I've been trying to do this more myself. I have noticed that I'd get someone's attention, then start writing up what I have to say while they waited for me to finish typing.
I tried for a while before giving up because almost nobody in my org reads statuses or heeds them to begin with anyway (as I’ve learned on multiple PTO days where I would change my status to “On vacation, please contact Mike at ——— for support” and getting P1 messages and calls over slack anyway).
Indeed. I’m firmly in camp “slack isn’t the problem with workplace communication, it just happens to amplify the problems that were already there”.
Most (not all) tech that tries to “fix” communication in the office suffers from this problem though so I’m not blaming Slack alone for this. It just is what it is.
As Joel Spolsky says, no one really reads. May be if you sum your status up in least possible words it will reduce the pokes a bit.
Also I sent a college a message while he was on holiday knowingly so that he can see and may reply if he wants to when he comes back.
If you are on holiday (palm emoji) you are free to not pick up any calls and messages, until an unless you job is life critical and requires you to respond immediately at any hour.
It just seems passive aggressive, not necessarily rude, per se. You could pull it off if you're a Guilfoyle type. But it definitely does not make you look approachable.
It does give me a good chuckle to think how annoyed someone must have been to have made this site in the first place :)
> Would you think it was rude if you saw this link as somebody’s status message?
Absolutely not; clearly communicating expectations makes life easier for everyone, which is (much of) what politeness is supposed to be about in the first place. The only possible suggestion I have is inlining a 1-sentence summary.
(Potential) counterpoint: there are those who sometimes prefer indirect language.
E.g. I would prefer if you said "I don't mean to be rude, but in my honest opinion you're looking kind of shabby these days" rather than "You're ugly" (statements exaggerated for emphasis).
I think this matters less in the context of the original thread (the "hello" back-and-forth).
You should see if you can convince some of your coworkers to adopt it at the same time. I've seen workplaces where many people have nohello as their status.
I would be inclined to think it odd if I saw just one person with that status. When I saw every other person using it, it became less off-putting to me.
I was in an IRC channel a while back that had "Don't ask to ask, ask" in its topic, because it was so common for people to join and write "May I ask a question?".
We see this all the time today over in the Reactiflux channels on Discord. We've got a bot that will show pre-recorded answers for common topics when we ping it, and one of the most frequently used ones is exactly this:
I totally agree with the sentiment represented here but thinking linking someone to this is a bad way to handle the situation with others. I think it’s best handled by asking them after they make one of these requests and they get their answer. Linking to external sites feels passive aggressive to most people who are just trying to be nice.
But it's the kind of thing you can put in your Slack status so that the moment someone opens up a DM with you, they might see it, read it, and then know, all before they've typed out their first message.
Yes, usually in real life unless it's a close friend I just don't respond to "Hello" until I get something more. It's not aggressive, it's just me waiting until I have a question.
Close friends get a pass because their "hello" might just in some cases mean "hey I'm lonely and want someone to talk to".
Google has a whole list of these (ActionableIM, OnlyHello, ContextPlz); I'm into FastHello
1. Open the chat window, and type your question with no "hello". Do not press enter.
2. Instead, press Ctrl-A and then Ctrl-X to cut your question out of the chat window and into your clipboard.
3. type and send "hello"
4. Pause 2-5 seconds
5. Ctrl-P and enter to send your full question.
Years ago I worked with several people from UK. No subject matter will be broached until pleasantries have been exchanged. After a period of time they will ask to proceed. Then, only after a definitive "yes, go ahead" and a "no, this is not too much trouble", will they finally make their request. I found it both charming and terribly inefficient.
It's the same with those ponderous extended variants on "can I just jump in here. Would you mind if I asked a question? Because I'm curious to know..." - seem to be to be used by people from all over.
The author doesn't seem to be that annoyed, they're just trying to make life easier for themselves and others.
It's equally polite to say "Hello" and type the question in the same message. Do you genuinely not see how saying "Hello" first, which for many people forces them to lose concentration as they mentally prepare to be asked a question, is worse? The author provides multiple, equally polite examples that respect people's desire to politely greet others and respects the concentration of the receiver.
I think the point is that basic politeness involves not appearances of being polite, but rather thinking of the other person, their time, and how you would feel if the roles were reversed. I do agree though that going as far as to register a domain for this one social quirk is a bit much.
basic politeness involves not appearances of being polite, but rather thinking of the other person
THIS!!!
I have the unfortunate experience of somewhat regularly engaging with people who:
1. Act in a manner / do something they think the other party should appreciate, where
2. The other party does not in fact appreciate this, and is often burdened, bothered, or inconvenienced.
3. When informed of this, the first party both accuses the second that they are ungrateful (for not actually being helped) and controlling (for expressing alternate preferences, including often no assistance).
The cycle can reepeat, over precisely the same exchanges, repeatedly and over long periods.
Small children not knowing better is excusable. Adults not so much.
Kindness and consideration are not forcing your preferences down another's throat (exceptions for specific therapeutic expertise and treatment), but in offering to someone that which they express a preference for or interest in. So long as this isn't actively acutely harmful, one should oblige, aand graciously.
Keep in mind that "where the roles reversed" may not be a reliable guide. It's not what you would want, but what they prefer.
politeness is also not wasting their time for the same reason. If you aren't there or aren't willing to respond, why make them type a huge question before they can learn that?
It's not more polite to wait for the other person to go through a hi-hi handshake process to make sure you have their full attention before just asking your question in async communication.
If anything, people are trying to port their face to face comforts to digital async communication where it doesn't make sense and has the opposite effect.
Though I'd argue that the "how are you" frivolity that nobody takes serious doesn't make much sense face to face either. So it's only doubly unnecessary when you make someone go through that in a work Slack setting before they can unlock when you're actually pinging them about.
It's quite impolite once you think about it. Respect other people's time and get on with it. Every time you ping someone, realize you may be interrupting them, so get to the point in as few pings as possible.
You call it insane, but it's actually common sense once you think about it.
You can add the niceties all in the same message, as the website describes. The initial message can contain the greeting, the hedging about not wanting to bother someone, and also the specific question and details, and any other needed information (error message, traceback, whatever). So much time is saved by just including it all in one message, separated with newlines where needed.
It can definitely be annoying because sometimes the latency is long. For example, I may be in another window and not see the "hey" right away. When I reply, I may wait half an hour for the person to explain why they messaged me, but I won't know how long I'll wait when sending my reply. I don't think it's a problem if someone says hi, then immediately types their question. But if they wait for an ack it can be kinda silly.
I always assume its because the person wants to make sure you are there before they bother to type the question. If not they will work it out themselves.
Yeah, I have a co-worker notorious about this. I just quit answering until he writes something amounting to a statement. It's annoying to keep clicking away from a problem for niceties, especially when it's every...single..day.
i think it would be reasonable to just guide him to say "hey, you often just start off these online messages with 'hi.' can you just get to the point first?"
Oh, I have...but more gently. His reply is that he prefers to engage in conversation than just receive a reply.
I do understand that point, but also that it's a bit selfish.
Part of the 'hello' problem is to get around the lack of context about what the other person is doing - particularly about who else might see their screen at that time. I still prefer just asking the question but that was the reason some others gave when I asked why they did the 'hello's.
- Have clear questions that are easy to jump back and respond to. Have them separated out by spacing, and preferably numbered.
- If there's something I need to copy paste, an email address, a specific id, a phone number, then put it on it's own line. Then I can double click and get the whole thing rather then dragging the cursor to do it.
The very first thing you should type after your initial greeting should be your question(s). Don't bury the lede.
You can provide all the additional explanation (i.e. what you were doing when it broke, where you've looked, what you've tried, etc) after you ask your questions. By asking up front, you frame the conversation so that the person you are communicating with can read your supporting information with the correct context.
XY Problem is worth keeping in mind too. It's covered in your link under another name but is probably one of the main problems I get with questions from people.
When I got there I scrolled down to read then when done I expected one click to return to HN. Actual result was each click of back going back to a previous point in the doc (maybe based on my scroll position¿) after 7-8 I was back to the top then to HN.
This is good advice, for the people who tends to ask to ask, or surround their questions with bunch of fluff.
On the other hand, is you, the question-receiver. The example starts with "CO-WORKER WAITS WHILE YOU PHRASE YOUR QUESTION" but that's not how I usually deal with these types of conversations.
If someone just writes "Hi" to me without something else and I'm busy, I won't reply until there is more messages, and instead continue with my work.
Although, ideally there would be no "Hi" messages. But, not everything goes as we want it to.
The other thing that gets my goat is the person that sends every line. I guess it’s hard not to do in slack since “enter” sends, but I really wish slack would debounce messages notifications from the same person.
I feel like at this point anyone using Slack should know to shift-enter to add a newline without sending. I don't understand why people still have a problem with that.
I usually go for a combined approach: pre-type my long question in Notepad++, then post a polite "hello" immediately followed by another message with the actual question. So it's both polite and considerate.
It has a bonus point of not losing what you typed in case the chat window bugs out.
There’s a lot of etiquette we can use to improve chat. Another one is phrasing questions in a “search friendly” way, using log names and error strings.
How does having to enter the same account information twice in the same session prevent unauthorized access? If an unauthorized person knows my account number, they can easily enter it twice.
And if the account number doesn't exist or doesn't match the name, they know immediately that one or the other was mis-entered.
Automated dial/entry, handoff to an operator, especially in high-volume attacks. Verbal repetition requires greater process coordination by the attacker.
Cues such as hesitation, discomfort, etc., may also be present.
The far more prevalent case is likely simply to guard against mis-keyed digits.
Similarly in heathcare, virtually every caregiver handoff involves asking for name and DoB. For the caregiver this helps confirm they are (literally) on the right page (patient record). Patients may see this as tedious.
>>Verbal repetition requires greater process coordination by the attacker. Cues such as hesitation, discomfort, etc., may also be present.
Actually no... The most effective Social Engineering attacks are ones with simulated chaos going on in the call, and simulated high emotions by the caller..
There is no evidence or actual theory making a person repeat the same number over and over again does anything about annoy legit callers
This sounds very much like security policy created in the same manner of "everyone must change their passwords every 30 days" which we know now makes things LESS secure not more.
>>The far more prevalent case is likely simply to guard against mis-keyed digits.
Again your data input validation should be taking care of that before you ever reach the agent in the first place
The most stressful version of this for me is when someone sidles up to you on chat and asks "is X working?" or "is Y supposed to do Z?"
Like, if you're saying it's not working: say that. If you're saying it's not doing what you expect: say that. It's the QA version of "we have to talk" and I'm instantly anxious until you clarify.
We work in an open space and people usually ask to make sure they arent the crazy one. It can go either direction: we had to do that cause x, or yeah thats not how its supposed to work... Followed by... Well its how it works for now cause of this and this... Along with everyone agreeing its wrong. They arent trying to mess with you just confirm intended behavior.
In-person I almost universally heard stuff like "is anyone else having problems with X? the site won't load for me" and that second part is crucial.
In chat, something like 1/4-1/2 are "is X working?" followed by total silence. Sometimes they really are just asking if it's running, i.e. does X still exist. Sometimes they're having a failed build on a different system because their dependency manager cache is broken and it's blaming random libraries. Sometimes the frontend is busted.
What they're doing in practice is asking for 1:1 dedicated help on literally anything, so the only reasonable choice for a responder is those unicorn devs who know everything somehow. They almost never exist, so those "questions" go unanswered for a long time.
Thats usually who I try to be but I have been burned by it cause I didnt mention why I was falling behind at two former jobs. It did cost me a job cause of that plus the fact they were over engineering what would of been a few months into a few years effort just to be bleeding edge.
It sucks how some environments are worse than others. I think the biggest quality for software developers is humility. Without humility you could end up with some nasty devs. I have worked with people who get personallu attached to their code being quality but they dont follow project protocol or write hacky code.
I dunno it's definitely happened to me before that the company's git repo was only down for me, or whatever. Networking is weird, so it's good to confirm that others are having the same issue.
Lots of folks will guard against strong assertions like that out of habit, especially if it's not their area of expertise. They're leaving open the possibility that they could be wrong.
This sounds pretty similar to the "askers vs guessers" cultural difference. If it's okay to receive a 'no', then you're free to ask whatever. If you're expected to know before you ask, then you can't ask until you know what the answer will be.
But, yes, it's valuable if someone is asking can clarify "here's what I tried..".
220 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 222 ms ] threadWould you think it was rude if you saw this link as somebody’s status message?
Nowadays I’m just a stochastic replier.
Most (not all) tech that tries to “fix” communication in the office suffers from this problem though so I’m not blaming Slack alone for this. It just is what it is.
Because you see I had the palm tree emoji. AND a bit of text. Still got PMs and calls.
The emoji didn’t seem to matter.
Also I sent a college a message while he was on holiday knowingly so that he can see and may reply if he wants to when he comes back.
If you are on holiday (palm emoji) you are free to not pick up any calls and messages, until an unless you job is life critical and requires you to respond immediately at any hour.
It does give me a good chuckle to think how annoyed someone must have been to have made this site in the first place :)
Absolutely not; clearly communicating expectations makes life easier for everyone, which is (much of) what politeness is supposed to be about in the first place. The only possible suggestion I have is inlining a 1-sentence summary.
E.g. I would prefer if you said "I don't mean to be rude, but in my honest opinion you're looking kind of shabby these days" rather than "You're ugly" (statements exaggerated for emphasis).
I think this matters less in the context of the original thread (the "hello" back-and-forth).
I would be inclined to think it odd if I saw just one person with that status. When I saw every other person using it, it became less off-putting to me.
https://github.com/reactiflux/reactibot/blob/a4e4e9d211a11c4...
"You just did."
"May I ask another?"
"You just did."
"You are allowed 3 questions and you just used them."
Close friends get a pass because their "hello" might just in some cases mean "hey I'm lonely and want someone to talk to".
1. Open the chat window, and type your question with no "hello". Do not press enter. 2. Instead, press Ctrl-A and then Ctrl-X to cut your question out of the chat window and into your clipboard. 3. type and send "hello" 4. Pause 2-5 seconds 5. Ctrl-P and enter to send your full question.
Type hello, shift-enter-shift-enter, type your message, enter.
You'll get a response much faster.
I'll often do something like
Hi <name>, <insert question>
It's equally polite to say "Hello" and type the question in the same message. Do you genuinely not see how saying "Hello" first, which for many people forces them to lose concentration as they mentally prepare to be asked a question, is worse? The author provides multiple, equally polite examples that respect people's desire to politely greet others and respects the concentration of the receiver.
THIS!!!
I have the unfortunate experience of somewhat regularly engaging with people who:
1. Act in a manner / do something they think the other party should appreciate, where
2. The other party does not in fact appreciate this, and is often burdened, bothered, or inconvenienced.
3. When informed of this, the first party both accuses the second that they are ungrateful (for not actually being helped) and controlling (for expressing alternate preferences, including often no assistance).
The cycle can reepeat, over precisely the same exchanges, repeatedly and over long periods.
Small children not knowing better is excusable. Adults not so much.
Kindness and consideration are not forcing your preferences down another's throat (exceptions for specific therapeutic expertise and treatment), but in offering to someone that which they express a preference for or interest in. So long as this isn't actively acutely harmful, one should oblige, aand graciously.
Keep in mind that "where the roles reversed" may not be a reliable guide. It's not what you would want, but what they prefer.
This lesson seems poorly assimilated by many.
For texting, requesting someone's attention and then wasting their time is rude. Get to the point quicker.
Good: Hello, can you help me with <<<explain the problem or request>>>
Bad: Hello.. <<wait for response>>
Chat is more like email, less like phone call treat it as such
If anything, people are trying to port their face to face comforts to digital async communication where it doesn't make sense and has the opposite effect.
Though I'd argue that the "how are you" frivolity that nobody takes serious doesn't make much sense face to face either. So it's only doubly unnecessary when you make someone go through that in a work Slack setting before they can unlock when you're actually pinging them about.
It's quite impolite once you think about it. Respect other people's time and get on with it. Every time you ping someone, realize you may be interrupting them, so get to the point in as few pings as possible.
You call it insane, but it's actually common sense once you think about it.
Never respond to hi. :)
I don't want to risk someone interrupting my chain of thought with some request that I can't / don't want to act on.
But if I respond to a "Hi" and then decide that I don't want to deal with the actual question, that's perceived as rude.
If you ask the question straight out, then I can decide to respond or not.
- Use spacing to make your message easy to parse.
- Have clear questions that are easy to jump back and respond to. Have them separated out by spacing, and preferably numbered.
- If there's something I need to copy paste, an email address, a specific id, a phone number, then put it on it's own line. Then I can double click and get the whole thing rather then dragging the cursor to do it.
The very first thing you should type after your initial greeting should be your question(s). Don't bury the lede.
You can provide all the additional explanation (i.e. what you were doing when it broke, where you've looked, what you've tried, etc) after you ask your questions. By asking up front, you frame the conversation so that the person you are communicating with can read your supporting information with the correct context.
http://xyproblem.info/
On the other hand, is you, the question-receiver. The example starts with "CO-WORKER WAITS WHILE YOU PHRASE YOUR QUESTION" but that's not how I usually deal with these types of conversations.
If someone just writes "Hi" to me without something else and I'm busy, I won't reply until there is more messages, and instead continue with my work.
Although, ideally there would be no "Hi" messages. But, not everything goes as we want it to.
It has a bonus point of not losing what you typed in case the chat window bugs out.
Typical scenario:
Manager: hey
<an hour or so may go by>
Me: what's up?
Manager: nvm
Using chat for support. The first thing it asks is "Please explain why you need assistance"...
I fill it in with all the pertinent details...
Then, when the support person finally comes online their first or second message is: ...and how may I help you today?
Why the hell did I just spend the time to type that in to my phone if I know have to type it again for you.....
And if the account number doesn't exist or doesn't match the name, they know immediately that one or the other was mis-entered.
Cues such as hesitation, discomfort, etc., may also be present.
The far more prevalent case is likely simply to guard against mis-keyed digits.
Similarly in heathcare, virtually every caregiver handoff involves asking for name and DoB. For the caregiver this helps confirm they are (literally) on the right page (patient record). Patients may see this as tedious.
Actually no... The most effective Social Engineering attacks are ones with simulated chaos going on in the call, and simulated high emotions by the caller..
There is no evidence or actual theory making a person repeat the same number over and over again does anything about annoy legit callers
This sounds very much like security policy created in the same manner of "everyone must change their passwords every 30 days" which we know now makes things LESS secure not more.
>>The far more prevalent case is likely simply to guard against mis-keyed digits.
Again your data input validation should be taking care of that before you ever reach the agent in the first place
Other points taken.
>confirm information accuracy, no mis-entered information,
There are a ton of better ways to do this...
>or unauthorised access attempt.
making me retype the same info in the same session is in no way a security enhancement..
Though given the state of infosec at most of these companies I would not be shocked if they think it was
Like, if you're saying it's not working: say that. If you're saying it's not doing what you expect: say that. It's the QA version of "we have to talk" and I'm instantly anxious until you clarify.
In chat, something like 1/4-1/2 are "is X working?" followed by total silence. Sometimes they really are just asking if it's running, i.e. does X still exist. Sometimes they're having a failed build on a different system because their dependency manager cache is broken and it's blaming random libraries. Sometimes the frontend is busted.
What they're doing in practice is asking for 1:1 dedicated help on literally anything, so the only reasonable choice for a responder is those unicorn devs who know everything somehow. They almost never exist, so those "questions" go unanswered for a long time.
It sucks how some environments are worse than others. I think the biggest quality for software developers is humility. Without humility you could end up with some nasty devs. I have worked with people who get personallu attached to their code being quality but they dont follow project protocol or write hacky code.
This sounds pretty similar to the "askers vs guessers" cultural difference. If it's okay to receive a 'no', then you're free to ask whatever. If you're expected to know before you ask, then you can't ask until you know what the answer will be.
But, yes, it's valuable if someone is asking can clarify "here's what I tried..".