to emails, especially if they're in a position to receive a lot of them. We should not attribute behaviour to malice so quickly and easily. edit: I don't want to say that I think it's nice to have a policy to not reply to emails. I do want to say that it's not good to make assumptions about what's going on. And frankly, there are some emails that are not worth replying. Do you reply to every single cold call sales pitch that lands in your inbox?
Matt_Cutts 14y ago
I've tried auto-replies. People get even more offended by that. Here's someone that posted after getting an auto-reply in 2007: http://www.ginside.com/2007/1186/matt-cutts-doesnt-respond-to-e-mail-anymore/ http://www.ginside.com/2007/1186/matt-cutts-doesnt-respond-t... . He was angry because he thought the battle against paid links was useless, and wanted me to email him back to justify our efforts on paid links. His conclusion? "When I met up with Matt at SES San Jose, he seemed like a cool guy, but I guess this [getting an auto-reply] proves my positive-assumptions wrong." Don't get me wrong. I like Jonathan (the author of the blog) and stopped by his blog to leave a comment to answer his question. But if you asked a neutral third party, "Which is better? To spend your time working on new algorithms for paid links? To write blog posts or make videos about paid links? Or to reply to emails justifying working on paid links?" I think the the neutral party would put replying to emails about paid links at the bottom of the priority list. And the amount of email at Google is pretty epic. Even after trying to reduce my email load through all the conventional methods like unsubscribing from newsletters, my mail storage is over 50 gigabytes. So there may not be a good conventional answer to the email issue for me. I really don't want to be rude by not responding to emails, but I also believe I should also be working on the biggest-impact things I can.
daeken 14y ago
> I get just as much email as you - promise! - but I really do try to respond to everything. I receive about 20 emails a day (to my personal email -- even disregarding work) that are deserving of a well-thought-out response, and aren't part of an existing thread or relationship. Of those, I may respond to 2-4. Any more would simply be too large a drain on my time; email already occupies several hours of my day, and the payoff just isn't there to justify increasing that, since it would come at the expense of other things I feel are higher priority, like spending time with the people I care about. I've actually been thinking about performing an experiment: you can pay me $X to send me an email. If $X > $Y, I'll guarantee a response (and a thoughtful one, at that), and I'll respond to the current highest paid email first, in case of inundation. You could still send me email via normal channels of course, but this would be a way of jumping over the normal hurdles I use when prioritizing (do I know you personally? do we have a business relationship? do I know you from HN? do I know your work? etc). Has anyone done this or considered it?

PakG1 14y ago

How much email do you receive? Some people truly do receive too much email. Especially during peak operations time for whatever might be happening (maybe some crisis, maybe seasonal business, whatever), I've many times heard someone say to some complainer, "Sorry, but I have close to a thousand in my inbox right now, and yours is just buried somewhere where I haven't seen it." I've experienced it too, and said similar things. I don't think anyone is rude for not replying to emails, especially if they're in a position to receive a lot of them. We should not attribute behaviour to malice so quickly and easily. edit: I don't want to say that I think it's nice to have a policy to not reply to emails. I do want to say that it's not good to make assumptions about what's going on. And frankly, there are some emails that are not worth replying. Do you reply to every single cold call sales pitch that lands in your inbox?

Matt_Cutts 14y ago

I've tried auto-replies. People get even more offended by that. Here's someone that posted after getting an auto-reply in 2007: http://www.ginside.com/2007/1186/matt-cutts-doesnt-respond-to-e-mail-anymore/ http://www.ginside.com/2007/1186/matt-cutts-doesnt-respond-t... . He was angry because he thought the battle against paid links was useless, and wanted me to email him back to justify our efforts on paid links. His conclusion? "When I met up with Matt at SES San Jose, he seemed like a cool guy, but I guess this [getting an auto-reply] proves my positive-assumptions wrong." Don't get me wrong. I like Jonathan (the author of the blog) and stopped by his blog to leave a comment to answer his question. But if you asked a neutral third party, "Which is better? To spend your time working on new algorithms for paid links? To write blog posts or make videos about paid links? Or to reply to emails justifying working on paid links?" I think the the neutral party would put replying to emails about paid links at the bottom of the priority list. And the amount of email at Google is pretty epic. Even after trying to reduce my email load through all the conventional methods like unsubscribing from newsletters, my mail storage is over 50 gigabytes. So there may not be a good conventional answer to the email issue for me. I really don't want to be rude by not responding to emails, but I also believe I should also be working on the biggest-impact things I can.

daeken 14y ago

> I get just as much email as you - promise! - but I really do try to respond to everything. I receive about 20 emails a day (to my personal email -- even disregarding work) that are deserving of a well-thought-out response, and aren't part of an existing thread or relationship. Of those, I may respond to 2-4. Any more would simply be too large a drain on my time; email already occupies several hours of my day, and the payoff just isn't there to justify increasing that, since it would come at the expense of other things I feel are higher priority, like spending time with the people I care about. I've actually been thinking about performing an experiment: you can pay me $X to send me an email. If $X > $Y, I'll guarantee a response (and a thoughtful one, at that), and I'll respond to the current highest paid email first, in case of inundation. You could still send me email via normal channels of course, but this would be a way of jumping over the normal hurdles I use when prioritizing (do I know you personally? do we have a business relationship? do I know you from HN? do I know your work? etc). Has anyone done this or considered it?