8 ms·
Yes I Saw Your Text, but Don’t Expect Me to Respond Instantly
- markbnj 11y agoYou can definitely see the effect of this within development teams too. I remember one specific exchange where a developer sent "X is broken" to the whole team, pretty much all of whom immediately read it and then started wondering how "X got broken." A minute later the OP sent "Oops my bad, typo." What is the cost of a two minute interruption for an entire team, or of the broken concentration, which probably lasts longer than the original interaction did?
- shocks 11y ago> What is the cost of a two minute interruption for an entire team Approximately zero.
- thesimpsons1022 11y agoBut if you're truly 10x like the HN community, that adds up to a whole 20 minutes of developer time! Adding this among an entire team adds up to hours.
- Raphmedia 11y agoNo. We bill $120 hourly. If the client CC the whole team on a problem, the whole team is going to take time off their current work to read the email. (5 mins * 6 workers) They are then going to reply to the message (2 mins * 6) and then investigate (10 mins * 6). A manager is likely going to step in and manage the team (30 mins). Finally, one developper is going to fix the issue (1 hour) and all the other developers are going to require getting back in "the zone" (average of 11 mins *6). That's three hours (or $360) wasted for an email that should have been properly sent to the product manager or to the support team. If the client do this every week and nobody notice it and educate him, he is going to waste thousands a month of the project's budget.
- drcross 11y agoMy grandma had a saying for people like you- "they know the price of everything but the value of nothing."
- tedunangst 11y agoEnlighten us. What is the value of the email about a nonexistent problem sent to the whole team?
- urda 11y agoI'm so glad you referred to your Grandmother to support an online discussion. What an insightful and relevant reference!
- Raphmedia 11y agoWhat are you proposing? That when the client don't use the proper channels, we simply do the work for free? We pride ourselves on how close to the client we are. If there is an emergency, they can email the team 24/7 and they will get a response. That doesn't come for free. If the client abuse of it, so be it, but they better be able to pay the bill at the end.
- shocks 11y agoI think we're answering different questions. I commented on the ridiculousness of someone complaining about a couple of developers losing 2 minutes of productivity. You're commenting on a problem client wasting hours of peoples times, at a company that apparently has no internal system to manage issues. Judging by the down votes I got, everyone thinks the same as you. Ah well.
- Nadya 11y agoApproximately zero most of the time - and potentially hours of productive work. I really like this comic for it's accuracy and I've shared it with a few project managers at work so that they'd leave me alone. https://i.imgur.com/3uyRWGJ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/3uyRWGJ.jpg A 10 second interruption is enough for me to lose 10 minutes of my time. Have twenty 10 second interruptions in the day and I've lost over 3 hours of productive time. Interrupt an entire team who potentially lose 10 minutes for that 10 second interruption and across a team of 10 people you've potentially lost 30 hours of productive time. Less meaningless distractions is better. Would you enjoy a book if I interrupted you every 3rd page for 15 seconds?
- markbnj 11y agoI love that comic. It is so dead on.
- shocks 11y agoI get your point, but this "Have twenty 10 second interruptions in the day and I've lost over 3 hours of productive time" is ridiculous. Yes, interruptions are exactly that - interruptions. No, a 2 second message accidentally sent to the entire team should not be the end of the world.
- ceejayoz 11y agoWe're not discussing geological timescales here. All the teams I've worked on lose a lot more than the couple minutes after an all-hands "something's horribly broken! whoops, my bad" panic.
- zhte415 11y agoHa. I OC'd [corporate instant messenger] a 200 strong team (all, added to an OC a group, think corporate MSN, we sat next to each other, but nothing like this had been done before in our office) an open question "What does it make to be a strong [business line role]?" It was quite fun seeing OC completely wipe out, but much more fun getting answers. Even as connections were being wiped out due to latency, as being asked to hijack desks that still had connection. Some really insightful stuff that was irrelevant for anything 'in hand' but yet relevant, and that didn't usually come back through formal channels. But, absolute OC wipe-out. Some answers that came back were quite embarrassing, for all. It led to good things.
- melvinmt 11y ago> If someone really needs you they will pick up the phone and call you. It’s that simple. I actually never feel the urge to respond quickly to a text message. I treat it as the asynchronous platform that it is. Phone calls on the other hand are way more intrusive than text messages and I hardly ever answer any call because of it.
- judemelancon 11y agoI always thought the asynchronicity was the main positive of SMS.
- mhurron 11y agoEventually all communication mediums will be expected to be instantaneous and synchronous. It happened with email, it happened faster with SMS because everyone expects you to have your phone up your ass at all hours of the day.
- sliverstorm 11y agoWhat really sets it apart is the robustness & cleverness, IMO. While delivery is not guaranteed, it's generally extremely reliable even with awful connections, and from what I remember it piggybacks on an existing communication channel meaning it was a "for free" extension of the original network.
- ketralnis 11y agoIt's really frustrating to be physically at a business speaking with an employee, only to have them pause our conversation to take a phone call. I really wish more businesses would use SMS.
- sliverstorm 11y agoPhone calls on the other hand are way more intrusive than text messages and I hardly ever answer any call because of it. ... which is an infuriating habit and a huge impediment to work. E.g., Your job has run away with our timeshare. Your email program is closed, you aren't signed onto IM, and you blithely ignore your ringing phone. I have to file a service ticket, summon support from ten timezones away, and it gets killed in a half hour. Or if you picked up the phone, you could have killed it in ten seconds. E.g., We are having a discussion about a critical decision. We wage email wars back and forth for days, each getting more disturbed that the other is completely misunderstanding some key point. Or if you picked up the phone, we might have easily sidestepped the miscommunication and reached an immediate understanding instead. If nothing else, a voice on the phone humanizes you more than Times New Roman 12pt, which reminds people they are working with other humans- and that in itself can nip issues in the bud.
- serve_yay 11y agoAn expectation of instantaneous response, combined with the pathetic verbal throughput of typing text on a glass screen. So many things that would be easy to say out loud are not worth typing on a phone screen. I didn't like talking on the phone much but texting is so much worse in so many ways.
- danneu 11y ago> So many things that would be easy to say out loud are > not worth typing on a phone screen. Yet even less worthy of a phone call.
- tomswartz07 11y ago“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoI have been arguing for contact states for years. You should be able to set conditions like the old IM status messages - "away," "in a meeting,","family time,"etc - that limit your reachability and optionally notify people that you won't be notified of their messages (until a certain time, if scheduled). This was (naively) my first iOS app attempt before I realized this is something that has to be done at the OS level. Please, Apple, "Do Not Disturb" was a step in the right direction. Finish the job.
- DarkTree 11y agoI was hoping this article was going to highlight the emotional issues with responding instantly as opposed to the "lack of time" issue. I don't respond to most texts instantly, not because I'm driving or busy with my life, but because I just don't feel like responding right away. I am not sure why this is. I am not trying to be rude, and most of the time I feel bad about it and think that maybe I have communication issues, such as keeping in touch with people. But I am starting to realize that we shouldn't be expected to respond immediately "just because". We shouldn't have to be occupied to warrant not responding. Unfortunately, it is a stigma, and people will continue to get upset if they don't hear back within a matter of minutes. I wish someone would touch on this issue as I've never really seen it discussed.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoLike I've said elsewhere, there's no built-in contact state that effectively communicates whether the person you are trying to reach is in normal work hours or they're with their family and only expect to be contacted in emergencies. It is a huge cultural problem, but the solution is technical: bring back away messages. It worked for AIM.
- teaneedz 11y agoIt's more than a technical problem. It requires a mindset change. Even if I'm Available, I can still be in the middle of a task and rather respond later - or perhaps think about how I want to respond. Also, by not responding immediately, it trains the sender not to expect instant replies. Contact states always introduce other issues.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoWhat issues? By "training" the person that contacts you it only affects their relationship with you, and has to be clarified for everyone you're in contact with. Some people will assume the rules that apply to them are the same for everyone else, unless you plan on explicitly defining your preferences to prevent misunderstandings.
- teaneedz 11y agoGreat post. This resonates with me because too often others expect a quick reply. I have read receipts disabled due to that mentality and won't use a messaging service that uses them without an opt-out option.
- noobie 11y agoBut, why would you see the text or read it if you're not going to respond?
- jjbiotech 11y agoI can think of a few situations. You're in a meeting and your phone buzzes. You can quickly read the message without being rude, where typing a response would be considered rude (at least in my office). I'll often do this to make sure it isn't something important that needs immediate attention. This also applies to driving. It would be unsafe to type a response, but reading a message in my opinion is fine. Similar to glacing at a GPS.
- angersock 11y agoIt would be unsafe to type a response, but reading a message in my opinion is fine. Similar to glacing at a GPS. As a cyclist and a former driver, neither is acceptable.
- IE6 11y agoMy Motorola V60i has an led indicator as well as a preview screen so sometimes seeing that I have a message or actually seeing part of the message is unavoidable.
- Qantourisc 11y agoMeetings, movie, recreation, ... coding in the zone ? Take your pick. But you might not wish to interrupt what you are doing right not any further. (But still keep a lookout for urgent things.)
- astrowilliam 11y agoAs someone deeply entrenched in a mobile workspace I tend to ignore a lot of txts because they aren't important. If they were important the person that's texting me would go through the proper channels and write up specs, etc for me instead of blasting a "WE NEED THIS NEW THING ASAP!" style message. Those texts get ignored and I send the person a Hipchat message stating that they must go through proper channels or NO work will get done. Writing the specs takes about 1-5 minutes and allows the developer to have a clear path to work from.
- justinlardinois 11y agotl;dr version: "You kids today and your loud music! Get off my lawn!"
- zeidrich 11y agoI've never had a person actually get upset with me because I've not responded back to a text immediately. I have some people who will always respond to my texts immediately, and some people who I will be lucky if I hear back in an hour. I don't hold any ill will towards the second group of people. I come to expect that from them. The only time I might get agitated is if someone always responds immediately and then stops, just because it's violating my expectations. I wonder if this person were to stop compulsively responding to texts immediately if people would stop getting angry when he doesn't.
- insensible 11y agoThis is an issue of boundaries on the receiver's side. Other people's unreasonable expectations are not binding on us. Otherwise we quickly become enslaved to everyone else's whims, which is no way to live and certainly no way to succeed at anything.
- tonyarkles 11y agoSigh... Kind of OT but I'm reminded of an old client of mine. He would routinely send feature requests and bug reports over SMS. At the start, I'd interrupt whatever I was doing and log it in the appropriate place, but after the first few weeks of this, it started to get pretty disruptive. I didn't trust myself enough to remember to go back through my texts later and catch everything from the messages. So I drew a line in the sand and explained to him that those things needed to go to email, so that I could deal with them at an appropriate time and not worry about losing them. This seemed to work well at first, but then every email was immediately followed by an SMS: did you get my email? The first few times, I interpreted that as "I sent an email a few days ago and didn't hear back" so I'd frantically go check my email and see the message: sent 2 minutes ago. I don't miss that client. Eventually the solution was to ignore him on SMS entirely. Well... Eventually the solution was to fire him as a client, but that was for other reasons.
- general_failure 11y agoLike some of the commenters, I don't respond to text immediately and not just when driving. This behavior of mine is made worse by all these new IM apps like telegram, hangouts which provide notifications on whether I have read it. If for some reason, I try to reply immediately and change my mind midway, the IM app shows 'xx it typing..' to the other party and now it's too late to back out.
- MadManE 11y agoThis is simply a matter of training people that you interact with. If you treat your own time as valuable and don't immediately respond to everything, eventually everyone else will come to think of your time as valuable also. The trick is to never respond immediately on media that you don't want it expected from. It has the random reinforcement effect attached to it, so if they get you once, they'll always expect it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- MisterBastahrd 11y agoI have a phone for a reason. It isn't to send telegraphs. I don't carry my phone with me to work, because people who need to get in touch with me have my work phone number and I live a few minutes away from the office. If your ego is so fragile that you need realtime validation of your thoughts, then we aren't going to get along. I'll keep on doing what I'm doing because it works for me, and I hope you find people who are willing to spend all day looking at their phone. I'd rather see everything else around me.
- john_b 11y agoOne of the best and simplest changes I ever made was to have my phone on airplane mode by default. Originally, the change was just to maximize the life of a dying battery, but even after I replaced the battery I discovered that I was happier, more focused, and less stressed when I only checked my phone 3-4 times a day. Essentially, I treat it like I treat email. Everyone who knows me knows that I do this and I have told them that I am not going to change. For emergencies, they know the people I usually see each day and know to call one of them. I've discovered that when people can't expect to contact you on a whim at any time, they think ahead and let you know what their plans are in advance. Both parties can then arrange their availability in advance and use their time more efficiently. After a year of doing this it makes you realize just how absurd and artificial the expectation of continuous availability is. My attention is a resource and I am going to control how I allocate it, not others.
- stuxnet79 11y agoWhen I receive emails and texts or anything for that matter, I try to get back to the original sender quickly. I expect others to do the same. People who violate this I treat on a case by case basis. If I know your life situation (i.e. you are always checking your phone - you are unemployed) and you are unable to get back to me within a couple of days let alone 24 hours, then to me this strongly indicates flakiness, or lack of respect of my time. However, if you are a busy individual with job, family responsibilities and you are unable to get back to me within a couple of days then I will cut you some slack. Ultimately, however, I find myself gradually mimicking the behavior of my contacts. If you always take your time to get back to me, then I won't see you as a priority and if we are 'friends' or 'romantic partners' then the relationship will gradually erode due to this. However, if you get back to me in a timely manner, you are always on time for appointments and you always let me know beforehand that you are not going to keep an appointment then I will put more effort than I would otherwise into trying to maintain the relationship.