10 ms·

No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

• cryptoboy2283 2y ago
  The level of entitlement in this post is ridiculous. Dude. You're just an engineer from an Engineering department of some company. Nobody's gonna read & apply any special rules of communnicating with you, especially written by yourself (sic!)
  • meowface 2y ago
    I think the core advice here is excellent and something I frequently think about when I receive requests for help, "can we hop on a quick call?", and "hi [name]" - but it's written extremely condescendingly and obnoxiously. This person seems intolerable to work with or interact with in general.
  • prmoustache 2y ago
    > Nobody's gonna read & apply any special rules of communnicating with you, especially written by yourself (sic!) On the other hand, you don't have to reply to those random "quick call" messages as well as videocalls without an agenda.
  • Leynos 2y ago
    It seems reasonable to me. I tell my reports to decline meeting requests unless the invitations include an agenda and a clear goal. If you're asking for 30 minutes or an hour of someone's time, it is only common courtesy to tell them why. If you send someone a message, don't just say "Hi". This is incredibly bad manners in the context of asynchronous communication. Give the recipient an opportunity to prioritize your message. You don't know what they are doing. They could be fire fighting. They could be tied up in a face-to-face conversation. They could be in deep flow. They might have three or four other messages to prioritize alongside yours. If you don't give someone the information to make an appropriate prioritization decision, all you are doing is inducing anxiety. This is all a matter of being kind and accommodating to your colleagues, enabling them to work with you effectively, and making it easier for them to help you. Purposefully making your colleagues' lives more difficult is a recipe for an unpleasant working environment.
    • daghamm 2y ago
      "I tell my reports to decline meeting requests unless the invitations include an agenda and a clear goal." We have a team that works this way 100% of the time, assuming the invitation is not coming from higher management. They are always the last to deliver and the team with the most critical bugs. If you don't make time for back channel sync, you will become an isolated island and your product will eventually suffer.
      • Leynos 2y ago
        How so? There is no excuse for sending a meeting invite without an explanation as to what will be discussed or what you hope to achieve. That just results in aimless meetings that either have too many unnecessary attendees or missing people who do need to attend. When someone asks you to provide an agenda for a meeting, do you really just ignore them?
        • daghamm 2y ago
          I don't know, but let me hypothesise. When you work with complex stuff, there will always be one or two urgent meetings where the caller doesn't have time or the data to set up a proper agenda. A meeting invite saying "oh shit, all hands on deck" does not need to be due to bad planning. Obviously this should not be the norm, but when it happens you cannot simply instruct your people to ignore it.
          • Leynos 2y ago
            I hate to say it, but dealing with high priority incidents with a meeting invite saying "oh shit, all hands on deck" and no further information does not sound healthy. The organisation should have a proper incident response plan in place setting out communication standards and channels.
            • daghamm 2y ago
              I think you are misunderstanding my message. This should never be the norm. But when the work is challenging and non-trivial something like this happens once in a while.
  • wccrawford 2y ago
    I think what you're missing is that this isn't just this person's preferences. These are things that bother many, many engineers and don't provide any value compared to the alternative. Good etiquette isn't common sense, and that's why there are books written about it for centuries.
  • malux85 2y ago
    I thought this was excellent, and I would enjoy working with people like this
• puttycat 2y ago
  > A call is more distracting than a chat message. I highly disagree. A call has a definite start and end. Async chats leave an open thread in your mind that needs to be constantly polled and interrupt flow much more than a call.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • simonmysun 2y ago
    I believe the author means "quick call"s. They are not against scheduled calls.
    • jstimpfle 2y ago
      Below a certain threshold, "quick calls" are the best thing to do. Some of the most inspiring discussions come from someone bringing up an issue they have right there and then. Good discussions often start from something that doesn't seem so important, that doesn't have a clear outline from the start. If there isn't the possibility to start a discussion instantly once in a little while, there is a good chance it won't ever happen.
      • meowface 2y ago
        >Good discussions often start from something that doesn't seem so important, that doesn't have a clear outline from the start. Yes, but I've never once had a "can we hop on a quick call?" turn into that. Almost every single one of those that I've encountered could've been settled in a handful of chat messages. The things you describe happen to me during unplanned asides in meetings, long-term general chat channels, or impromptu in-person chatting. My impression has been that the people who want a quick 1-on-1 call just don't like typing.
        • prmoustache 2y ago
          > My impression has been that the people who want a quick 1-on-1 call just don't like typing. Yes, similar to my ex (can't get rid of her completely, shared custody of the kids) who always insist on sending voice messages. She just don't want to type and keep sending voice message after I told her several times I hated that because it made looking for past information super difficult. By the way, wasn't there a slack like app that was working kind of a walkie-talkie kind of system within a team?
• BiteCode_dev 2y ago
  I get the sentiment, but also, for many the work place is a socialization hub. And what OP argue about is a direct consequence of that: small talks, serendipity, politness rules, etc. If you want raw efficiency, the article makes sense. However, in most orgs, that's not what most workers want.
  • intended 2y ago
    The Article is about remote work, which dodges this issue.
    • BiteCode_dev 2y ago
      It doesn't, chat and mails actually become way more socially important in remote.
  • meowface 2y ago
    Small talk is fine, but when someone isn't willfully trying to engage in small talk and just is walking through a ritual to ask me a question, it seems better to skip the ritual and get to the point. Instead of "Hi [name]", them waiting for me to reply, me waiting for them to reply, and them sending their question, they could write "Hi [name], [question]" in their initial message. There are no disadvantages to this and plenty of advantages.
    • BiteCode_dev 2y ago
      I agree but stating isn't going to change the culture of corporations or even countries.
  • prmoustache 2y ago
    > I get the sentiment, but also, for many the work place is a socialization hub. > And what OP argue about is a direct consequence of that: small talks, serendipity, politness rules, etc. You can do that while following the same rules of politeness and small talks. For instance I had a colleague who used to put "Hi" or "Good morning" messages several times a day on my teams chat. He could be as polite saying and include small talk in a single message: " Good morning prmoustache, do you have some time to help me on project BLABLABLA, I need assistance regarding setup of FOO in a BAR context. Mr John Doe told me you had experience with that. Here are the errors I get. <some snippet> If you have some time now we can maybe do a quick call, otherwise can I schedule some time? By the way, how is the weather in Spain today? Did you enjoy some nice time on the beach with your daughters? " This is polite, include all the info I would need, some small talk, would give me an idea on how much time I might need to dedicate to that to give assistance, if I have to check some info in my note/wiki/whatever and either decide to stop what I am doing now and help him immediately or ask him to schedule a meeting later during the day or week. And maybe I have the exact solution and I can point him a link that will help him directly. People who usually don't go straight to the point either do it: - for cultural reasons - by ignorance on how to work effectively with remote worker - or because they want to brute force their way into you. - a combination of all 3
• cj 2y ago
  At a certain point it just doesn't make sense to over-optimize for productivity, when the sacrifice (being pleasant & accessible to coworkers) isn't worth the gain (more focus time coding).
  • passwordoops 2y ago
    This is a phenomenal general rule and can be expanded well beyond engineering and social norms: At a certain point it just doesn't make sense to over-optimize for productivity, when the sacrifice {insert impact} isn't worth the gain {insert output}.
  • worldsayshi 2y ago
    Sometimes it seems that we're over focused on efficiency as opposed to effectiveness. And I get it, because it's very hard to "be both". You can either spend your day coding away solving problems or you can spend your day discussing with people figuring out what the problem is. Both pursuits have clear failure modes; you can spend a lot of time trying to understand the problem better without really getting anywhere and you can spend a lot of time solving the wrong problem. How do you know when you have the right balance? 50/50?
    • cj 2y ago
      > How do you know when you have the right balance? Find the right balance by understanding the needs of the whole business, the needs of your department, and the needs of your specific team, and your manager’s expectations of you. Then balance all that with the work assigned to you, deadlines, etc. And then align your day to day work with what the business is telling you is most important. (This is also how average engineers can put themselves in positions to be promoted ahead of “rockstar engineers”. Companies promote and elevate employees who have the most positive impact on the business, not people who have the most impact on the codebase)
  • gregjor 2y ago
    Agree, especially when no one writing code, or managing anything, has a meaningful measure of their "productivity," or how removing or changing variables might "optimize" it. People talk about optimizing their productivity as if they had a meter on their desk showing a number, but it just comes down to subjective experience and mood. People who act like their time has so much value they can ignore and talk down to their co-workers end up with no professional contacts worth anything when they get laid off. "I had my head down coding, I didn't have time to socialize or make friends." Optimal for an hour, maybe, but a losing strategy in the long game.
• ckastner 2y ago
  For larger enterprises with complex org charts, I consider an agenda one of two invaluable tools for meetings, the other being post-meeting minutes including a RACI chart. If someone can't think up a few bullet points for a meeting in advance, that person has not prepared for their meeting, and will waste some of the participant's time. Not creating (one-line) minutes that most importantly include decisions that have been made in the meeting is also the perfect set-up for wasting other people's time. I see this similar to the effort of writing a good commit message.
  • petecooper 2y ago
    >RACI chart Today I learned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matr...
  • Leynos 2y ago
    This is good advice. I hadn't thought to use a RACI chart in this way, but as you describe it, it seems like the most obvious application.
  • prmoustache 2y ago
    Most times that person not preparing the call with an agenda is told in the middle of the meeting that he should have invited someone else that has knowledge on some key point and it ends up needing another meeting to be scheduled. With more context, people may have told him prior to the meeting that person needed to be included to.
    • ckastner 2y ago
      Yeah, this is one of the more common failure modes. One meeting wasted, and possibly lots of time lost when the next meeting can only be scheduled much later. All easily preventable if the person organizing the meeting prepares for it, and shares a brief agenda so that other participants can prepare to, or find replacements if they themselves are the wrong person for the meeting.
  • joncrocks 2y ago
• omega3 2y ago
  I’m amazed these titans of productivity have time to write blog posts about productivity.
  • GoToRO 2y ago
    Some even go out, do sports, visit museums. How dare they?
• yungporko 2y ago
  these things annoy me too but it's never going to stop, linking somebody to something like this is just going to result in everybody disliking you and then asking you for a quick call anyway when they want something.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• intended 2y ago
  I get the point. You want a quick answer, then ask the question directly. I dont think the rule can be applied universally. 1) Cultural norms - This may not work in all environments 2) You have an issue which requires cross function help. Hard to frame a precise question when you dont know which features are the most significant.
  • makeitdouble 2y ago
    > 1) Cultural norms - This may not work in all environments If you have the luxury to pick and choose, going to a company where that works is a huge improvement at large. In my personal experience at least, I've seen no place where the "let me quick call you" is a norm and engineering is also decently respected and paid appropriately. > 2) You have an issue which requires cross function help. Hard to frame a precise question when you don't know which features are the most significant. You'll need more investigation either way, I'm not even sure you'll be able to properly decide who should be part of the meeting. The whole "who should I talk to" can be potentially be done better by chat, where you ask a whole group at once who's concerned by your problem and further narrow down as you get pointers. Messaging a whole channel at once will probably be better accepted than inviting random people at a meeting to realize none of them were concerned.
    • intended 2y ago
      It would be strange if you used a nail to hit a hammer. There is a degree of picking and choosing the right tool for the right job. > I've seen no place where the "let me quick call you" You haven't seen places where people say "Hi?", especially in the context of remote work? >...decide who should be part of the meeting This would be where "could we have a call?" matters, As said first, words used with purpose provide a specific utility. Nor did I mention messaging a whole channel? Whatever the situation you are envisioning, it is of your own experience that looks to be bleeding in.
      • makeitdouble 2y ago
        > You haven't seen places where people say "Hi?", especially in the context of remote work? The whole bit from the article: > > You started a conversation by writing "Hi", or "Hello", or even maybe "Good morning Sebastian, I have a question". And then you waited. And waited. And waited for minutes (or hours if I was busy and you were patient) without a single word explaining what problem you were facing. Yes, I've seen this in places, many places. Most times the person doing it immediately got guidance to stop doing it. The only place where it persisted was a small shop where the founder and managers would also be doing it, and the technical team was leaking away at a speed I couldn't check for very long, as I was out pretty fast too. That could be one of the most clear sign they don't give a damn about online communication and won't care to adapt. >...decide who should be part of the meeting TBH I'm not sure to understand your answer. Of course I'm talking from my own experience, how could I speak for you ? Also, calls are costly, using them to understand who you're actually supposed to call feels wasteful. That can be done completely asynchronously in most cases.
• bruce511 2y ago
  Open a jira ticket for every meeting you attend. (And close it). When asked about productivity treat meetings as the most productive use of your time. "I had a fantastic day yesterday, attended 5 meetings and closed 5+n tickets. I'm so productive I deserve a raise." Managers treat meetings as the most important thing you do. (Its the most important thing they do.) The disconnect is that we don't see them the same. Once you start taking credit for all the meetings you attend, you'd be surprised how many fewer you get invited to.
  • alluro2 2y ago
    Exactly - in my experience, it seems like many managers often have a notion of engineers' work being done somewhere/sometime else, isolated in another dimension from the meetings, and hence meetings not having much effect on that "actual work". Once you start adding tickets for every meeting and ad-hoc call, and from that it becomes obvious that these are now taking 70% of your time and what little remains is not nearly enough for the "real work", you'll find how the attitude shifts and those managers start protecting your time... Interestingly, managers often don't seem to consider meetings "real work" for engineers, but it's almost the only type of work they do, and take credit for...
• cududa 2y ago
  Sorry but if any one of my coworkers behaved or responded like this, I’m not sure we’d be working together anymore.
  • meowface 2y ago
    Simultaneously, 1) I am frequently annoyed when dealing with these help-asking, "can we hop on a quick call?", "good morning [name]" interactions and vehemently agree with the author's frustration with them, and 2) their tone is so condescending and rude that I'd rather deal with 1000 of the former interactions than 1 interaction with this individual. I can't imagine linking this post to anyone.
• I_o_IllI__o_I 2y ago
  [dead]
• albert_e 2y ago
  There are valid arguments here so I broadly agree with where the author is getting at. But some points are a stretch and that weakens the whole argument. Point 3.1 : you waste HOURS of time debugging the wrong piece of code -- going off on a quest based on just one single chat message with incomplete info (and not even a stack trace as you deem it so essential yourself)? You don't ask any clarifying questions to validate your assumptions before sinking hours into work? Is that not your fault instead? Point 4: so you want a whole IT support ticket (with attachments and priority classification if IM allows it) in a single chat message? Why are you accepting support requests on chat instead of via a ticketing tool that keeps track of request volumes, history, SLAs etc. If your workplace doesn't care about this level of productivity management and efficiency anyway -- why bother with these rules of engagement. Also when someone pings you about an issue ... there is a chance you already know about an outage/issue and are working on it...and might just say "I know, fix is on the way by EoD, sit tight." If so... the whole stack trace and explanation of the problem scenario, what they have tried etc is all useless waste. They are just trying to optimize THEIR productivity by pinging you first instead. Two people can play this game.
  • PickledJesus 2y ago
    3.1: A skilled person does, but it's still easy to get led down the garden path, even for very skilled engineers, especially when something is urgent, or at least "urgent" 4: Stakeholders really like chat, and it's a constant battle to make them go through the motions to report things properly. Why wouldn't they like it, it puts the burden onto you rather than them. It's often a tricky balance to strike, depending on the organisation, they can often be more important than you.
• widowlark 2y ago
  Most of the time, im letting YOU know that the product or service YOU own is not working. Its a courtesy. If I have to jump through this many hoops to tell you that, ill just let it continue to fail until someone more important than me has a problem. Then ill point them to you.
• rethab 2y ago
  We cannot forget that we also loose something with working remotely (say more than 75% of the time) and that is the occasional bumping into each other at the water cooler or in the morning when coming in. These are situations you can artificially create by scheduling calls to socialize etc, but that is still not comparable with being in an actual office. By categorically saying no to quick calls, you're isolating yourself even more. While it can be distracting to jump on a call while you actually meant to focus on some coding, it can also be great to have a quick chat and brainstorm about an idea rather than let the other person work out the solution in isolation only for me to then suggest a totally different approach in the PR review (yay! asynchronous!).
  • prmoustache 2y ago
    That is not incompatible with adding some context in the "quick call invite". Even when I was working from the office, sometimes I would have to say no to someone who was reaching out to me or bumping into me in front of the water fountain because I was in the middle of something. In that case I would just ask to send me a message with some context and I would go back to him/her when I had more time to dedicate on that.
    • space_oddity 2y ago
      Exactly, providing context in quick call invites can make a big difference, even in a remote setup
    • repeekad 2y ago
      Maybe not incompatible but certainly diminished, the idea is you randomly stumble upon someone’s work or ideas who you wouldn’t have otherwise talked to if it needed to be scheduled, personally I think lunch in person is where this shines the most Productivity doesn’t go down with fully remote work, but I think the kind of creativity that organically comes from ideas being constantly shared and discussed does To be clear, I don’t think it’s always people’s job to be creative, and company’s should absolutely have roles for people who can work remotely who just join scheduled meetings and execute “the plan”
• sanitycheck 2y ago
  I agree with this entirely, and have griped about it to people (and here) before. But I would never, under any but the most egregious circumstances, complain directly to a colleague who does it or (especially) send them this link. People are different, and most people are different to me. I'm getting paid partly to deal with other people, so that's what I'll (sometimes grudgingly) do. If they're doing this all the time to each-other, my productivity is still going to be relatively high anyway.
  • n4r9 2y ago
    > I would never ... complain directly to a colleague who does it True. Nor would I. I would push for the company to publish guidelines about remote and asynchronous communication. And then if someone repeatedly communicated badly, I'd provide constructive feedback either directly to them or to their line manager.
• daghamm 2y ago
  This may sound reasonable, but the world is not black and white. If we turn every quick question into a complete meeting with agenda and whatnot, the organisation will become extremly bureaucratic. And at some point people will start making guesses instead of reaching out to experts because it is just too much work. So in my opinion, the author is a little bit selfish too. The company cannot 100% align with what best works for you.
  • widowlark 2y ago
    The authors approach, in my opinion, will lead to nothing but confrontation and probably decrease productivity significantly. Then again, it sounds like that's the goal
  • throwaway346434 2y ago
    Yeah. Nah. 1) are your goals aligned with the ultimate success factors of the company? Probably. 2) are the people who want to stop you from doing your job aligned? Probably not. Ask yourself if people who "just want a minute" would go stick their arm in an industrial metal press, willingly. Don't they want to make a good impression? Or would this be a horrible act of self harm that is completely disruptive?
    • drawkward 2y ago
      Neither 1 nor 2 are obvious. They sound more like ego to me.
    • seeEllArr 2y ago
      [dead]
  • cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
    Yep. Frankly, these articles are just keyboard warrior antics from introverts that are feeling on top of the world with the wave of WFH. Conflating “what’ll get me back to my IDE faster” and “how can I make all communication so structured that I never have to genuinely interact with anyone at work on a human level” with an actual increase in productivity is just a sign of immense naivety. Thankfully these people tend to be quite vocal about these views online so I can appropriately take it as a soft red flag when hiring.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• omega3 2y ago
  More often than not when I encounter people with these very strict prescribed communication preferences it’s due to either, hubris, inability to manage their own time or skills issue - people are just afraid to be asked a question because they might not know the answer.
• DebtDeflation 2y ago
  I will never understand people who write "Hello" or "Hi Joe" in Slack and then just wait. It has to be some form of mental illness.
  • unsupp0rted 2y ago
    It's especially taxing for me because it means I can't concentrate on what I'm doing until I reply to them. If I know the "Hi Joe" is hanging there, part of my focus is holding onto it until I clear it.
  • philipwhiuk 2y ago
    Honestly, I just ignore the conversation until they post something meaningful.
    • spacebacon 2y ago
      The “hey Joe” catalyst types often expect a “I got that X for you” response. They correctly assume you don’t need a public reminder for your responsibilities so they opt for a subtle nudge.
  • prmoustache 2y ago
    It is like calling someone and saying hello in the voicemail.
    • drawkward 2y ago
      Except that it is not, because it is not voicemail.
  • thomond 2y ago
    It's why I don't use IM and just block myself off on those platforms. If it's not meaningful enough to write in an email then it's not meaningful enough for me to read.
    • Kamq 2y ago
• dangsux 2y ago
  [dead]
• tialaramex 2y ago
  I endorse the general thrust of this post, however: Calls can be much more effective than messaging for detecting and handling the XY problem now that users can easily screen share, because you can often see why the user wanted to do X, not just (as in their two lines of text) that they wanted to do X, and you may be able to solve Y and make them happier.
  • prmoustache 2y ago
    It is not about avoiding calls but avoiding calls without context.
    • widowlark 2y ago
      But the chilling effect it has on cross-team interactions leads to the same result.
      • prmoustache 2y ago
        It really depends on how it is asked. I went through that with a coworker who kept saying hi and quick call. I reckon we are from different continents and with way different cultures so I once entered one of these "quick call" and asked him politely if in the future he could ask his question directly and I would answer when I have time and that would leave me time to check for information if needed. I also asked him if he could put some context when asking for a call so that I can decide to ask him to schedule a meeting some other day or accept it right away depending on my schedule/load. Once in a while he goes back to his old ways but more often than not he is adding context. Some people just think you are their personnal stackoverflow / github copilot if you don't put any limit.
• krisoft 2y ago
  > So we both embark on a completely needless adventure of changing random parts of the code and scratching our heads as to why nothing makes the error go away. I end up wasting hours because of a typo. Wow. That's just straight up admitting being an idiot and blaming others for it. If a person leaving out a stack trace causes you to ask for a stack trace that is on them. They wasted some of your time. (Or at least I guess you can argue that.) If a person leaving out a stack trace causes you to blindly modify random parts of the code then that is on you and you only. Confused people ask confused questions. Because they are confused. If they could ask the right questions they would have already helped themselves. It is your job to not let their confusion overtake you. Ask questions until you understand the situation. Software engineering is not a SWAT raid. You can and should ask questions and shoot only later.
  • v3ss0n 2y ago
    > Software engineering is not a SWAT raid. You can and should ask questions and shoot only later. Ask Question and *TroubleShoot only later. FTFY. Nice one by the way, quoted.
• j-a-a-p 2y ago
  > Those are common mistakes that people make when working remotely. Maybe you work in an environment where productivity is low, so everyone has time to jump on a quick call or chat with you any time you ask. Classic 'you are with us or against us' level of argumentation. Saying hello is already a _mistake_, and paraphrasing: you either like to work for a company of underperforming losers, or you need to follow the advice of the article. How convincing!
• Lyngbakr 2y ago
  While I totally agree with the post, I think the tone of the delivery is likely to undermine the points made. From my perspective, for these guidelines to be adhered to there needs to be a broader buy in. 37signals are perhaps a prominent example of how this works. And if it's presented in a more pleasant way, rather than in the tone of a parent chastising a child, I think these principles can take root and become part of team/company culture.
• maxehmookau 2y ago
  I'm a huge advocate of full-time remote working, but those like me who feel it is the future of work need to stop being so dogmatic about how communication should happen. I don't really like posts like this. Sure, it's a great idea in a remote context to write down how you like to communicate, and how you like to be communicated with at work. (You should do it, it's great!) However, not everybody will agree with you and part of being a good employee on a large, distributed, team is understanding and working with other people's communication styles. Even if you hate it.
  • nottorp 2y ago
    Let's get to the point: some people like being in pointless meetings/calls all day, some don't. With remote work, you get the chance to rewrite company communication so that the above pointless meetings aren't needed. People who write articles like the OP have realized that and view the former way to communicate as the extremely inefficient and intrusive system that it really is. If you're in a fully text based async culture, then all the conversation, including the famous watercooler stuff and how're the kids doing stuff happens text based and async. I'd say the watercooler/kids stuff can happen more often, because you know you won't interrupt them when you ask, and they'll answer whenever they take a break. Keywords are both text based and async. Not one, both.
  • sitkack 2y ago
    I agree with the authors sentiment, and to some degree yours. We should be flexible, but we should all try to better ourselves and others. Their post is meant to change norms, basically a, "Hey we really should all understand why nohello.net was created". Oddly enough, the post itself is my version of nohello. I'd prefer that they started with the conclusion and then build from there. [1] The author is attempting to change norms. I already fixed it with my kid, she asks amazing questions and includes all the right context. It isn't that they don't agree or disagree, very few "hello'ers" will be able to defend or even explain their position. It isn't about preference or dislike. A blind "Hello" isn't a communication style, it is a faux pas. It doesn't matter if you are remote or on the next desk over, we should do better with communication. And that includes how to deliver the message that a blind hello is poor form. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication) https://www.nngroup.com/articles/inverted-pyramids-in-cyberspace/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/inverted-pyramids-in-cybers...
• NKosmatos 2y ago
  It's mentioned in the post, but it never hurts to repeat it here: https://nohello.net https://nohello.net It's been some years since I saw this site and ever since I always add context in all my on-line interactions with co-workers.
• davidrm 2y ago
  My favorite impact that I've had on my organization was the "no agenda, no meeting". It became a meme, minutes before the agenda-less meeting was supposed to take place someone would send it to a meeting chat or email, usually followed with ":)", especially if I were one of the attendees. In the rare cases I forgot to follow my own stubborn rule then it was a whole show, in hindsight, probably should've broken it at least once a quarter along with some penance to really help cement it. However, I managed to "bully" everyone into following this simple rule because I had some influence in the organization; I was a manager of a large department. Unfortunately, interns will probably get an eye-roll for such suggestions, even if they reference their superior's rule. My point is, don't send you colleagues this link, you will come off as rude. You'll get further by e.g. feigning surprise to the lack of agenda, and maybe you get to use that opportunity to spark a conversation about the importance of an agenda. If you're a manager and above, then by all means, use your influence to force it, it will make everyone's job easier in the long run. Oh, as for the messages that contain only "hello", just ignore them, they will either solve their own problem or quickly jump to the point once they tire of waiting for your equally pointless response. Or just have a chat with your colleagues every once in a while, maybe they genuinely care about you and your cat.
• Pikamander2 2y ago
  This particular blog post is probably too snarky to share with most people, but I've had success with gently explaining the same concept to various clients and coworkers, especially ones who are working different with different schedules or time zones. The trick is to frame their behavior as inconvieniencing them rather than you. In other words, if they send you all the details up front, then you can send them a good answer as soon as possible rather than needing them to drop what they're doing later on to send you a follow-up reply when you ask for clarification. I've also found that, for people who seem to prefer talking to typing, asking them to record a short Loom video of the issue usually gets them to explain the problem with enough details to solve it.
  • thyristan 2y ago
    The real trick would be for the company higher-ups to recognize that there is a problem and impose the rules in the original article as binding company policy.
• Simon_ORourke 2y ago
  Meetings without an agenda and a published list of minutes and actions are effectively theft. You're stealing people's time and with that company resources. However, having said that I've found these kind of "Hi can we chat" meetings are great ways of flagging corporate sociopaths and general losers. They make it their career to schedule as many of these as possible to get out of doing other work.
• projektfu 2y ago
  There is definitely culture clash in this. I think it is probably better to normalize "available" and "unavailable" spans for the knowledge workers who need flow to work effectively. (And I am one.) If my plan was to write a prototype or debug a difficult problem, it doesn't matter if I'm expected to respond to "Hello" or "Hello, <30 word question>", I lose my flow and the job will be delayed. I might even end up permanently distracted on something else. Better would be to connect a pomodoro timer to status that says "Available at <+30m>" when the timer starts. Then I could respond to "hello" and take a quick call and ask the meeting planner to make an agenda.
• akoboldfrying 2y ago
  I sympathise with some of this, but the tone is unbearable. >Don't worry, I'm not mad at you. Those are common mistakes that people make Calling a common and natural communication style that is not your preferred communication style objectively a "mistake". Charming. >Maybe you work in an environment where productivity is low, so everyone has time to jump on a quick call or chat with you any time you ask. "But I don't, because I'm amazing. You've probably heard of me."
  • GoToRO 2y ago
    This is the classic "I don't have any counterarguments so I'll complain about something fuzzy, like the tone" comment.
    • akoboldfrying 2y ago
      If OP's goal is to actually change people's behaviour, tone is very important. If their goal is just to vent, it doesn't matter. I've assumed the former.
• lucideer 2y ago
  No hello is very reasonable, but only to a point. It's a specific adaptation to asynchronous communication that kicked off in the IRC days where channel idling was common - async is a radically different form of comms to in-person & this etiquette aids in adapting to those differences. But it's important to remember that it is an adaptation for a specific comms medium & applying it too broadly may really just be a way of shirking socialisation. That's fine if you're most productive as an engineer working alone on your fully-self-contained owned project, but in most cases collaboration is beneficial. Collaboration introduces communication inefficiencies but its a known trade-off. Especially extending this barrier-to-entry to other things like calls (verbal comms) & meetings (in-person) can lead to significant inaccessibility, exclusion & siloing. It's worth stepping back & looking at problems you may be trying to solve here: e.g. too-many-meetings or long meeting run-on. These are problems that frankly this doesn't do anything to solve whatsoever; you'll just end up with managers setting boilerplate agendas for the same "too many long meetings" & meanwhile some of the peers you may need to have a valuable short meet with will be too hung up by your requirements to contact you at all.
• leonixyz 2y ago
  This is the best guide to improve anti-social behaviour in remote workers and disrupt teams. Just refuse to answer when people text you "Hello". Oh, come on... Am I loosing time waiting for your "hello" back? Well, guess what: maybe I took it into consideration the fact that you're busy, and that I might be waiting for hours, but not answering at all only makes you a jerk. This is far from politely refusing "quick calls" when busy. And no: you can't be always busy: if you want to keep telling yourself you're working in a team you need to allocate a reasonable amount of time to social interactions. Do you really expect me to send you a calendar event invitation to have a quick call with you once in a month? To update you about something that might even interest you? Maybe it's not going to be communicated in the most efficient way possible, as would be with an email, but certainly it will be done in a way that would keep us human beings, not mentioning the fact that it would also improve team work. If you do, please do not expect me to sit next to you if we happen to meet in person, and be happy and friendly.
  • widowlark 2y ago
    The best way to interact with people who feel this way is to not play the games. Eventually the isolated individual will be managed out or adapt to a more sensible posture. Best to work around them until then.
• rdsubhas 2y ago
  Social behaviors are complicated. Yes of course, it's possible to have both pleasantries (hi, how are you, etc) and ask the question in very polite ways (whenever you're free, if I'm not disturbing you, I wanted to check with you about <xyz>). But social behaviors are habitual. I spent time in many parts of Africa where it's just downright rude/unacceptable to go to someone and ask something, even if it's just a change for a few bucks. You have to go through the pleasantries and WAIT for them to acknowledge before you ask what you want. It's impossible to change that habit, no matter the tool, medium, rationale, process, even urgency. They're still going to say "can I talk to you for a sec" and wait for an answer. I've had people do this in the middle of production issues and it's driven me crazy. Even when things are burning, their way of escalating is still only to say "I NEED to talk to you right now", they're simply not tuned to state what they want. To not help with this, I also went through trainings on personality traits and communication styles. Some people reveal and then explain (direct communication style), and some people first explain then reveal (indirect style), they need you to go through the thought process first before concluding. I learned that it's guaranteed to create conflicts when the communication style for a person is reversed. If you give a conclusion-first to someone who needs explanation-first, they're tuned to mentally reject the conclusion – no matter how you sugar coat it or your intention or rationale. So we have to constantly keep reinforcing what we're ok with. Just keep calm and reinforce, tell people to provide context in your chat profile, use an auto reply, copy paste a message saying "next time please feel free to ask the question..." and so on. It's kind of a never ending battle. The only thing is, please don't assume anyone is being a jerk, the same way you are not being a jerk by ignoring that message or replying tersely.
• cromulent 2y ago
  PG put this perhaps more gently in his essay Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule. I work with people whose days are a sequence of meetings and chats within meetings. They don't understand (or respect) that I have meetings but also must concentrate for periods of time. https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
• karrotwaltz 2y ago
  > There is another possibility - you're lazy and selfish, so you don't care how your interruptions affect others because your questions need to be answered right now with minimal effort on your end. But I'm sure that's not the case. > So, when I answer your "Quick call?" with "What's the problem?", that's really for your own good :wink face: Please do not ever write sentences like this in a professional context where you are not friends with the recipients, it's terrible. It sets the tone to "adult to children discussion where I think that I am smarter than you" which is the last thing you want when you try to solve on of your pain point. One the other hand if you want me to avoid interacting with you as much as I can that would be spot on.
• peanut-walrus 2y ago
  "Calls are ephemeral" is a feature, not a bug. Real-time chat should be as well. Slack storing messages until the end of days is an anti-feature.
• quacksilver 2y ago
  As a junior i often wrote "Hi, do you have a moment? (ok if not)" in slack (or lync at the time) to senior people when I had questions. I then didn't expect a reply unless the senior person was not busy or bored. If no reply within 5 mins I would ask the next person. I did this when I had a question that perhaps 20 people who I knew could answer, though I had no way of telling who (if anyone) was free to chat something over with me. I didn't send a group email as the projects that I was working on contained need to know stuff, so sending details of it to 20 people would be a no-go but saying I spoke about this with Bob, here is the audit trail would be fine. I still think that this was optimal in that situation, though I often see it derided with no better option suggested.
  • philbo 2y ago
    The optimal approach is to ask your question in a public channel. Then all 20 people get to see it at once, they can see if someone else already responded and other people on the team who may have been wondering about something similar also get to see the question and the answer(s).
    • sebtron 2y ago
      In my experience, writing in a public channel gets slower responses, if any. Especially if nobody knows the exact solution to your problem. Some people don't have notifications enabled for group chats / public channels, and even if they see the message they may think "someone else will reply". Asking someone directly almost always results in a quick response, even if it is a "I don't know" answer. And an "I don't know" from a senior colleague can mean a lot, for example that the problem is much harder than you initially thought.
      • thyristan 2y ago
        Which will lead to the senior colleagues being swamped by questions that a junior could have answered. Ticket or bust. That way the question can go the proper way from cheap junior supporters to expensive senior ones (if necessary). It can be prioritized, subject to an SLA like time to first answer or time to solution. And the whole ticket can be searched and reused as documentation for identical/similar questions.
• orwin 2y ago
  The only real point is the 3rd. I agree the 'Hi' type are annoying, but I for sure don't expect a stack trace. Worst case the person is from another team, and I would rather have context on why they're contacting me directly on IM. Best case is that's a coworker, and I trust that if my coworkers ask me in particular and not my team's chat, its a specific issue I will have an easier time dealing with (or I made myself available for help because I'm on toilet duty and will jump for anything remotely interesting). If I am engaged with you and you ask me for a quick call, I either have 30 minutes ahead and agree, or I don't, and refuse. I fully expect the call to last anywhere between 2 and 30 minutes (unless you're a PO and I set aside 2 hours). The more we understand each other, the quicker the calls will be anyway, so even if the call isn't 'productive', it ultimately is.
• sneak 2y ago
  Largely these problems exist because people type poorly. It is much easier for them to speak than it is for them to type. I require all staff to learn to touch type if they don’t know how, and prefer candidates with high typing test speeds.
  • antisthenes 2y ago
    I've only met a single person in 15 years of work who couldn't touch type, and they came from a completely unrelated background and were 45+ old. Is it really a concern for younger candidates to not be able to touch type these days? I suppose Gen Z who are phone-centric would not have much experience touch typing.
• unixhero 2y ago
  What about a quick coffee?
• qbxk 2y ago
  I get the sense of this, and it's ok, too draconian. Maybe works for people like you if everybody is like you But sometimes the question is fuzzy, to me "hey got a minute?" means "I'm about to unload something confusing on you, and I don't want to break your flow state, so let me know when you have a minute to take it" I'm a tech like the author, and personally I'd prefer not to see all the details up front, because I can't control my flow and I'll start scratching at their problem right away even though I was busy doing something. I'd rather have the sign lit up that says they need help, WITHOUT KNOWING what it is, and then when I'm ready to help them, I'll find out. If it means I need to check on some stuff first, then fine, we'll set a meeting a for it at some point in the future (that's now the agenda), even if it's just "Let me get back to you in an hour about that"
• horsebridge 2y ago
  I don't really agree about that "frobnicate" deal. If you messed up when you added a parameter to "frobnicate", you'll get "Hi, you broke frobnicate, please fix it. It's causing issues.". You break it, you fix it, including the troubleshooting.
• liveoneggs 2y ago
  Yet another person who forgets that slack can, in fact, be closed.
• douglee650 2y ago
  Greetings are still ok, add your ask as well to save one step. Ex. "Hello, good morning. When can you spare 10 minutes today to catch me up on PR reviews?"
• jakupovic 2y ago
  This guy is too concerned about himself rather than others. Working at a company means you're a resource anyone can use, live with it and don't make up your rules on how to communicate. Just do it and collect.
  • antisthenes 2y ago
    That's also true. People need to be more flexible, especially if they are collecting a fat six-figure paycheck. If you need more info from someone, just paste "Can you provide more context please?", and move on with your life.
• onion2k 2y ago
  The way to stop these distractions is not to set a bunch of rules, but to document things in clear and discoverable ways that people can search to find what they need. No one wants to interrupt; people do that because it's the quickest and easiest way to find an answer. If you make something else the quickest way they'll use that instead.
  • thyristan 2y ago
    No, they won't. For example: Tickets are easier to discover, don't suffer from bus-factor=1, act as searchable documentation, can easily be handed over to another team if misrouted, can be queued and prioritized, all those nice things. But people are too lazy to search the ticket system and documentation, then open a ticket and ask incomplete time-wasting questions in chat instead. It is actually normal for individuals to be lazy, and searching docs is more work (for the asker) than just asking a quick question. This is why rules are necessary, otherwise every asker will just waste someone else's time. It shouldn't just be on the two parties in this interaction to enforce structured communication as a rule, it should also be on the company hierarchy to do so. Because in the end, the whole company will suffer if e.g. the knowledge about fixing problem X died with Bob who always just answered inquiries about problem X in private chat.
• liveoneggs 2y ago
  For the chat issues brought up in this silly rant the most effective solution I've found is to create a culture of public chat rooms with your entire team, instead of individual direct messages. "Quick Call" people are a personality type so they are not going to change.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Havoc 2y ago
  This just feels like the classic “maker vs manager schedule”, except viewed from only one side. Most larger orgs run on a mixture of those depending on role and where they interact you get friction If you force the one on the other in either direction that person gets nothing done. Which is functionally what this article attempts - solves writers problem (“do it my way”) but ignores the consequences for others.
  • morpheuskafka 2y ago
    Obviously which one makes sense depends on the role, but does anyone else prefer the "manager" schedule even if you're not a manager? I prefer jobs where there is a mix of responding to tickets, meetings, and small tasks rather than long blocks of working on the same thing for hours, but it seems like almost everyone who writes these kind of posts prefers the "maker" schedule.
• boesboes 2y ago
  Or you could be a bit more approachable and people wouldn't feel the need to ask permission before stating the problem. And a quick, "yo what's up" is easy enough.. The truth, once again, is in the middle i suppose.
• nicbou 2y ago
  Quick calls are super important. Sometimes they'll settle a matter immediately, in a few minutes, instead of dragging the decision to a 15 minutes time slot the next week. One of my first bosses would constantly push me to make phone calls instead of firing emails, and even though I didn't enjoy it, it undeniably worked. Things got done much faster, with far less effort from everyone.
• kemelon 2y ago
  It's also important not to get so caught up in the remote, ivory tower of self-importance of your work/time that you forget maybe interacting with your co-workers is more important than you think, even if it takes up time you'd rather have to do something else. If someone else is paying your salary, your time is probably not THAT important. I am constantly annoyed by people's poor communication skills, but I find it much more efficient to lead by example and communicated back, sooner rather than be passive aggressive. No agenda for meeting? Email back or chat in the group channel kindly asking for an agenda, maybe throwing in something useful along with it. Co-worker sending me one of those "Hiya" type messages, well "Good morning! How are you today?" Sooner or later they get to the point and I schedule a proper meeting about it.
• bartread 2y ago
  In my last role I was CTO of a ~650 person multinational. I agree with almost everything in this piece, perhaps even absolutely everything (although I admit to skim reading it quite quickly so I may have missed something). A lot of this is summed up for me by a piece of advice to managers that I read several years ago, almost certainly in an article linked from this site: "don't be spooky". I.e., be clear about what you want. Don't leave people in the dark. Particularly as a manager, if you send a vague request for a quick chat with someone, they're quite likely to think it's something bad or they're in trouble, and become anxious, particularly if they don't know you well. So not only are you breaking their flow state, but you're freaking them out as well. Specificity, along with an appropriate level of detail are profoundly reassuring from a variety of perspectives: including reassuring people that you're not simply about to waste their time.
• thrownaway561 2y ago
  I can see a formal meeting, but a quick call? a hello? what's next? a text? an email? a chat message? this dude sounds like an introvert that doesn't work well with others.
• teeray 2y ago
  The worst is when someone “wants to have a quick call this afternoon” but refuses to use calendar scheduling tools. You then have to engage in “the waiting game” where you don’t want to start anything deep for fear of getting interrupted.
• sirolimus 2y ago
  This blog post is definitely for people that have no desire to ever have social interactions
• bdcravens 2y ago
  I enjoy being able to shoot the breeze with clients etc, and relate to each other. That's not to say I haven't worked for folks that I genuinely winced when they'd ask to jump on a call: it's more a matter of whether the relationship feels adversarial.
• gumby 2y ago
  Normally: no agenda, no need to attend. But since our team is currently small, we have a deliberately agendaless meeting every morning. We talk about anything: somebody's daughter got engage, an upcoming vacation, that gnarly engineering problem that never got resolved yesterday. It's an anti-standup, and it's designed to take the place of those transient "water cooler" convos. It's incredibly valuable, but sure doesn't scale.
• tedchs 2y ago
  What I've found best is a compromise: send a chat message like "Hi foo, I hope you're having a good day! I'm trying to figure something out with Postgres and I wonder if you might have 30 minutes to chat about it?". As a remote worker, there is also a social cohesion upside to having a synchronous call sometimes.
• nunez 2y ago
  > You probably received a link to this website because you did one of the common mistakes of working remotely This is probably a factor behind execs crying "but muh productivity" and scaling WFH back. These are huge distractions, agreed, but not answering messages like this or responding with _a link to a fucking website telling you how wrong you are_ will never not be perceived as asshole behavior. A better approach is to _just respond to the message_. Saying "hey! How can I help?" Takes two seconds to write. Shit, you could probably automate this. Responding to asks for "quick chats" with "hey; I can't do a quick call right now, but happy to talk when I'm free. Mind scheduling something on my calendar?" is much more respectful and most folks will do just that. Sorry for the harsh language. This is the kind of incredibly elitist and condescending behavior that make people like Eric Schmidt call us "arrogant" and spend billions of their own money finding a way of getting us out of the way.
• JADev62096 2y ago
  Has the "no-hello" crowd realized what the "hello" is trying to achieve? It's a method of establishing a synchronous conversation.
• px1999 2y ago
  This is great, but I wish there was a shorter and more to the point version for me to link folks to. Each of the ideas in here is solid, but there's too much writing around the core idea -- a sentence or two for each point and then a tldr like "put in some basic level of effort if you're going to ask for others' valuable time." would do it for me personally.
• jredwards 2y ago
  Being this smug is a great way to get people to not speak to you at all. Enjoy your quiet productivity.
• mrfumier 2y ago
  No, chat is not asynchronous. It's a dialoge, it is synchronous. If you want people to write "Hello, my problem is xxx" just close your chat box and ask for emails. Moreover there are studies showing that if people socialize and get to know each other a bit before working together, there are more chances to collaborate and to reduce conflicts.