Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat (2013)

http://www.nohello.com/

by oftenwrong • 7 years ago

323 263 7 years ago

nohello.com

lisper2• 7 years ago

This is a reasonable thing to say, but does it really need its very own domain?

qubyte• 7 years ago

Soon (it's available): diditreallyneeditsveryowndoma.in

crooked-v• 7 years ago

The part that I find weird is less the domain and more that it's a full Blogger setup and not using Netlify or Neocities or whatever.

lisper2• 7 years ago

That's not so surprising. Blogger makes it easy to point a domain to a blog. But what else would you ever do with this particular domain other than have it contain this one post?

(Once upon a time back in the pre-cambrian era of the internet I once got myself into a situation where I had to register a new domain with Network Solutions in order to re-activate an account (or something like that, I don't really recall the details). So I registered networksolutionssucksbigfathonkingweenies.com. Got myself into a wee bit of trouble with that one.)

anonytrary• 7 years ago

Another rule: Don't ask to ask, just ask. For example, don't do:

  u1: Hi, can I ask a question?
  u2: Yes.
  u1: <asks question>
  u2: <provides answer>

Instead, do:

  u1: <asks question>
  u2: <provides answer>

analogmemory• 7 years ago

If I'm feeling snarky, I'll say

  "Looks like you've already asked a question there ;)"

A nice way to help folks is to say to them after the exchange,

  "Feel free to ask your question when you ping me so we don't have to do the hello/hi exchange"

satyrnein• 7 years ago

It might work, but I'm not sure the typical person would interpret that as "nice" or "help[ful]"...

andrewla• 7 years ago

Meh. More typical is

   u1: Hi, can I ask a question about the flubulator process?
   u2: Hmm... u3 owns the flubulator, unless it's frobnicator-related.
   u1: thx

TacticalTable• 7 years ago

And in an older company, you might find that u3 has left the company and handed it off to u4, who has touched the code just as much as you have.

readhn2• 7 years ago

thats BS. It is common courtesy to ask if its ok to ask a question.

paulgb• 7 years ago

But that in itself is asking a question!

More seriously, I never know how to respond to that question because it depends on what the question is. It feels like a trap so that I can't get out of providing an answer to a question I won't want to answer.

jcims2• 7 years ago

In person yes, but in chat I would much prefer people just ask the question. You wouldn't do that with email, why chat?

Just dropping it all at once gives them a chance to absorb the question and give a more thoughtful reply.

Obviously if the question is of a sensitive nature or needs special care then none of this applies.

isoskeles• 7 years ago

Who would ever say no? Useless question.

kelnos8• 7 years ago

It's a common courtesy that, in a text-chat context, ends up being less courteous than just asking. If you "ask to ask", you are wasting my time with an extra interruption that I don't need. Now I either need to sit there and stare at "readhn is typing..." until you've finished your actual question (wasting my time), or I need to go back to what I was doing, only to be interrupted again in a minute or two when you finish typing out your question.

I understand that asking to ask is a courteous thing to do in general and follows the general rules of social graces, but when you do that, you're actually wasting my time and are being less courteous.

If you really must do this, just put the ask-to-ask in the same (initial) message as the actual question. Given that the ask-to-ask query is functionally useless anyway (what asshole would say "no" to that?), you get to appear courteous while also not wasting your colleague's time.

leetcrew• 7 years ago

agreed, but the phasing can be improved. instead of "can I ask a question?" (which risks the classic sarcastic retort), ask "do you have a moment to talk about $topic". if you don't give a hint about how involved the question is, the person can't know whether they have time to answer it.

icebraining3• 7 years ago

That's fine, but then you must follow through on that courtesy by having the actual question ready to paste and send when the person says "yes". By taking more of their time, you're being rude, not courteous.

jcims2• 7 years ago

I've settled on:

    u1: <greeting><urgency><question>

The reply is almost always:

    u2: <greeting>
    u2: <response>

alleyshack• 7 years ago

This is exactly what I do, and it generally has good results. I don't have to worry about being rude, because the greeting - usually a simple "Hey!" - is there for those who care about it, and my question is also right there. Makes Slack turnarounds MUCH faster.

yongjik• 7 years ago

<off-topic>

For some reason that reminded me of this gem: http://www.bash.org/?23396

Not sure if I should be pleased or horrified with myself that it took me less than 15 seconds to find that link. :/

silentfish• 7 years ago

If the matter is time-sensitive then I need to ask whether the user is available or not to provide an answer.

  u1: Hi, can you switch to the alternate server, the main one is crashing

  [... 12 hours later, when the problem has already been resolved]

  u2: Sure thing, let me do it.

  u1: STOOOOOOOOOP!

basseq• 7 years ago

Or, for sensitive context, "hey, is this alert about to pop up on a projector in front of 50 people?"

icebraining3• 7 years ago

IMHO, a better approach is for u1 to say "nvm, john's got it" before u2 replied.

standardUser• 7 years ago

Or simply use your best judgment about how to interact with individuals and to build relationships. We shouldn't rely on blanket rules because people are different. You should know if you're going to sound curt or polite or irritating or friendly, based on your own personality and that of the person you're engaging.

I feel like I'm making it sound complicated, when for most people it's the most natural thing in the world.

GordonS8• 7 years ago

The problem with this is that in anything other than a small organisation, you probably don't know the individual you are starting an interaction with.

zapzupnz4• 7 years ago

Providing helpful advice for people for free on Freenode, I think "don't ask to ask, just ask" should be made a services-level command. Y'know, just type /justask and a service bot will post the almighty phrase of concision into the selected channel. Save everybody having to make it part of their clients or keyboard macros.

clamprecht• 7 years ago

Lo and behold, the domain is already setup!

https://dontasktoask.com/

rc_kas• 7 years ago

I've always heard it as "don't ask to ask, just ask."

pram• 7 years ago

I get so many random messages on Slack that I usually just ignore the DM if it says 'hello' typically because the actual request/question will appear sooner or later (as they grow impatient)

Hasn't burned me yet but YMMV

WaxProlix2• 7 years ago

I'll occasionally end up with people creating tickets or making noise with managers if they're ignored. The only reason I stopped doing this, really.

kbenson• 7 years ago

I wonder if if the integration hooks in slack have enough options to allow a good bot to help with this. I know they can identify and respond, but if they can't alter the message or noise it makes, maybe they can at least set a specific noise for the automated reply? Then if you recognize the telltale combination of the two, you can assume that initial interaction has been handled and wait until you hear the singular message received noise.

gowld5• 7 years ago

Tickets are good. They give you tangible credit for your time spent helping someone. If they are interrupting your manager the same way they interrupted you, instead of sending a request in an efficient manner, they saved you the trouble of you going to your manager to ask for help dealing with the person being a nuisance.

machiste77• 7 years ago

I usually reply to their greeting-only message by reacting with a wave emoji.

It shows them that I've seen their message, but I won't be responding with my own message in order to pull a request out of them.

slothario2• 7 years ago

Someone needs to write a Slack extension (or whatever the plugins are called) that simply replies to "hi" or "hello" with "Hello! How can I help you?" and hides those opening salvos from you.

Chunkyated• 7 years ago

I just pretend I haven't seen the "hi".

tyingq• 7 years ago

Also, don't pollute your advice by surrounding it with giant adverts :)

shoes_for_thee• 7 years ago

Oh god, yes. At my previous job this would happen constantly. Super annoying.

tonymet• 7 years ago

slack (and any chat app) should "absorb " hellos and consolidate them with the subsequent message, maybe with a 2 min timeout .

learc832• 7 years ago

I hate this as well. There also seems to be a correlation between people who do this and people who type slow.

jrootabega2• 7 years ago

And its sister site, emailhasasubjectforareason.org

lucb1e2• 7 years ago

To prevent spam (very successfully, so far), I have users fill in their email address instead of displaying mine on my website. They get an email like this:

    From: lucb1e-$randomcode@example.com
    Subject: Email address for lucb1e
    Content: To contact me, just reply to this email!

People use this, but not a single person changed the subject from "Email address for $me" to the actual subject of the message. Not one.

jvolkman• 7 years ago

Most people don't change the subject when replying to an email, which is what the content instructs them to do.

dredmorbius6• 7 years ago

You could programmatically vary the subject. Either by time/sender, or by lifting the first (or first statistically improbable) phrase from the message.

jrootabega2• 7 years ago

Like jvolkman says, I'd be worried changing it might break your mechanism. Not that that's what's driving most people's choices.

api• 7 years ago

This needed a domain.

areyouseriousxx• 7 years ago

I think we may want to consider if our hatred of meetings, and now just saying "hello", has more to do with dealing with unrealistic deadlines and pressure for what should be a white collar job.

In the example given, there is 1 minute between the "Hi" and the question. If 1 minute makes or breaks getting things done in time, you do not have a white collar job, you have a fast paced labor job similar to that of a worker on a factory room floor.

Food for thought.

carlosdp• 7 years ago

I think it's more about context switching than time. I might be on a roll writing something and then have to change context for a few minutes to wait for someone to ask a question, and by then I lost my train of thought.

ryanSrich2• 7 years ago

Why are you even getting notified of someone messaging you? I’ve had my notifications for computer and phone muted for the last 1.5 years. It has changed the way I work. If someone needs an answer right now, they know how to call me. If not, I’ll see it when I check slack again.

readhn2• 7 years ago

i think its just most people cant communicate effectively and respectfully.

pushtheenvelope• 7 years ago

It’s not about the raw time wasted, but more about the interruption. When people are concentrating on some creative task, having this one-minute gap between “hello” and actual-question can really break one’s “flow”.

Much better for the question to be directly asked, so that the person can respond asynchronously when at a convenient stopping point.

Also note that asking directly doesn’t preclude being polite with “hello - mind if I ask you a question? <insert question>. Thanks in advance!”

mrguyorama• 7 years ago

It's not so much that it breaks productivity, it's annoying on a simpler level.

You are doing productive thing x. Person A sends you a hello message and your chat app pings you. You go to look at chat and now you are staring at an empty chat window for the minute or more it takes for person A to actually ask what they could have sent already.

I honestly think you can treat "conversations" in a chat program as more like email. Sure, some of the time you can get a conversation going, but if you don't already have a continuous conversation going then create a fully self contained message

ergothus• 7 years ago

now you are staring at an empty chat window for the minute or more it takes

Worse, you're trying to figure out if it's worth refilling your short term memory with the things you just dropped when you checked on the chat.

It's not a minute of boredom, it's a minute of having too much in your brain but you're uncertain if it's worth it to stop the effort or not.

voidhorse3• 7 years ago

This critique doesn't really make sense.

No matter how the person asks their question your flow is going to be interrupted the moment you open your chat apps. If the person says hello then asks a question a minute later your flow is broken. If the person asks the question right away now you're answering the question and your flow is, just as likely, broken.

As far as flow interruptions are concerned, it's not the fault of the person asking a question but rather the invasive design or reliance on chat, or your own patterns of chat consumption.

The real solution to this problem isn't to impose some kind of rule that people should stop spending an extra minute to be polite, but rather that we should all adopt conscious consumption patterns around chat, i.e. setting aside time each day when you focus strictly on work and ignore chats for x hours (your role permitting). Rather than letting the chat notifications dictate when you attend to them, you should dictate when you attend to chat notifications, and if it means breaking some important flow you have going the chat can probably wait.

Edit: I suppose the only exception to this is when the question is something that requires a one word answer and can be answered instantaneously, but if that's the case that's probably a sign you have larger communication problems in that things that are easily answerable are in the heads of workers and not stored in some uniformly accessible place.

ravitation5• 7 years ago

I honestly do not understand why anyone would just stare at a blank chat window for a minute (or more) instead of switching back to what they were doing (or, in most(?) cases, just looking at a different screen).

It's similar one of your sibling comments which compares a chat message to a person walking up and saying "hello"... They are absolutely not equivalent; it's perfectly alright to not immediately respond to every message you get (or even only giving it a bit of your attention), even if they are not emails.

I wonder if this is a generational thing...

gonehome• 7 years ago

Yeah agreed - it's more irritating than anything else. It anecdotally also seems like the people that do this also tend to be more annoying and slower at typing in general, but maybe I've just conflated the two.

enraged_camel• 7 years ago

Nah, waiting for one minute is sufficient to kick most people out of their “zone”. And the problem in this scenario is that you have no way of telling in advance whether the incoming question is within your area of expertise, or something you want to spend time responding to.

superhuzza• 7 years ago

For me it's more about the break in concentration than the hello. If I get a full question, I can ignore, respond, whatever.

If I get a 'hello', now I don't know what the situation is, and it might go a few different ways. More distracting.

dsjoerg• 7 years ago

You're missing something very important. Imagine we are co-workers, and I come up to you and say "hello" and then stand there saying nothing further for an entire 60 seconds. While you stand there and wonder why I'm there and what I'd like to talk about. It would be weird and rude of me.

It is rightfully expected that one gets on with it and says what one has further to say, and in less than sixty seconds from the initial "hello".

master-litty• 7 years ago

For me personally it's a context switching issue, not a time issue -- It's more of a mental inconvenience to have nothing to switch to.

When someone grabs my attention to ask a question but leaves me idle for a moment, I'm left to wait. I don't get back to what I'm doing because I'll be pulled away from it shortly. The back and forth is very mentally taxing.

I'd love for it to be different but in my experience it's a physical limitation, just the way I am.

president2• 7 years ago

We are all just machines and we work and work until one day we break or are no longer efficient at what we do. And then we are replaced.

the8472• 7 years ago

Speech is bidirectional, synchronous streams, so you can process it while it's being emitted. Text chat on the other hand commonly is asynchronous and packet-based, i.e. you only get completely formed sentences.

That means with text there's an idle period between the "hello" packet and the followup. Just seeing the greeting and having to decide whether to wait, respond or ignore it is an annoyance that does not exist in spoken conversation.

It's not about the time itself, it's about the uncertain, possibly unbounded latency and the context-switching.

In fact text is not just higher-latency, it also has a lower bandwidth. It's really important to use it efficiently.

For a bit reduced latency and higher throughput they could implement liveposting as some imageboards do[0].

[0] https://imgur.com/HQKEwXE

ehsankia2• 7 years ago

Imagine the same interaction happening in real life. If I came up to your desk, said Hi, then didn't say anything for 60 seconds, and then asked you a question. Anyone would reasonably be annoyed by that. It has nothing to do with deadlines and being overworked. It's just annoying.

wutbrodo3• 7 years ago

If 1 minute makes or breaks getting things done in time, you do not have a white collar job, you have a fast paced labor job similar to that of a worker on a factory room floor. Food for thought.

Um, if you think there's a connection between a job being "white collar" and not caring whether or how long one's focus is broken, you may want to look into getting a better job.

I'm fortunate enough to have made and saved a lot more money than I need, so a big part of what motivates my career drive and keeps ending my sabbaticals is that getting sufficiently difficult intellectual challenges in front of me is a lot easier in a corporate environment. It turns out that most of these require sustained concentration: interrupt-based communication destroys the ability to do this work, and drawing out the length of the interrupt exacerbates it.

In fact, you have your example precisely backwards: if I worked on a factory floor and someone interrupted me, the cost of the interruption is going to be a lot closer equal to the length of the interrupt (with no second-order effects), since one's time is a lot more fungible.

davemp• 7 years ago

To be fair, people could just be annoyed about losing valuable HN browsing time!

hawski• 7 years ago

That's a bit what I'm thinking about lately. I'm wondering what could I do instead. I like programming as a hobby, but not necessarily as a job.

How could I go into a think tank for example? Or whatever that needs problem solving, but does not equate with sitting on my ass in front of a screen for hours.

For now I'm saving money to try building multitenent CLT housing.

Grass is greener...?

codegeek• 7 years ago

Funny how this resonates with so many of us that it is #1 post on HN within minutes. We have been telling our team members to not just say "hi" or "hello" and instead ask the question straight away. Imagine the amount of hi and hello texts that are stored on tools like skype/slack :)

azhenley• 7 years ago

Discussion from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868294

dmix3• 7 years ago

The site homepage is not optimized for mobile and is 90% google ads with a small link to the blog post.

I’d rather not share this.

Too bad because I agree with it.

Edit: it’s also stolen from a Google wiki https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14870907

kristopolous4• 7 years ago

maybe that's a business model. go find high ranked content on HN from a couple years ago, make a site about it, put some ads, and pretend it's something new.

gowld5• 7 years ago

The site is 6 years old.

duxup• 7 years ago

At a previous employer received a ton of "Hello" and I would respond immediately....and they would not say anything. I don't understand that.

massivecali• 7 years ago

As others here have said, ignoring the 'hello' is the best bet. For those on the asking end, my advice is to ask your question and if it goes beyond a simple answer, follow up with 'do you have time to talk about this now?' Most people assume I have time or desire to answer a flood of questions because I responded to the first simple one, which isn't usually the case.

randylahey• 7 years ago

At my old work we used to call this PWP: Ping with Payload.

ir193• 7 years ago

tldr: use udp rather than three-way handshake tcp when you want to ask a question.

johnwheeler• 7 years ago

And, if you're sick of your coworkers saying, "Hi"--tell them directly. Don't create a domain name and get it front-paged on a site you know they frequent. ;)

HenryBemis• 7 years ago

There is an anecdote, but I just cannot remember which major US bank it was. The anecdote is that they have eliminated the "Hi <name>" on the email. No greetings are accepted. People were asked to proceed to the task/question and wrap it up fast. Also no "kind regards" etc. in the end of the message.

I will continue googling and I may update if/when I find more info on this.

dsalzman• 7 years ago

I love this. When I worked at Qualcomm we had a page just like this on an internal wiki.

warp_factor• 7 years ago

That's the issue with Slack and other hype trends that will eventually go away as fads.

Slack doesn't you make you more productive, it makes you spend more time on smalltalks and constant distractions.

I almost never had a constructive discussion on Slack. In contrast, I used to have them way more over email.

nurettin• 7 years ago

Ahhh, reminds me of the early 2000s IRC. Which is pretty much the same right now.

dredmorbius6• 7 years ago

Slack is IRC's corporate successor, FBOW.

voidhorse3• 7 years ago

I understand the point of this is efficiency, though I feel it's necessary to give voice to the other persuasion: are we really going to pursue maximum efficiency in trivial matters to the point that it no longer sounds like it's human beings communicating?

There are such things as rudeness, crudity, boorishness--and in my opinion, those don't go out the window in the workplace. Keeping your interactions civil and pleasant is important, just like getting to the point can be important too. Saying "hello" before asking someone a question is polite because you're treating them like a human being, not some question-answer bot. Being too aggressive in eliminating these "pointless" social signals can have a cumulative effect of making you look like a real jerk that only values people for their utility in a given situation, in other terms, treats others like objects.

I shall remain a staunch defender of manners and etiquette and pepper all of my conversations with so-called needless pleasantries.

All that said, I of course don't promote saying only hello and then waiting for a reply before proceeding. That's just silly.

slothario2• 7 years ago

All that said, I of course don't promote saying only hello and then waiting for a reply before proceeding. That's just silly.

Well, that's what the article is arguing against. No one is saying you shouldn't start your question with hello. You should just say, "Hello X, I was wondering..."

kelnos8• 7 years ago

Not sure what you're disagreeing with here. The article doesn't advocate being rude, boorish, or robotic, and explicitly points out that if you want to keep up with social niceties, to prefix your question (in the same message), with something like "hi, if you have time for a question, i was wondering, [question]?"

That's perfectly polite and friendly, and also respects your colleague's time.

_throwawayyyyy1• 7 years ago

indeed. as a sociable software engineer who appreciates the art of conversation, i often have a hard time getting the hang of the mood on my dev team. greetings are generally eschewed, even of the brief-eye-contact-mini-nod variety when passing in the hall. always have to remind myself i'm not getting dissed - they're just shy!

ravitation5• 7 years ago

If I receive a message that says "Hi", I'll respond with something like "Hello", but I'm not going to sit there staring at the chat window watching them type a message... I'll swap back to what I was doing until I see whatever their next message is... I also probably won't make a website to try to change an otherwise ubiquitous social practice because it slightly hurts my productivity...

kelnos8• 7 years ago

I guess it just doesn't bother you as much as it does others. I absolutely hate needless interruption, and every time I get a "hello" without anything else substantive, it means an extra interruption that wastes my time.

I often won't switch back to what I was doing after replying to the "hello", because my brain is doing a little wager, hoping that the question is short and quick to type out, because doing two mini context switches back and forth is tiring. And if my brain loses that wager, I end up sitting there idle for longer than I'd like.

It's funny how there's so much attention being paid to social niceties in this thread when a simple social nicety is learning how to best communicate with people on an individual basis. And I think that's even more important when the purpose of sending a message to someone is to ask for their help with something. If you're asking someone to take time out of their day to help you, doesn't it make sense to do your best to respect their time, on their terms?

ravitation5• 7 years ago

It certainly is important to respect others time, but I wonder if at a certain point people will stop asking the person who is annoyed by "hello" questions.

eknkc• 7 years ago

We have an intercom widget on our SaaS website. A lot of people just say "hi" and wait for an ACK. Or go with "I have a question". Then they wait. I guess they think it is turn based.

Just go ahead and ask your question. We'll have the appropriate person for you. We'll take a look at the issue before responding you. Or we'll get back yo you if nobody is available right now. It bugs me a lot.

phlakaton• 7 years ago

If you are making a request of someone with whom you are not in regular contact, it is good etiquette to start with a salutation. Therefore, "no hello" is bad advice. "Inline hello," as the article suggests, is better advice.

But even there, the mechanics of whether the request comes in one long message or broken up is just not that important in the grand scheme of things...

kelnos8• 7 years ago

the mechanics of whether the request comes in one long message or broken up is just not that important

Yes, it is. If you put "hello" in one message, and then follow up with a question some time later, you've possibly interrupted someone twice. If you put both in the same message, you've interrupted them once.

This may not bother you if you're on the receiving end of it, and that's fine. But it does bother me, and I wish people -- especially people who are asking for a bit of my time -- would get this and do me the courtesy of being respectful of my time.

Because that's what we're talking about, right? Being respectful and socially-aware when initiating communication with someone? There is no one-size-fits-all approach to communicating with different people.

tunesmith5• 7 years ago

Sure, let's squeeze another drop of humanity out of conversing. Maybe it's because I'm a remote worker, but I don't mind the "hello" and "hey, are you available for a quick question?" stuff at all. I prefer it, I find it polite and collegial. I'm honestly surprised this bugs so many people. Maybe it's an indication that our working environments are asking too much out of us.

js22• 7 years ago

I'm a remote worker too and have been for over a decade.

Please, just put it all in with the message: "Hi. I have a quick question if you're available. Let me describe it as best I can here to start: ..."

This way even if I was not available to respond immediately, at least I have some actionable information when I do reply.

loktarogar• 7 years ago

yeah, this is it for me.

I worked for a company on the other side of the world and they'd often message me "hey, you around?" at like 5am in the morning my time. I'd get up later by that time many of them had gone home, meaning i'd have to wait for tomorrow to find out what they wanted. Which, as well as well as having to wait every interaction, also left the issue hanging over my head, fuelling anxieties.

GordonS8• 7 years ago

Please, yes!! It drives me nuts when someone IMs with "Hi" or "You got a minute?", when my IM status clearly says whether I do or not - just say what you want, and I have something useful to say when I do have time.

president2• 7 years ago

It's hard to understand until you've worked at a place where you and all your co-workers are context-switching between 5 projects all due yesterday and everybody is pissed off. I didn't mind the "hello" at my older jobs where I actually wasn't stressed out.

asdfasgasdgasdg• 7 years ago

Or maybe it's just that an asynchronous medium has different etiquette than face to face?

delish• 7 years ago

I'm glad this is the top-rated comment--it teaches me that there are people who are totally different from me! I'm a remote worker who is sharply annoyed by "Hi" [send] "QQ" [send] [wait 30 seconds] "[question]". I find it impolite, and I am honestly (honestly, honestly!) surprised anyone feels otherwise. It's nice to be able to express this here; there's no way I could say it at work!

xiphias2• 7 years ago

there's no way I could say it at work

If you can't politely ask people how to address you on chat, it's a problem with either you, or the team / workplace.

You should be able to talk about things effecting your productivity, or switch job.

viraptor4• 7 years ago

As a full time remote, I really don't mind people doing this. I don't microoptimise my day to that extent. If it takes extra 30 seconds, then I can just wait for the rest of the message, chill, stretch, have a drink. If I get annoyed over 30sec delays at work, I'll take that as a signal something doesn't work well.

dennisgorelik5• 7 years ago

Why can not you express your frustration with distracting messages at work?

tunesmith5• 7 years ago

Honestly it taught me something too. Before I commented, there were a lot of comments, all practically unanimously expressing as you believe. So I'm as surprised as anyone that it's (currently) the top-rated comment. It's easy to forget that lurkers can believe quite differently than active commenters!

Kaveren2• 7 years ago

It doesn't squeeze any humanity out of people to ask them to actually ask what they want, instead of just saying "hi".

The annoying part is that they will wait until you reply to the "hi" before asking the question, which is a waste of time.

It's not impolite to say "Hi. If you have a moment, can you tell me why I am getting this error in my JS on line 20?". Saves hassle.

I work for myself and am not at all overworked. Still annoyed by it.

You wouldn't send an email saying "hi" (usually).

zapzupnz4• 7 years ago

As the website suggests, those who still wish to say 'hello' can just integrate it into the same message as the question. There's no drops of humanity being squeezed out of the conversation, just the conversation being made more efficient to reflect the nature of the conversational medium.

Your example 'hey, are you available for a quick question?' could easily have the question directly after that in the same line. No less polite, no less collegial, but much more efficient.

Of course it bugs people, it causes us to sit and wait for something when it could have been given to us straight up. People don't have infinite amounts of time to devote to mere waiting. Perhaps it is because you work remotely that this isn't so much the case, but for busy IT help desks, dedicating screen space to a conversation with nothing useful in it for any period of time is both a waste of the user's time and the technician's.

Our working environments aren't asking too much of us. There's absolutely nothing strenuous about people learning to adapt their mode of conversation for the medium, especially to meet everybody's efficiency needs. As the website stated, it's altogether possible to keep the polite chit-chat in the same post as the question.

nxc18• 7 years ago

You could just switch to some other activity while the colleague finishes typing their message.

With a very basic policy change to how you receive messages, you can totally avoid all inefficiency.

You also avoid supporting the transparent money grab of a website dedicated to a needless complaint that is 90% ads.

freyir• 7 years ago

I get a few notifications daily from my manager: “Hi. You there?” Morning, noon, and night.

Maybe the intention is that I don’t have to respond. But every now and then, it’s about something important.

So I have to stop what I’m doing every time, respond, wait for the actual message to be typed out, and realize it’s something unimportant that doesn’t need to be discussed on a Saturday afternoon. Maybe this is humane, but it’s also annoying.

alistairSH• 7 years ago

When I get those from my manger, it’s usually because he wants to discuss something private/sensitive, so cannot type out the question. It’s also stipulates always “r u there?” Followed by “come on down to room X so we can chat in private”

dennisgorelik5• 7 years ago

“Hi. You there?”

Just reply "Hi" or "Here" or even "Not here" (if your manager understands jokes and you are ready to leave).

You do not need to wait for the answer after that. Especially if it is not your work day.

Please understand, that your manager is trying to solve a problem, and getting your help -- is not the only option for your manager. That is why he may not want to spend his time explaining the problem to you if you are not available anyway.

JoeAltmaier• 7 years ago

I'm maybe hypersensitive to the 'quick question' question. That's already a question, and the next one isn't going to be quick.

How about, just ask the question? Like "Can I get your attention today to help me figure out xxx?"

dfischer• 7 years ago

Yeah seriously, when I first read what this was about my reaction was concerning to say the least.

Keep the humanity alive!

We are not robots – yet.

Skunkleton2• 7 years ago

I personally refuse to respond when coworkers just send a hello when I know they are just going to ask a question. Waste of everyone's time, and I don't appreciate someone who would never talk to me otherwise pretending to care about me.

CharlesW• 7 years ago

Waste of everyone's time, and I don't appreciate someone who would never talk to me otherwise pretending to care about me.

That's not what's happening. If there is a selfish reason (generally there's not), it's their handshaking protocol to discover if you're available to answer immediately.

SlowRobotAhead2• 7 years ago

Sure, let's squeeze another drop of humanity out of conversing.

You sure you're not overreacting a little?

When I answer tech support questions, the first thing out of my mouth is "Hi I'm SlowRobotAhead, what is the problem you're having?"

Not what can I do for you today, not tell me the setup, not what it is I do here. Tell me the problem have - and we'll see from there. That's not rude or removing humanity. It's polite by acknowledging we're not going to waste each other's time because of a mutual respect we start off with.

tunesmith5• 7 years ago

You sure you're not overreacting a little?

Hehe... no. I wrote the comment, took it out, then decided it didn't really express what I was trying to put across, so put it back in. So I was clearly on the fence anyway! A fine line between pithiness and rudeness sometimes, I regret when I fall over into the latter.

mmaunder• 7 years ago

And this...

"Short link to this page: http://nohello.com/. (If you see that as someone's status, please be prepared to be ignored if you only say "Hello!".)"

Is just a new way of being an asshole. Don't do that.

reificator2• 7 years ago

And this... [snip] is just a new way of being an asshole. Don't do that.

I agree fully with the message behind the page. Put your greetings in the same message as the question. A lot of people seem to think it's rude, but I'm convinced that it's the only polite option and not doing so is rude.

That said, I agree with you as well. Don't just set that as your status and ignore people. That's about the worst of all worlds.

ada19815• 7 years ago

This is from 2013, so not that new.

And certainly not as bad as the folks who ask me to "please consider the environment before printing their email." Maybe even with some weird text-based tree art.

I dislike most email footer text.

Those privacy policy things are the worst.

I'd love to see some annual award for most ridiculous email boilerplate text actually in use.

laughinghan• 7 years ago

Can I ask what kind of remote work you do, tunesmith?

Perhaps some kinds of work are more sensitive to interruptions than others.

tunesmith5• 7 years ago

Usually deep work, backend integrations and distributed communications, architectural consulting and implementation. So at least generally for me, when I'm blocked, I don't tend to be entirely blocked, where I need my answer now now now or everything is ruined. :) Plus, it's very important to have collegial relationships with the people that I am working with.

I can see being more impatient with this if I were in Ops and everything was an urgent fire all the time. Sometimes you just need the information as quickly as possible and that's what you need to optimize for.

But for me, if someone asks, "Hey, you there?" I'm sort of thankful for the opportunity to say, "Hey! How's it going, what's up?" rather than think, "Just ask me the question already!" As a remote worker it's often more important to optimize for the relationship because that's how you stay connected to what's going on.

wetpaws• 7 years ago

There is nothing about humanity, it's all about using communication tool right way. Phone is real-time. Chat is asynchronous. It's just as simple as this.

You don't put phone call on hold and reply next day. You don't use text chat to expect realtime communication.

Interestingly, people don't have this trouble with e-mail. No one sends an email with single line "hello" and expect a reply, because instinctively people expect email work like real paper mail.

With chat they expect it to work like phone, although it's pretty much works on the same principles as email.

tunesmith5• 7 years ago

I think this "chat is asynchronous" point gets abused to the point of being rather meaningless.

People often, and I would say usually, want to have a synchronous -ish connection when they engage in chat. They want a person-to-person session. It's like synchronous with a generous timeout, or to stretch it, maybe it's like asynchronous -ish but with a very limited thread pool.

But the point is it is mostly used to discuss as you would on the phone, except slightly slower so you can take advantage of other abilities, like the pasting of a code snippet or a log output or a screenshot, and so you can maintain the connection while you are doing some light multi-tasking or virtual pairing at the same time, or even just so you can avoid whatever minor social anxiety you might have.

But if you're in a work conversation with someone on chat, and then they disappear for twenty minutes with no explanation or transition, that's usually not the etiquette and it's usually annoying. More common is they'll say "brb" or "ok, gotta do this other thing" or whatever.

And even if you do have a question, it usually doesn't work to just drop the question in their chat, and then blithely expect an answer "whenever". They might have a followup question or a clarification when you aren't available, and then this simple exchange can stretch on for hours or days.

So it's not like this totally asynchronous thing where people drop singular notes into each other's mailboxes and then go on about their days. It's more often a very efficient and low-friction alternative to scheduling fifteen-minute one-on-one meetings with someone or going and interrupting them at their desk.

raz32dust• 7 years ago

You have to think from the point of view of a person doing their own work, while being pinged by 5 people on slack. It is super annoying because this is what happens:

- You're in the flow of working on your thing.

- Now, you see a notification. But you decided to continue working but now you have a thing at the back of your head that you have to respond to the message.

- Finally you take a break and decide to look at the pending messages, and you see just a hello. So now you have to respond with hello and know that you are going to be interrupted once again, because very likely, the other person is not looking at their slack at this time so they will respond later when you are busy again.

It doesn't say, "Don't say hello". It says, "Don't say just hello". Say your greetings but also give a brief overview of the question. Saves everyone time and it isn't any less courteous.

biztos• 7 years ago

I'm also a remote worker and have been for many years. Everyone else on my team is in a different time zone than I am, many of them quite far apart.

I get the "hello" message quite a bit on Slack, and I find it pretty reasonable, since the person hello-ing me is really asking "are you there? Because I expect you might not be, and I want your help with something."

I think "hello" is a polite way to check for presence. If I reply (and the asker is still online) then it's a green light for the conversation. If I'm not online then fine.

(I usually send messages like "Hi @coworker, can you please check the smoke alarm in the server room?" -- but the questions the coworkers have for me usually involve more Q&A than a one-liner would cover.)

alkonaut2• 7 years ago

I think "hello" is a polite way to check for presence. If I reply (and the asker is still online) then it's a green light for the conversation.

It is. But typing a long question for say 5 minutes isn’t really “conversation” it’s just keeping someone waiting. That’s what the usual problem is. Not someone saying “hello” and then when greeted back they ask a 5 word question. In that situation it obviously makes no difference.

GordonS8• 7 years ago

I get the "hello" message quite a bit on Slack, and I find it pretty reasonable, since the person hello-ing me is really asking "are you there?

I haven't used Slack for some time now, but I presume it's like every other I'm service in that it displays your current status, such as" Available", "Away" etc?

alkonaut2• 7 years ago

That’s fine. This isn’t exclusive. If you have a long question to ask me, just type it in a text editor. Then chat “hello, have you got time for a question” I answer “sure”. Then you paste the question instead of typing for 5 minutes.

If the question is just 5 words or 100 words you can type them in 10 sec then sure I’ll wait. But that’s not how it usually works. You see it’s the people who are least used to chat and so both type the slowest that also misunderstand the greeting protocol. Greeting is fine. Greeting and then typing for 5 minutes is not.

Also as a remote worker something that really annoys me is when someone goes “hi, got time for a question?” and then 20 minutes later “sorry someone just walked in”. Don’t do that. If you sent a hello, always pay attention at least 15 seconds and be ready to interact. Don’t ping and then go for coffee. And please ask people who walk in to wait while we finish chatting, or just tell me someone walked in you need to talk to so I can go on with work.

njepa• 7 years ago

While I would think it would be annoying, I think the multiparter (like one sentence per message) works pretty well for work stuff. The people I work with type pretty fast however. Maybe someone should bring back ytalk ;)

learc832• 7 years ago

When someone says "Hey are there?" there's pressure to respond right now--many times they won't ask if I don't. If someone just asks the question, I can respond when I have time.

geofft3• 7 years ago

I don't find it polite and collegial; I find it rude. I appreciate that the intent is to be polite and collegial, but impact matters more than intent for rudeness.

reificator2• 7 years ago

Sure, let's squeeze another drop of humanity out of conversing. Maybe it's because I'm a remote worker, but I don't mind the "hello" and "hey, are you available for a quick question?" stuff at all. I prefer it, I find it polite and collegial. I'm honestly surprised this bugs so many people. Maybe it's an indication that our working environments are asking too much out of us.

I don't think that's the takeaway.

The message is more about treating chat as a lightweight email rather than treating it like face to face or phone calls.

You'd never send an email that said hi, wait for the person to respond, and then respond to that with a question you wanted to ask them from the start. Chat should be the same way.

That doesn't mean no pleasantries, it means bundle them up into your message.

chefandy2• 7 years ago

I like a happy medium. I usually have my question typed out but send a "Hi, how are you?" ahead of time and actually read the answer, you know, because humanity. But then I've got the question ready to paste right then. Best of both worlds.

dennisgorelik5• 7 years ago

If you already spend time typing your question - why not send it as well?

chillacy• 7 years ago

Hey are you available for a quick comment?

...

In all seriousness, imagine if every response to your comment did that, and you had to reply and say Yes before they actually typed up their comment.

wufufufu• 7 years ago

As if there was any humanity to messaging someone as compared to face to face conversation?

jgvgkvljhvojg• 7 years ago

I have ADHD and every interruption harms my productivity. If a co-worker emails me "hello" there are two possibilities:

1) Notifications are enabled, and visible/audible to me. If I'm working, I will likely be set back by multiple minutes by the interruption. I respond back asking what they need and it takes them a few minutes to formulate their question, at which point I've possibly managed to refocus and begin working again. There is a desperate struggle to switch context without losing the mental model I have been building of the problem at hand, before I have the chance to record it by writing some code, a comment or personal notes.

2) Notifications are disabled. I see the "hello" an hour later. I respond "hi, what's up?" and my coworker is now in a meeting or something and takes an hour to get back to me. They respond with "I was wondering if you could help me with something" and the cycle begins anew.

And by the way, I actually really like helping people with technical problems. I would sit around all day doing just that if I didn't have other work to do.

debt• 7 years ago

We’re not conversing, we’re trying to run a business. Get to the point sooner so we can solve the problem sooner.

Let’s converse during non work hours.

zerkten• 7 years ago

In large organizations the person is likely "pinging" multiple people to see who is available to answer their question. This is deeply problematic because folks sitting next to each other look over, or comment on the usual suspect pinging each of them. This becomes an interruption for more than just folks on the end of the IM.

cptskippy• 7 years ago

It's odd but I don't find it polite. It's akin to calling someone on the phone and when they say "Hello", responding with "Hey cptskippy, let me put you on hold real quick."

If you say "<small chat> <actual question>", I'm perfectly capable of responding "<small chat> <actual question || delaying response>". There's no need to decouple the questions and making one contingent on receiving a response from the preceding question.

The downside to slamming a person with multiple questions is obviously aligning their responses to the questions asked. So there's obviously some thought that must go into formulating your questions. But I don't see any issue with opening your line of communication with small chat and your actual question as the responses would be easily distinguished.

fmpwizard• 7 years ago

I've been working remotely for about 13 years, something that I do with every new developer we hire, is to tell them that we are all available to answer their questions, no matter how "silly" they may think it is. I tell them not to worry about interrupting what we are doing, because if we are truly busy, we will not go into the chat app (flowdock in our case), but when we have a minute, we'll come to it and if the question is already there, we can answer it right away, instead of saying hi back and having no clue what the real question was.

And we are all very polite about it, we do say things like: "Hi, if you have a minute, how do I get this code working?"

And, we also have a "water cooler" room/flow, where we talk anything that isn't work related, weather, music, etc, and there sure, you can just say hi and nothing else.

In my case, it is not that I'm on a tight deadline, we make sure to have almost no tight deadline, my case is, I'm probably playing with my kids, or about to have breakfast with my wife, so if you need me, and post your question along with "hi", I can answer before I step away from the computer.

Hope this gives you an alternative view.

groby_b• 7 years ago

It's not "squeezing a drop of humanity". It's making the case that chat pretends to be a synchronous communication medium, but is actually asynchronous.

Somebody just saying "Hi", without followup, is saying "I expect you have nothing else to do, except wait for me". That's not "humanity", that's entitlement.

I do draw a distinction to "hey, available for a quick question", because that is stating a request - the person sending it asks for a chunk of our attention. It's a deliberate request to move to synchronous mode.

And to forestall the "but isn't chat just like talking to each other" - no, no it isn't. Talking is 150 words per minute, and it's delivered as a continuous stream. Chatting is (if we're lucky) 50 wpm, and it's delivered bursty.

GordonS8• 7 years ago

Maybe it's because I'm not American (or maybe it's because I'm possibly low down on the autistic spectrum) - but I absolutely hate the fake "how are you?" at the start of every single interaction (unless of course it's a friend who actually cares).

It's even worse on telephone, Skype and IM, where any semblance of "personalism" is lost - someone starts a new conversation with "Hi, how are you?", and I have to respond to that before you'll just tell me why you're actually starting a conversation! How am I meant to respond? I invariably just say "yeah, fine, you?" - but I don't care, the other person doesn't care. It's just... awkward and pointless. I don't get what either party is meant to get our of this.

dennisgorelik5• 7 years ago

I absolutely hate the fake "how are you?"

Just interpret "how are you?" as "Hi" and reply "Hi" or "Hi. What's up?" back.

rictic• 7 years ago

Network effects create counterintuitive situations. If you pick a random one of your friends, that person probably has more friends than you do (this is true! for most values of "you" at least).

I bet that it's likewise true that when you ask someone a question, it will usually be the case that that person answers more questions than you do (again, for most values of "you").

I think the distribution of how many questions a person is asked is very nonlinear. Someone who answers five questions a week is going to have a very different experience, and want very different social norms, than someone who answers fifty, or a hundred and fifty.

laumars• 7 years ago

The thing that irritates me about people who just say "hi" is it wastes my time. I stop what I'm doing to read their message only to find out that I now need to wait for them to ask that question - which isn't always quick because if you've not replied to them right away then they're likely off doing something else themselves. So my workflow has been interrupted for no good reason.

I now passively aggressively handle this by posting lyrics of songs that feature their greeting in, like "Hey Jude". It usually gets a laugh but also makes a subtle point that their "Hey" follow up comment was a little pointless.

I don't mind if people post something like this though:

  <13:00:00> Hi, hows things?

  <13:00:30> Did you manage to get that report sent?

In that instance it's still 30 seconds before the follow up but at least they open with something more conversational and they're not waiting for me to respond before getting to the point.

tripzilch2• 7 years ago

Humanity is taking into consideration what the other person may be doing, whether you are disturbing them and whether it's nice to make them wait for your question after typing "Hi". It's a very cultural thing whether and how much greeting is appropriate (I've heard this varies widely even within the USA). But empathy for the other is universally cool and appreciated.

So you take a moment to consider the other, and you put your preferred greeting first, and add the question in the very same message. Bam! Best of worlds! Polite, nice, collegial and not making people wait and lose focus and switch context (which clearly is less of a deal to some people, but when it is, it's a big deal for some others).

Reading the comments in this thread from the people defending to split the "Hi" and the question into two messages, I really wonder what is their reluctance to just type everything in one go? Because I'm not buying that saying "Hi" in a separate message and then waiting is somehow more polite than saying the very same things but in one single message.

See, it sounds to me that it is them who don't like waiting. Sending a "Hi" first makes it more likely you have the other's (waiting) attention by the time you finished typing the question, so that you get an answer right away, not wasting any of your precious time. If you were to type your "Hi" and the actual question in one message, you spend your time and effort typing that question but the other person only gets the notification as you press <send>, and now it's you who has to wait in idleness. Much easier too, to quickly fire off a "Hi" first and only then start thinking about actually formulating your question.

spurgu• 7 years ago

Screw that.

I just wait for 10 minutes before I engage in that chat (wishing I could turn off notifications for individual people in Slack), let the person say "Hi spurgu", followed by "Hope you are doing well" (and whatever else they come up with), after which they finally type out what they actually wanted to say. When they're done going through this horribly inefficient, annoying and time-wasting procedure I just directly respond to their question, without any added social bs.

Then again I come from Finland.

taoufix• 7 years ago

What I personally do is to write my question down, copy it, say Hi, wait for a replay, then paste my question. And thus have the best of the two approches.

mozillas• 7 years ago

A Slack bot could reply to solitary "Hello" messages with a link to this URL. Although that might come abrasive to some people.

Spooky23• 7 years ago

This is stupid. There’s a lot of reasons why one might want to establish that a person is there without providing more detail.

I deal with reasonably sensitive material all of the time. Spewing information without context to my laptop when I’m presenting something, for instance is a bad idea.

icebraining3• 7 years ago

Why are you letting your chat program interrupt you in the middle of a presentation?

hirundo• 7 years ago

When time isn't of the essence, I prefer to use email for the same reason. With email it isn't expected to follow the face to face round trip greeting convention, but to greet and then get to the meat. And compared to any kind of chat there's a much lower expectation of immediate response so it's more conducive to a considered rather than an off-the-cuff response. But mostly, becaause it's a more considerate way to address people who depend on being in a flow state and how I prefer to be treated.

I prefer to keep chat questions to occasions when there is actual time sensitivity, or I already know that the recipient is not heads down or is currently chatty.

minimaxir• 7 years ago

In general, if I have to do consecutive message in a Slack channel (not just direct messages), I try to use Shift+Enter to do a single multiline message so it only does one ping.

human20190310• 7 years ago

There's no way the "hello" should make a difference.

If you're getting so many questions that the removed "hellos" add up to an appreciable amount of time, the real problem is that you're getting too many questions.

kelnos8• 7 years ago

It's a "death by a thousand cuts" sort of thing. As a maker, every little interruption hurts. And an interruption that's entirely unnecessary and wastes my time makes me annoyed. Not "I'm going to go throw something out a window" annoyed, but annoyed nonetheless. These things add up.

If this sort of thing doesn't bother you on the receiving end of it, that's great for you. But please recognize that other people have different communication styles and respond to things differently. If you're going to ask someone for help with something, it's a nice thing to do to try to be aware of their communication style and work with it if possible.

dgzl2• 7 years ago

The first example given seems incorrect. The author says that if you combine your greeting/request then you can get your answer sooner, but that's not calculated right. In the first interaction, the time user1 spends on writing out the problem is accounted for, but in the second interaction it's not. The "time savings" the author is referring to assumes that user1 can combine greeting/request without needing to combine the time it takes to write the request. That's ridiculous.

kelnos8• 7 years ago

Yeah, I noticed that too and was a bit disappointed.

But I think the point still holds, even if the math is wrong. If I get a context-free "hello", and it wastes my time, I'm going to be less inclined to immediately switch back to the chat when the next message comes in.

dgzl2• 7 years ago

That's where you and I differ. I wouldn't consider the ~1s of time used to read "hello" as time wasted any more than I'd consider a person saying "hello" in person as time wasted. On the contrary, I'd be happy for the greeting.

keithnz• 7 years ago

This doesn't worry me, I don't sit there waiting I just carry on until something more substantial turns up. Or I completely ignore it if I'm in the middle of something.

noja• 7 years ago

If I am talking to a person, I will say hello first.

(and if someone was to send me a link to a website telling me not to say hello, then I would think that person might have some issues)

chiefalchemist2• 7 years ago

Moi? I'd rather say "Hi", get an acknowledgement and then continue. Rather than Hi + type something out; wait; still nothing; move on; find answer elsewhere; and have to remember to go back and say "NVM".

I find NVM semi-offensive. It so often seems to come across as "I'm done with you."

Also, there's the chance the colleague replies for naught, as I've already sorted myself out.

kelnos8• 7 years ago

I'd rather say "Hi", get an acknowledgement and then continue. Rather than Hi + type something out; wait; still nothing; move on; find answer elsewhere; and have to remember to go back and say "NVM".

Basically you're just telling us that you are optimizing for your own time and don't respect your colleague's time, which I think is a nice thing to do, especially when you're asking someone to take time out of their day to help you.

I find NVM semi-offensive. It so often seems to come across as "I'm done with you."

Then don't say that. A more-friendly, "hey, i managed to answer my own question, no need to reply" works equally well.

chiefalchemist2• 7 years ago

"Basically you're just telling us that you are optimizing for your own time and don't respect your colleague's time, "

Huh? How did you draw that conclusion?

As for NVM, your suggestion feels longer than necessary / optimal. That makes it a waste of my time to type and someone else to read. For someone who is time sensitive, can you give me something else I can use?

bondolo• 7 years ago

aka "Don't ask to ask, just ask" the mantra of IRC for at least 25 years.

angry_octet• 7 years ago

If you like this you might want to investiage email as a method of communication.

js22• 7 years ago

The only way to win is not to play.

I had to stop letting Slack interrupt me. Too many of my colleagues had started using it as an email replacement. So I keep it on a secondary monitor or desktop and only glance at it when I'm done with a task. I don't let its icon bounce/beep/bloop/be badged.

I still try to be respectful on my end and go as far as composing everything I want to say in an editor before pasting it into Slack, gathering links to screen shots and logs in advance, etc. We can still model good behavior, right?

sand5002• 7 years ago

I agree, there should be no expectation to respond to IM immediately. If it is super house is on fire urgent, people can call me (phone or chat app calls).

shados2• 7 years ago

Another similar one, even in person, is someone shouting an (often negative) exclamation and making everyone wait a minute before explaining themselves.

"Oh crap!" <long pause as everyone around is panicking, waiting on what actually went wrong>

Sometimes something really wrong happened and the person is trying to process it. That's cool. But more often than not, it's like "Oh shit!" <2 minute pause as people ask what happened> "I forgot about my cat's birthday!". Thanks for the dose of anxiety.

dredmorbius6• 7 years ago

A uni flatmate of mine.

Sport. It was always sport.

ghostly_s• 7 years ago

I think you just have a really weird work culture if this is considered acceptable.

shados2• 7 years ago

Work culture? Im not talking about work, and just in general. And people don't do it as a joke, thats how they talk. Annoying as hell.

peterwwillis• 7 years ago

While we're telling people how to talk: please don't tell people how to talk.

wutbrodo3• 7 years ago

Haha I remember at Google, we had an escalating series of go/ links for people's chat preferences: nohello, yeshello, notonlyhello, etc etc.

This always just seemed like common sense to me, and I say that as someone whose in-person manner of speech is substantially more polite and flowery than most people. There doesn't seem to me to be a big difference in politeness or friendliness between "hello <new IM> [content]" and "hello, [content]".

sand5002• 7 years ago

This is from 2013, I wonder if this came first?

wutbrodo3• 7 years ago

That's roughly in the middle of my time at Google, so it's possible. I'm inclined to say that I first came across it at Google around '12 but I could easily be off by a year.

mlmartin• 7 years ago

My pet peeve is when you get the message "Hey, have you got a minute?"

You type back "Yeh, sure". And then wait... and wait....

Whenever they do actually ask the question almost an hour later, I'm always tempted to reply "Sorry, the minute is long gone".

pteraspidomorph• 7 years ago

Can I open with SYN?

caymanjim2• 7 years ago

I couldn't agree more with this. It's long been a pet peeve of mine, and I get irrationally infuriated when it happens. It makes me passive-aggressive, too; I tend to completely ignore messages that are a simple "Hello", or "Can I ask you a question?" You've now interrupted me and wasted my time, so I'm going to waste yours by not replying. If it's important, the person will eventually just ask.

There's a cultural component to this as well. I've worked with people from a few cultures where their norms dictate that smalltalk and pleasantries be exchanged before getting down to business, so sometimes it's even worse than simply "Hello" or "Can I ask a question?" Sometimes they want to go through the whole rigmarole of "How are you?" as well. Sorry, but in my culture, we get to the damn point, because the most polite thing to do is to interrupt me only if necessary and consume as little of my time as is required.

We're not friends, we're coworkers. You're sending me a message because we're interacting to some business end. The most polite thing to do is to optimize the transaction and move on. If you want to chit-chat, I'd be happy to join you for lunch.

notimetorelax3• 7 years ago

I see you're adding a fair amount of your own cultural bias, which you do recognize. You also recognize that there are other cultures where poeple value small talk. The best solution might be to be inclusive and meet in the middle:

- Hi

- Hi, how are you? How can I help?

- <here they can quickly reply how they are and ask the question>

WDYT?

GordonS8• 7 years ago

Firstly, the first "Hi" is a distraction, and pressure to respond without know the urgency, or anything else about what the issue is.

Secondly, and assuming this is a random co-worker rather than a friend, why is "how are you?" in the response when you don't actually care, and possibly don't even know the person?

DoreenMichele• 7 years ago

In addition to cultural norms, there are gender norms.

In most cultures, women get trained to be all touchy-feely and they get a lot of social expectation to be all touchy-feely. It often winds up being abused by people just seeking to get their own emotional needs met completely for free and seems to either never be of professional benefit to the woman or to actually undermine her professionally.

I am still trying to figure out how to effectively navigate this issue. Women who try to be professional are often given a lot of flak for being "cold and bitchy" or similar. But doing the warm, friendly social stuff so often expected for women literally does not pay off.

There are also class issues. Behavior that I spent most of my life seeing as simply polite gets interpreted differently depending upon both the social class of the person to whom I am speaking and also how they perceive me, especially with regards to if they think they are "better" than me/ "one of my betters."

Two people who are both upper class will both be polite to each other and also genuinely respect the other person. Unfortunately, in many cases, if they bother to be polite to someone they see as beneath them, it is often quite superficial and does not involve any degree of genuine respect nor caring. So, for example, it will not lead to deal making, opening doors professionally for the lower class individual, etc. -- even in cases where they know the lower class person has a skill of value to them and pertinent to their project.

alan5• 7 years ago

co-worker: @here

co-worker is typing...

co-worker: Could you help me with $x?

Nothing more annoying than grabbing everyone's attention with the first message and _then_ spending time to compose the question.

pikewood• 7 years ago

I start chats with a separate "Hey" message solely just for the chance that the recipient is sharing their screen in a meeting. That way others in the meeting will only see the "Hey" popup and not any details of the rest of my message.

gowld5• 7 years ago

Anyone who shares their whole screen deserves what they get until they learn to properly share a window.

snowmaker• 7 years ago

One way to split the difference on this issue is to type out your question in a separate text editor ahead of time and store it on your clipboard. That way, when your coworker responds to your "hello", you can immediately reply with your question, saving them the time of waiting for you to type.

crazygringo• 7 years ago

This is ridiculous.

You say "hi" or "hello" to check if the person is there.

And if they are, it's worth spending 2 minutes typing out the question. If they're not, you're not going to waste those 2 minutes.

It's just simple efficiency.

If they're not there, you might walk over to someone else's desk and ask them... why would you bother wasting the time to type something out if they're not there? And waste their time because by the time they see it and answer it, you already got an answer from someone else?

nine_k• 7 years ago

The title as it currently stands, "No Hello", does a poor job conveying the (imho correct) idea.

It should be "No Hello Without The Actual Message in an IM Conversation". (That would also obviate the need to read the article for like 90% of people who actually use IMs.)

EamonnMR• 7 years ago

I agree with this, but mostly because 'hello' is a demand for synchronous communication, whereas just dropping your question off means you can walk away and the recipient can handle it at their convenience. Of course, chat has mostly supplanted email at companies I've worked at and as a result it is used for both sync'd and async communication.

mcqueenjordan• 7 years ago

As someone who used to get directly pinged by hundreds of teams for questions, if all I got was "hey", I used to simply reply with https://nohello.com. People appreciated the feedback. :)

sebringj• 7 years ago

Yes this makes perfect sense and its something developers for the most part have adopted minus needing to say hi in the first place as slack is a different animal and mode of communication.

We've already gotten to the place where "What's up." means "I acknowledge you exist." and nothing more when in person when it used to be an actual question of genuine interest. How often have you passed persons in the hallway or on the street and they act as if you don't exist or don't respond to you if you give a nod or say "good morning". It's more common these days to be impersonal which I don't like but it may be due to the greater number of humans existing, the less interesting and annoying they become.

karolsputo• 7 years ago

Aren’t single word or short messages like “Hi”, “Sure” simple ACKs in our human protocol? I’ve observed (at work) that people feel more comfortable and respected when I use these words while writing.

dredmorbius6• 7 years ago

Yes, but they're distracting, unnecessary, and grating in an async memorialised medium such as IRC or Slack.

timzaman• 7 years ago

If you need an answer quickly, you'd end up asking the same question to multiple people. Then, multiple people will take the time to read and respond. This takes up a lot more time than just probing for 'Hi'. And, since when does anyone wait for a response in a chat channel!?

PorterDuff• 7 years ago

Not a bad point. It's like how talk show callers often ask how the host is doing instead of cranking right up. It hurts the flow.

smlacy• 7 years ago

Fuck this gatekeeping

rococode• 7 years ago

I feel this deeply from building online games that have chat communities. Often random people I don't know will message me, or more frustratingly, write a message in a group chat directed at me, along the lines of "hey rococo can I ask you a question" or "hey i have a suggestion". I see these messages so frequently that I just don't have the energy to respond to every one of them with "yeah what's up". People who directly post their ideas or feedback are much more likely to get a response from me.

piqufoh• 7 years ago

Another non-obvious, but good reason for doing this;

Often I get as far as typing out my actual question and I work out what the answer is before hitting send. Sometimes forcing yourself to layout the problem in a structured way helps you understand it and solve it - rubber ducking. If you've not hit send, you can save yourself the embarrassment of

"Hi!", "Hello", "... Oh - never mind, sorry to bother you!"

sexyflanders• 7 years ago

No. Close the chat app if you don't want to be interrupted.

Don’t impose your personal communication preferences to others.

There are far to many languages, cultures and personalities to think that you know better how to chat than someone else. Be nice and take time to communicate with your colleagues.

jeffbarr• 7 years ago

This works for me! Far too many IMs seem to go like this:

Them: Hey Jeff ... Them: Can I ask you a quick question ...... Them: I am sure that you are really really busy with re:Invent ......... Them: And I could look this up, but you have been here forever and I figured you would know .................. Them: Where can I find X?

I am happy to help, but would prefer:

Them: Hey Jeff, hope all is well. Where can I find X?

nyx_• 7 years ago

At my workplace we use Skype for Business. I often get "IM?" or "OK to IM?"

Starting the conversation that way requires me to greet them and request that they continue.

Why ask if it's OK to IM, if you're using an IM to do it? Ostensibly it's to prevent, like, notification sounds going off from my laptop if I'm in a meeting, or to avoid disrupting me while I work... but sending the "Permission to communicate?" message is already a disruption.

Also, S4B has available/away/busy/meeting/call status indicators. Why not use those if you can't decide if it's OK to IM?

viraptor4• 7 years ago

I know there are exceptions, but I think the idea of the IM status is generally dead these days. It's hard to micromanage it, and the only general status for a work day is "busy". People leave it by default on available and that's a new normal.

turbinerneiter• 7 years ago

I regularly have people sending me "hellos" - and then nothing until I answer.

If you want a synchronous conversation, call me or catch me in person. Messages are asynchronous.

alexandercrohde• 7 years ago

I'm confused by people admitting they're "irrationally emotional" about this, as though those two things aren't flaws.

Maybe that 1 minute efficiency is something you're irrationally emotional about. But you have the privilege of working with hundreds of other people who have their own, sometimes contradictory, emotional irrationalities.

I think our industry's greatest weakness is the too-accurate perception of petty emotional battles and tribalism (e.g. Tabs vs Spaces, vim/emacs, mac/windows, front-end/backend, iphone/droid, sql/nosql, php/python). Why don't we do ourselves the favor of not leaning in to finding more silly hills to die on?

vzaliva• 7 years ago

While I agree with the sentiment of the site, the form they suggest "Hi -- ...." looks ungrammatical. Disclaimer: I am not a native English speaker.

ada19815• 7 years ago

Also, tech support folks.. please don't say "Hello, how are you today?"

Instead say "Hello, how may I help you?"

code_duck• 7 years ago

First off, this is a fairly confrontational and antisocial way to make a point about social graces. Also I’m puzzled that someone made an entire website based on one assumption.

If someone says hello to me and doesn’t continue immediately, or even if they do… I’ve already switched to another window. The initial “hello” is perfectly fine for getting attention and informing someone that you wish to speak with them in the near future. There’s no reason to assume they are staring at the chat window, immobilized, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for you to continue.

dredmorbius6• 7 years ago

The history of business communications since 1800 (and before) has been toward both increasingly abbreviated and structured communications, largely doing away with the prolux formalities of earlier ages.

JoAnne Yates and James Beniger have both explored this in what I've found to be a surprisingly fascinating literature.

For the brief intro:

JoAnne Yates, "The Emergence of the Memo as a Managerial Genre", May 1, 1989.

http://www.ismlab.usf.edu/dcom/Ch6_YatesMemoMgtCommQtly1989....

https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318989002004003

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0893318989002004003

https://sci-hub.tw/10.1177/0893318989002004003

James R Beniger, The control revolution : technological and economic origins of the information society

https://www.worldcat.org/title/control-revolution-technologi...

JoAnne Yates, Control through communication : the rise of system in American management

https://www.worldcat.org/title/control-through-communication...

JoAnne Yates, Information technology and organizational transformation : history, rhetoric, and preface

https://www.worldcat.org/title/information-technology-and-or...

scarejunba• 7 years ago

It's not about efficiency or anything for me. It's about courtesy. For instance, if you're moving and you want to ask a friend to help you out, the right way to do so is "Hey, man, I'm moving this Saturday to the Mission. Can you help me out?"

The wrong way is "Hey, can you do me a favour?" or "Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Oh you're free?" And then going with things.

It's the same way with everything else. If you have a question, give them a chance to not answer it. "Can I ask you a question?" is a trap on question complexity because the answer is always "depends".

It's okay if they can't answer the question you have. You can just copy-paste it. Also, always ask in public channels unless it's sensitive. That way everyone learns.

If you priorize your conversation partners this behaviour is easy and natural. If you're prioritizing yourself (don't want to repeat the question, don't want to be seen as not knowing the answer, etc.) this behaviour doesn't seem obvious.

mr_tristan• 7 years ago

After reading _Deep Work_ by Cal Newport, I realize that this "hi" message is just yet another way we are distracted in the modern workplace. (I heartily recommend that book.)

What I've adopted is a structured "offline" timeframe, where I answer _no_ communication over the period of about 1-2 hours. When I come "online", I take the time to really answer questions very completely.

I've noticed a few things:

1. This has reduced stress a _lot_ 2. Nobody cares I don't answer immediately 3. People do appreciate that when I do answer them, I've taken the time to really research the response

(Now, "offline" isn't really offline, it's more "no distractions or notifications".)

The funny thing I've noticed, is that the people that just want you to be online when they say "Hi" are often very distracted people themselves.

dennisgorelik5• 7 years ago

I use brief "Hi" message when I want to voice talk.

If person on another end is not available - I may send a brief email.

anotherevan• 7 years ago

This reminds me of a little anecdote. My colleagues in the office all used Skype, which was particularly handy for me as I was the only person who worked remotely (about half the time).

However, I always had the habit, when in the office, to eschew Skype and go see a person directly. It had the advantage of higher fidelity communication, and about half the time I'd figure out the answer to my own question before I got there.

After a while, I started turning Skype off when I was in the office (remember there were no other remotes at this time). This actually became an annoyance to one of my colleagues as they would have to, get this, walk across the hall if they wanted to talk to me. My ill concealed amusement at their ire did not go over well.

In person, face to face: the original instant messaging.

dorgo• 7 years ago

I also like following chat style. Especially when I try to concentrate on something else.

colleague: Hello

5 seconds later

colleague: I have a question

5 seconds later

colleague: I work on problem X

5 seconds later

colleague: .. and can't do Y

5 seconds later

colleague: are you there?

eibrahim• 7 years ago

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This BUGS the s out of me and I have to tell all my remote developers to do that. The worst is when they are in a different time zone and say “I have a question” and wait for me to respond before they ask it. VERY FRUSTRATING.

Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat (2013)

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