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

https://switowski.com/blog/no-hello-no-quick-call-no-agendaless-meetings/

by tybulewicz • 2 years ago

229 265 2 years ago

switowski.com

cryptoboy2283• 2 years 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!)

meowface4• 2 years 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.

prmoustache9• 2 years 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.

Leynos5• 2 years 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.

daghamm4• 2 years 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.

MaxikCZ• 2 years ago

don't just say "Hi"

Agree, but

If you don't give someone the information to make an appropriate prioritization decision, all you are doing is inducing anxiety.

Disagree here. I used to think the same "why you only sayibg Hi and not what you want", but I realized it doesnt have to be my problem if I dont let it become one.

You said Hi? Expect a Hello from me sometimes during the day. You needed something urgent? "Why didnt you tell me?". A "Hi" isn't urgent, so I know I dont feel the burden of not being able to assign it a correct priority.

A lot of people have trouble recognizing when their teoubles are really other people troubles in disguise.

wccrawford• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

I thought this was excellent, and I would enjoy working with people like this

puttycat• 2 years 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.

simonmysun• 2 years ago

I believe the author means "quick call"s. They are not against scheduled calls.

jstimpfle6• 2 years 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.

dopylitty• 2 years ago

In my experience calls rarely have a definite end. "Quick" calls often turn into 30 minutes or an hour of the colleague talking about things unrelated to the issue they wanted to discuss originally.

In the office I've had people sit at a desk next to me and just talk at me for more than an hour about themselves. Trying to politely end these kinds of conversations just results in a brief blip in their monologue before they go back to it. I've even had to get up and walk away after someone wouldn't stop talking at me.

For whatever reason there are many people who are incapable of thinking about how they're using other peoples' time. The only defense is asynchronous media like chats or emails where you aren't forced by social politeness into continuing to be disrupted.

creesch5• 2 years ago

A call has a definite start and end

Oef, you clearly had not to deal with the "quick" calls I had to deal with at a previous organization. If I had not set boundaries, these would easily drag on for who knows how long.

Besides, chat messages I can respond to in my own time when I have had proper time to look into whatever they need from me.

If they need documentation I can look it up, have them read it and maybe then ask targeted questions. Just to give a simple example. Which is also why "no hello" is important. It isn't that most people mind being greeted, just accompany it directly with the right context.

Which can be as easy as "Hi creesch, if you have some time I wanted to ask about X".

BiteCode_dev4• 2 years 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.

intended4• 2 years ago

The Article is about remote work, which dodges this issue.

BiteCode_dev4• 2 years ago

It doesn't, chat and mails actually become way more socially important in remote.

meowface4• 2 years 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_dev4• 2 years ago

I agree but stating isn't going to change the culture of corporations or even countries.

prmoustache9• 2 years 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.

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

BiteCode_dev4• 2 years ago

Yes, but that doesn't change the problem.

cj2• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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?

cj2• 2 years 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)

gregjor2• 2 years 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.

kethinov2• 2 years ago

A well-functioning organization would not devalue people who are more judicious about their use of time, preferring productivity over unnecessary socializing.

But while what you're describing does not describe a well-functioning organization, it's definitely true in practice. People who buck the silly social dynamics in office cultures will be perceived as less productive whether it's true or not and are frequently devalued.

A knee-jerk response to what I just wrote of course will be maybe those people just can't see the real value of all these allegedly silly office rituals, but before you jump to that conclusion, consider the possibility that it's at least equally likely that the people perpetrating the rituals are overvaluing them.

The point is all of these social dynamics and office rituals should be open to being reexamined every so often to see if they're truly adding the value people think they're adding so they don't devolve into rituals people do because they're rituals. Keep the good ones, ditch the useless ones, and be proactive about objectively evaluating which are which.

twoodfin• 2 years ago

Agree. I think the key distinction this post misses is between being effectively collaborative and adaptive to others’ communication styles (the fatwa against the naked “Hi”) vs. producing back-pressure against organizational dysfunction (a norm that throwing a vaguely titled hour on a dozen folks’ calendars w/no preliminaries or agenda is acceptable).

kethinov2• 2 years ago

At a certain point it just doesn't make sense to over-optimize for being highly interruptible, when the sacrifice (productivity) isn't worth the gain (satisfy outdated notions of office etiquette designed by extroverts who want to vampire other people's attention unnecessarily).

quectophoton4• 2 years ago

If I liked call center work, I would have applied to a call center position. That way I wouldn't have to deal with the pesky programming stuff.

GoToRO4• 2 years ago

When you interrupt mental work, you just doubled that person's effort. At a minimum. Now tell me it's not worth it. Managers don't care because it"s not their effort.

Don't be fooled by the use of the word "optimize" which suggest some minimal gains over the current situation. In the short term you double the effort of that person/team, in the long term you will get frustration, people asking for huge raises (to reflect the effort) and then people just quit.

ckastner2• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

RACI chart

Today I learned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matr...

Leynos5• 2 years 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.

prmoustache9• 2 years 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.

ckastner2• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

Agenda, expected outcomes.

Everyone should know going in what is being discussed and what the expectations are around the objective of the meeting.

If you don't have these, you have no idea if it will be a productive meeting.

And don't forget https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

omega32• 2 years ago

I’m amazed these titans of productivity have time to write blog posts about productivity.

GoToRO4• 2 years ago

Some even go out, do sports, visit museums. How dare they?

yungporko• 2 years 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.

intended4• 2 years 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.

makeitdouble4• 2 years 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.

intended4• 2 years 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.

bruce511• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

Sorry but if any one of my coworkers behaved or responded like this, I’m not sure we’d be working together anymore.

meowface4• 2 years 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.

albert_e• 2 years 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.

PickledJesus3• 2 years 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.

widowlark4• 2 years 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• 2 years 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!).

prmoustache9• 2 years 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_oddity3• 2 years ago

Exactly, providing context in quick call invites can make a big difference, even in a remote setup

repeekad3• 2 years 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”

soco• 2 years ago

The post is about requesting context and preferring long lasting traces for a technical interaction. Not about socializing.

ctm92• 2 years ago

There's no problem with socializing, but this can also be a special appointment where everyone is free to join and can talk about stuff that is not related so a specific issue.

We do a weekly fixed appointment where we gather together and smalltalk about whatever is on our minds.

cdrini2• 2 years ago

I've had trouble implementing this in the past. We have biweekly social calls with my team, but a lot of people don't take part! And even when they do, when we have the full team (~12 ppl), usually maybe like 3-4 people dominate the convo and it's not super satisfying.

Have you found any tricks/ideas from the implementation at your org that has made it more successful for you?

repeekad3• 2 years ago

Scheduled social time over zoom is not social time, it’s work prescribed team building

If anything these kinds of “meetings” felt like they made the culture on my team worse because they felt so forced and inorganic

RestlessMind2• 2 years ago

We do a weekly fixed appointment ..

We also have something like that. But since it is not spontaneous, not every participant in the same state of mind and hence those meetings are a dud. Whereas participants in water cooler conversations are there because they want a break and want to chit chat. So conversations are more natural and hence enjoyable.

philipwhiuk2• 2 years ago

A quick call isn't socialising - it's solving someone's problem. It's not ephemeral happenstance, it's a planned interaction.

I'm not sure you understand the water cooler moments if you think the 'quick call' is in anyway a replacement.

LunaSea3• 2 years ago

In my experience forced online water cooler talk has never worked and was always incredibly awkward and boring.

axitanull3• 2 years ago

Surely the C-suites of the company will employ whatever brilliant ideas that we talk over the water cooler. The water cooler is the fountain of innovation after all.

Perhaps they should put all the water coolers in the executives' offices, so they can listen to all the brilliant conversations that take place at the water cooler.

prepend2• 2 years ago

Forced is horrible. But consensual is great.

refurb• 2 years ago

You've never been in an office and had a productive, random interaction with a coworker?

Like, never?

I've had it happen on a regular basis. I see someone and suddenly remember to tell them "oh, I did some work on that long ago, I'll share it with you" or you overhear a conversation about a topic you didn't know they were looking at?

Vinnl3• 2 years ago

Yeah, I know there's people who are able to make it work, but not me, in general.

I can get a fairly similar experience on the org chat, though, and sometimes at the start or ends of meetings. And just meeting up in real life every now and then helps a lot.

pdimitar• 2 years ago

lose**, not loose, I really don't get why so many people can't learn a few basic English gotchas.

maleldil• 2 years ago

Second language speakers, careless typos because HN is not that important that you _need_ to check everything…

Gravityloss• 2 years ago

I notice I often breathe deeply after a telecon. As if I was holding my breath during it. Even if the telecon was quite laid back. It doesn't happen in water cooler talks. Have there been studies about what causes this, or even how to alleviate?

cdrini2• 2 years ago

Yeah it became a big topic of interest during the pandemic when everyone went remote. It's colloquially referred to as "zoom fatigue". That should find you some of the research.

It's become a bit of a meme now: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dl0rpDY9460

Personally I've yet to find a cure :P

lvncelot• 2 years ago

Absolutely the same for me, as well as having extremely tense legs during/after online meetings.

I think the general phenomenon is often talked about under the umbrella term "zoom fatigue" - besides the fatigue this also encompasses stress and anxiety. (https://spectrum.ieee.org/zoom-fatigue)

liveoneggs3• 2 years ago

stand during the meeting instead of sitting

makeitdouble4• 2 years ago

As sister comments are pointing out, it's a pretty common thing ("zoom fatigue")

Personally the best improvement was closing the camera feed, and that has been my team's experience as well.

There will be extremely few meetings (mainly HR and meetings with external vendors) where we set the camera, and even for those you can do the opening and presentation with camera on, and just shut it after that for the meat of the discussion.

The biggest part is we're presenting documents and slides either way, so seeing the person's face somewhere just doesn't help. In particular we want to check the meeting transcript realtime to be sure it matches what we're talking about. Overall I've seen no downsides doing it since the pandemic, and don't see going back to camera on meetings by default.

axitanull3• 2 years ago

Why is it that every time someone tried to push RTO agenda in a thread, "water cooler talk" has always been pushed like it is one of most important thing in a job?

Is "water cooler talk" the new "open office layout"?

thyristan4• 2 years ago

Is "water cooler talk" the new "open office layout"?

Yes. It used to be that "water cooler talk" was considered an unproductive waste of time. But for people pushing an RTO agenda, it suddenly became the go-to argument for RTO. Very often, the same PHBs use this to push RTO, who back in the day complained about people doing "water cooler talk" on company time.

At the same time, open office or cubicle layouts are proven to be detrimental to work output, concentration, health and happiness. But same as RTO, it is not about any of that, nor about collaboration. It is about PHBs fearing their loss of purpose and control.

RestlessMind2• 2 years ago

.. been pushed like it is one of most important thing in a job?

because it is actually one of the most important thing in a job. During Covid, work was boring as hell because there were no spontaneous interactions or small breaks to chit chat with other people.

And guess what, most of the colleagues I have talked to mentioned that they missed those kind of interactions. Barring some super introvert ones who just want to be left alone, but those are a tiny minority.

throwawaysleep• 2 years ago

I like my isolation. As an employee with minimal stake in the outcome of my teams, I don’t ever want to discuss ideas in the workplace. I’ll walk the other way around the office to avoid such a chat.

PickledJesus3• 2 years ago

Well, that's honest! But presumably you can see that it's at odds with the interests of the business..

mewpmewp25• 2 years ago

The problem is all of those acts take you out of flow state. I don't want and I can't randomly brainstorm when I am deep into coding. Even if I have to go take a quick water I would try to do it as quick as possible to continue with the problem I am focused on and I couldn't pay attention to the random conversation or brainstorming at a cooler.

RamblingCTO• 2 years ago

Maybe "flow state" is not the most important thing?

prepend2• 2 years ago

Flow state is really powerful, but it’s not constant. I don’t want to be in flow for 40 hours per week. And to tell the truth if I get a few hours of flow a week, I’m lucky.

So I don’t want to shut the door on any interactions in the unlikely chance that it interrupts me in my optimal state.

What I like to do is block off “deep work” in my calendar a few times a week. Then people can think about if they want to interrupt.

This has let me look at these “quick call” or “hi” messages as just part of being human and having a pleasant team where people are happy to interact rather than dings to maximum team productivity.

space_oddity3• 2 years ago

Does it really foster collaboration and innovation?

sensanaty2• 2 years ago

First off: Are water coolers even a thing still? At least in NL we just bring our own bottles and use the tap to refill it :p

Second, I've not once in my life had a productive "water cooler" conversation. Not a single time, it's pretty much always just socialization about literally anything other than work. Same with lunch, people don't want to talk about work during their free time, and they don't. I've certainly never heard of anyone having a sudden eureka moment spontaneously like that either, and if they do these days they'll just post it in slack so that people can refer back to it rather than it disappearing into the ether as soon as the convo ends.

As for the idea thing, I can't say I've ever had many such a drastic PR where the approach was completely 180 degrees from what the PR is doing, and even in the rare occasions those do occur, both parties are usually more than okay with then hopping onto a short (meaning max 15 minutes, not some hour long monstrosity of a "quick chat") call to align.

goralph• 2 years ago

I’ve had plenty of productive “water cooler” conversations. Especially with people from other teams, as we don’t interact with each other much. Cross pollinating ideas in a large organisation is conducive to spontaneous creativity.

However, neither of our statements are very useful as they are just anecdotes, a result of our personal experiences.

probably_wrong• 2 years ago

First off: Are water coolers even a thing still? At least in NL we just bring our own bottles and use the tap to refill it :p

I know of two cases where office water coolers are super useful: in areas with high temperatures where cold water is much better that the warm water coming out of the tap, and (if your model supports it) for getting a cup of hot water for tea. I've also seen them used in areas where the tap water tastes funny, but that's more of a patch.

js8• 2 years ago

Second, I've not once in my life had a productive "water cooler" conversation.

I just realized it's worse than that. If the old adage on innovation "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" is true, then water cooler simply cannot help much. Then, what you need for innovation (and not just a warm fuzzy feeling of a possibly good idea) is actual time to work on it, not a water cooler.

Quothling3• 2 years ago

I agree with your take on working remote and how it can hinder spontaneous "group creativity", though I'd argue that the loss of the smoke break did a lot more damage to this than remote work. With that out of the way I just want to say that in decades I've never had a "quick call" which wasn't a humongous waste of my time.

It's always some project manager or business process or whatever person who wants to talk about something they don't quite understand on behalf of someone from the business. I regret never doing the statistics on it, but if I had to guess I'd say that 9/10 times they could have simply forwarded the email from the "someone" instead of being the middleman. I have no idea why anyone would ever want to do a "quick call" without telling someone the reason first. I'm perfectly fine with taking a call with a co-worker who wants to discuss something they're not sure about, but then they'll ask me "hey, can we talk about X because I'd like your input". Which isn't a "quick call" in my book. I don't mind meetings either, but I dislike meetings which are solely there to make pseudo workers or bad middle managers feel like they accomplish something. If there are more than 3 people attending a meeting then you can be pretty sure it'll be a waste of time. If there is no agenda you're going down the road of the "quick call" which is essentially that initiator hasn't done their due diligence beforehand.

tankenmate• 2 years ago

Indeed, when I want to do a "quick call" to get pointers on something, or to clarify possible implications of technical choices I'll always send a message on a platform / channel that can be muted with some text like "i need your input on X, give me a call when it suits". That way the callee can chose to mute and/or choose a time that doesn't interrupt their workflow, but also give them the opportunity to contemplate the issue. This way the other person is in the right frame of mind to get to the meat of the issue, get a quicker call, and most importantly get the right direction / decision without hampering productivity.

bartread2• 2 years ago

With that out of the way I just want to say that in decades I've never had a "quick call" which wasn't a humongous waste of my time.

I don't know about that. I tend to find that incoming "quick calls" with peers, even where they've turned out to be anything but quick, tend to be at least reasonably useful. People do always ask first as well, rather than calling out of the blue.

Overall though, I find working as an engineer at home to be an isolating, and increasingly depressing experience. I really like team I'm working with at the moment but we're scattered to the four winds and barely get to spend any time together, so I'm keeping half an eye out for any roles that are local and might involve a bit more facetime.

When I left my last role for the last 3 - 4 months I was going in 2 - 3 times/week after a handful of us made a pledge to do so and, honestly, it's the happiest I've been at work since the beginning of the pandemic.

I wouldn't say I regret leaving - it was definitely time to move on to something new - but I think that experience, versus how I feel at the moment, is somewhat telling.

doix• 2 years ago

though I'd argue that the loss of the smoke break did a lot more damage to this than remote work.

Eh, coffee breaks serve the same purpose as a smoke break in my opinion. I'd guess nowadays the amount of coffee drinkers is probably the same as the number of smokers back in the day.

Interestingly, in my experience, a "quick call" has been something where the other person doesn't want an email to get forwarded. That's why they don't include the subject in the message/meeting invite. Usually some political maneuvering to try and get ownership of a project or push off a failing project to another team/organziation.

Yizahi3• 2 years ago

While there are of course frequent chats and interactions while in the office, the called "water cooler brainstorms" is a complete and total myth propagated via soulless linkedin seo and ceo posts. Like this stuff never happens on random and the few technical discussions I've seen or participated in a third place (i.e. two+ coworkers meet at any place which is not their workstation - kitchen/watercooler/smoking area etc.) were never resembling anything productive for the project or innovative. That in my not quite humble opinion is an utter BS perpetuated for the misguided RTO policies.

PS: disclaimer a) I do support short spontaneous calls and like them, but try to never initiate them on my side, because I understand they ARE very disruptive. disclaimer b) I actually like working in the office in some aspects, but it is totally not worth 30 full awake and unpaid days of my life per year wasted on commute. Like not even order of magnitude close in benefit compared to the waste of time.

altacc• 2 years ago

People are fixating on the mention of a water cooler but I think the key point is:

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

In my team we work mostly remotely and have a lot of ad hoc calls about issues, after an initial exchange of messages introducing the problem so that it can be loaded into memory. In my experience talking about a problem on a call is almost always better than text tennis. You're focused, our minds work better and are more engaged when we're talking and it's quicker easier to summarize then question ad hoc ideas, etc...

creesch5• 2 years ago

It could be that you are working for a very healthy organization where having a quick call is no big deal as they don't happen that frequently. In that context, you are entirely right. If all the quick calls are just that, quick calls from direct team members then this entire article does not apply to you.

However, there are many, many, many (really a lot) of organizations out there that are in various degrees but continuous state of chaos. Things like constantly shifting deadlines, goals changing, roles being poorly defined and various other things.

The sort of company where anyone who cares about their work will find themselves in a boiling frog type of scenario if they are not careful. They try to take up extra work that is not technically part of their role description, or simply by being knowledgeable attract attention.

In those companies where everyone is a continuous state of mild panic it isn't just one "quick call" it is a steady stream of them, interrupted by unannounced actual calls. Or, if you are in the office, people constantly walking by and "quickly" asking for things.

Certainly, when you find yourself in a situation where the documentation is always lacking. If you then make the mistake of writing the few pieces of documentation that actually are useful you suddenly might find yourself in the position of "knowledge holder" where everyone flocks to for their questions. In companies like this knowledge holders then get over asked (with questions often covered in the documentation), making it difficult for them to focus on their work.

In that sort of situation you need to be competent at setting boundaries as companies will often not do that for you. They happily take advantage of someone running 100% of the time, so they don't need the expense of another FTE added to payroll. Or if I'd have to do a slightly less cynical take, because they simply do not realize they are missing an FTE. Or, to go back to a more cynical take, they are filling roles with seat warmers instead of competency.

In a previous organization, I have had to actively enforce what the article suggests and more. Even then I eventually decided to leave as I simply couldn't see a path forward with the company getting their structure in order in time and me keeping my sanity.

A few of the things I started doing (some overlap with the article):

- Set my teams status with a message encouraging people to ask the question, not just greed me. Eventually, I did include a link to one of the "no hello" websites. I think https://nohello.net/en/

- Refuse unannounced teams calls from most people except a few people. I'd hang up and just leave a message along the lines of "hi, bit busy with something at the moment, what was it you are trying to reach me about?".

- Decline meetings without a clear agenda.

- Decline meetings with a clear agenda, but where I was simply not needed. Sometimes it was not related to my responsibilities, I would let them know and if I could, I would forward the meeting to a person that was responsible. In other cases, I simply was not needed in person because the information was already written down somewhere. In that case I'd provide them with the information.

- Decline meetings during my lunch break.

- Decline meetings that overlapped with other meetings in my agenda, specifically stating I was not available due to another meeting.

- Block a few moments in the week in my agenda as "focus time", set those to private meetings. To the credit of the company, they eventually did recognize that a lot of the IT engineering staff was sitting in too many meetings and then as a company policy blocked of two afternoons for everyone as focus time.

- When getting general help requests about things I knew for a fact were written down in documentation, I'd refer them there first. Ask them to go over the documentation first and then let me know if they had specific questions.

To be fair, this was an extremely chaotic and continually panicked company, with a lot of extra things compounding all of this. But it isn't that rare either as I know plenty of people who actually burned out over similar things at various different companies.

quectophoton4• 2 years 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.

To me this sounds like neither you nor your coworkers... talk? Like you're not used to communication unless the photons you receive in your eyes are the same ones that bounced off someone's face (or unless there's a face at all).

I still took coffee breaks to unwind for a tiny bit of time, and I still talked with teammates during those times while I was taking a moment to unwind. Async. The conversation would either stop after a few exchanges, or continue for the next minutes.

Not much different from, say, IRC or Discord. Obviously there will be professionalism in the "real" channels, but other than that it just happened that sometimes a teammate would just send me a DM like "hey, have you watched this series?", or I would post in a shared channel something like "yooo look at this thing I built last night".

I don't really need any specific medium to talk to a person. I can have my preferences, and other people can have their preferences as well, but there's still not much difference either way when it comes to getting to know each other. There's some people I only know through text chats that I'm on better terms than with some I know in person. There's some people I know in person that I'm on better terms than with some I only know through text chats.

sirolimus2• 2 years ago

Agree, this blog post is primarily for hermitic autists.

whateveracct• 2 years ago

I actually "bump into" way more people on Slack than I ever did in an office. In threads, various interest channels, random DMs. And the quality of discussion is generally higher too (because of text and async reasons)

dijksterhuis2• 2 years ago

I completely disagree.

I’ve done plenty of meetings in a remote only setting where at the end I say “if anyone wants to hang and chat about things further, or just hang out and socialise, feel free to stick around”.

People get to choose if they stay. It’s at a natural context switch (end of meeting). It’s deliberately informal and not organised (“hey, let’s just hang for a bit”).

The opportunities are there to achieve the same goal as the water cooler.

When I see people lamenting what has been “lost” I usually read it as “I don’t want to look for alternative solutions”.

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

This is ideology masquerading as data.

rumblestrut• 2 years ago

I am so glad to be in the office.

For instance, every morning when I come in there is a person on my team that will talk about their family, their kids, their life, and that goes on for about 15 minutes. In the spirit of team building, I entertain it for awhile. But that does come with a cost.

Someone came in a few weeks ago not feeling well, but decided not to stay home. Ended up having covid and spread it to others. It's hard to be productive when half the team is out sick.

Every day I have to be in the office with others, I truly hate it. The pandemic was hard, but I absolutely miss being able to work from home every day.

haliskerbas• 2 years ago

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

This is my biggest frustration when working with new people. Too busy to explain context, then let me do it my way, then in PR review tell me to flip the whole thing based on specific context only few people had along with team specific style nits. Finally, manager asking why it's taking me so long to complete the work.

jdhzzz• 2 years ago

I still have PTSD from pre-COVID days when I would be working at in my cubicle and have someone "drive-by" with a quick question and plop their laptop on my desk.

"Can I ask you a question?" (Ugh) "Sure."

It might only take five minutes. Then I'd reconnect to _my_ work. That and getting over my, admittedly emotional, irritation at the interruption would take another 5 minutes.

I really liked being able to delay those folks to when it was convenient for _me_ while working from home.

pbrum• 2 years ago

The water cooler thing is a myth. I've spent my fair share of time in tech company offices and have never seen, nor cannot think of, anything worthwhile coming out of those encounters. Like other posters said, a shared meal with colleagues is a different story, though it will typically increase social connections rather than generate new productive/business outcomes

EasyMark• 2 years ago

Most people don’t mind the occasional “hi” ….. What they hate is 10 an hour.

bravetraveler• 2 years ago

Counter: when this says 'no', it really means, 'modulate'.

Working remotely gives us the ability to have infinite water-coolers any hour of the day. Great power, great responsibility.

People take this personally completely forgetting there is a much larger world than theirs.

sanitycheck• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

daghamm4• 2 years 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.

widowlark4• 2 years 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• 2 years 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?

drawkward5• 2 years ago

Neither 1 nor 2 are obvious. They sound more like ego to me.

cqqxo4zV46cp• 2 years 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.

Gooblebrai• 2 years ago

how can I make all communication so structured

I think this is a really key point. For many developers, human communication feels hard or full of seemly useless rituals.

Making communication something well defined and structured helps to get a feel of control and to deal with it in a less anxious way.

sensanaty2• 2 years ago

I'm the furthest thing from an introvert and I still despise having managers pulling me into unprompted random bullshit calls that could've been a slack message, usually because they don't read the status messages posted by the people doing the actual work.

The large, overwhelming majority of impromptu meetings I've ever been in that didn't have a fellow engineer on the other end of the call have been nothing but massive time wasters. And usually if it's another engineer a few messages is more than enough, anyways.

creesch5• 2 years ago

Or, these articles are written by people who deal with so many "quick calls" and a continuous stream of meeting invites without clear agendas that it actually does stop them from performing what is their actual job description.

This would also apply to people working in offices where someone stops by their desk every five minutes. If you are constantly being disrupted in your work, have to shift focus, rinse, repeat, it makes sense to start setting boundaries.

Question, do your job openings by default include one of these phrases?

- Thrives in high-stress environments

- Excels in demanding situations

- Delivers outstanding results in challenging circumstances

- Effective in fast-paced, high-pressure settings

- Demonstrates resilience in demanding conditions

- Capable of handling high-pressure tasks

mewpmewp25• 2 years ago

Only few of them would be un-anonymously vocal about it.

I believe most will fake enjoying those random social situations in order to get the job.

Cthulhu_• 2 years ago

It's a welcome change from the extroverted era to be honest. There's a middle ground somewhere though, including but not limited to cutting through the bullshit, posturing and rituals and getting to the point.

RHSeeger• 2 years ago

The company cannot 100% align with what best works for you.

There's 2 thoughts in that one sentence

1. The overall productivity of the company may be increased having a single individual accomplish less of their _individual_ goal. People helping each other can multiply productivity.

2. What one person thinks works best for them may not _actually_ be what makes them the most productive. It is a very rare person that works best in a complete silo, separated from any input from others; likely almost nobody. It is an _uncommon_ person that doesn't benefit from some amount of casual discussion about what they're working on. If a developer thinks they are most productive working on their solution start to finish without ever discussing it with someone else; odds are that developer isn't very good at what they do.

space_oddity3• 2 years ago

Finding a middle ground where communication is both efficient and respectful of individual needs is key

ffgjgf12• 2 years ago

To me it seems more about scheduling a meeting when a simple email or message might do. Which is kind of the opposite of scheduling meetings with agendas etc.

If it’s really a “quick question” just write it down and in the off chance that it develops into something else you can have that meeting.

Of course it’s also a cultural/etc. thing. Some people are just horrible at expressing themselves in text or communicating asynchronously (the “Hello [I won’t tell you what I need until you reply”] ones or those that think that they are being helpful by making their messages as terse, short and consequentially vague and unspecific as possible)

I’m not sure how can that be beneficial for the team/company if it significantly affects productivity.

axpy• 2 years ago

Why go for a quick 5 min call when an email thread that will need you to context switch 10 times will do? That being said there is a lot of meeting which should be replaced by a email and vice-versa. Also, When there is something you don’t understand properly, coming up with the right question or meeting agenda can be very hard. Finding a common ground is better served by face 2 face communication rather than an email. When a slack thread is getting too long, a quick 5-10min VC often do wonders.

creesch5• 2 years ago

So in my opinion, the author is a little bit selfish too. The company cannot 100% align with what best works for you.

No, of course not. It is a scale/grade where balance needs to be found. Unfortunately, in some companies the balance is really off where in order to maintain your sanity you do need to set clear boundaries like this. If not you will not even be able to think clearly as you are in a constant state of being interrupted.

There is also a big difference in the quality of quick questions.

For example.

1. Bad, no context: Hey, quick question.

2. Still not good: Hey, quick question about why Y is part of X (where the reasoning is clearly documented).

3. Better: Hey, I was looking at Y and X and see the reasoning for doing it like this, but I still have some questions about the details.

As far as why I rate these the way I do:

1. certainly is bad because it just means I get a ping, need to respond, need to wait for the answer (being distracted again from what I was doing), etc.

2. Is just a waste of time but is okay enough as I can just point to the documentation and ask to follow up if the question is not covered.

3. Is much better as I know what it is about, you have the right knowledge as well, and now we can actually answer your question in a meaningful way.

Having typed this out I realize I am just repeating the article. Which also does not say that everything needs to be a meeting with a clear agenda. It basically boils down to one thing if you want something from someone make sure to include enough context. It really is not that difficult :)

DebtDeflation• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

philipwhiuk2• 2 years ago

Honestly, I just ignore the conversation until they post something meaningful.

spacebacon• 2 years 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.

prmoustache9• 2 years ago

It is like calling someone and saying hello in the voicemail.

drawkward5• 2 years ago

Except that it is not, because it is not voicemail.

thomond2• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

Huh, we have really different experiences. I often describe things the other way. My email is full of automated messages, things that get blasted out to the entire organization, status updates that got sent to an entire mailing list and I don't need to read. I assume at this point that if it's an email, it's probably not important. That is to say P(important | email) < my threshold

I mean, I glace at them at some point, but I don't put much thought into them.

At least I know slack/teams messages are meant for me. If it's important, don't send me an email about it, ping me on one of those.

drawkward5• 2 years ago

If you spent even a nanosecond considering these other people, you might stumble upon the hypothesis that these people are trying to port the way they interact with others in meatspace to an IM channel, rather than assume some form of mental illness.

acjohnson55• 2 years ago

I think it's actually people bringing their norms from social instant messaging tools.

antisthenes3• 2 years ago

And if those people stopped for a nanosecond and considered other people, they might come to realization that an IM is not the same as meatspace, and maybe there needs to be some adjustment to an async model.

Also, giving context is good, regardless of medium.

OliveMate• 2 years ago

You're not the only one who hates it - https://nohello.net/en/

GoToRO4• 2 years ago

They are well meaning, but they just don't realize this is async communication. They only know direct, sync communication. This is one signal that tells me they are junior (even after years of "experience").

omega32• 2 years 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.

tialaramex• 2 years 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.

prmoustache9• 2 years ago

It is not about avoiding calls but avoiding calls without context.

widowlark4• 2 years ago

But the chilling effect it has on cross-team interactions leads to the same result.

krisoft• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

nottorp6• 2 years 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• 2 years 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://www.nngroup.com/articles/inverted-pyramids-in-cybers...

NKosmatos• 2 years ago

It's mentioned in the post, but it never hurts to repeat it here: 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

thyristan4• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

akoboldfrying2• 2 years 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."

GoToRO4• 2 years ago

This is the classic "I don't have any counterarguments so I'll complain about something fuzzy, like the tone" comment.

akoboldfrying2• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

widowlark4• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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

karrotwaltz• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

quacksilver3• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

quacksilver3• 2 years ago

In that case I felt like I would interrupt the workflow of more people (i needed the answer within an hour so there would have to be a notification of some sort), share more information than was necessary (auditors don't like that) and court answers from people who I knew weren't really competent in that area but liked showing off for career reasons who were quick to 'solve' the question and would use it to try and show their superiority compared to you to others.

There is also the bystander effect - i.e. yelling call 911 vs asking someone directly to call 911

Vinnl3• 2 years ago

Suggestion for better option: ask your question in the first message (so they have a feel for how long the "moment" might take, and/or potentially can ask it right away), and ask it in public where everybody can see it.

I'd be OK with skipping that last option; asking for help is hard enough as it is, and I can imagine people not wanting to flaunt their imagined ignorance. Which is also why it's good for more senior people to do it, so they can set that culture that shows that it is OK.

ffgjgf12• 2 years ago

"Hi, do you have a moment? (ok if not)"

I was always very puzzled by people who do that instead of just saying “Hi, [short description of the project/question]”.

Especially by junior developers who usually struggle with estimating the importance/complexity of the problems they are trying to solve.

quacksilver3• 2 years ago

I would ask the question that I wanted to ask immediately in the next message (usually after 'whats up'), as I didn't want to have people think about my problem rather than their problem if they were deep into something.

We were also told not to share things about projects with other staff unnecessarily.

orwin• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

antisthenes3• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

What about a quick coffee?

qbxk• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

liveoneggs3• 2 years ago

Yet another person who forgets that slack can, in fact, be closed.

douglee650• 2 years 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?"

jakupovic2• 2 years 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.

antisthenes3• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

thyristan4• 2 years 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.

liveoneggs3• 2 years 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.

Havoc• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

bartread2• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

sirolimus2• 2 years ago

This blog post is definitely for people that have no desire to ever have social interactions

bdcravens• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

nunez2• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

Has the "no-hello" crowd realized what the "hello" is trying to achieve? It's a method of establishing a synchronous conversation.

px1999• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

Being this smug is a great way to get people to not speak to you at all. Enjoy your quiet productivity.

mrfumier• 2 years 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.

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

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