I originally wrote this text on an internal wiki page at Google. It was short-linked to "go/nohello" and sparked a fair bit of discussion, including another page with exactly the opposite viewpoint. I have no idea who Brandon High is, but he must have copied it from inside Google and posted it publicly.
Seems like a problem that a scriptable chat client should solve: if it's the first message in a long time and it's short, debounce notifications for 30sec~1min.
Not a silver bullet but it might solve it in many cases
I kind of disagree with this. If you post your problem to someone without asking if they have the time, it interrupts their flow to a much greater degree, because it's simply not possible to read that question without your mind engaging with it.
Posting just "Hey" is kind of dumb, but starting with "Hey, do you have a minute? I have an issue" is fine. It's easy to respond to with "no, sorry" and keep working.
I just put my Skype on "do not disturb". No notifications, no sounds, just pipes all messages to my email where I'll see them when I want interruption.
So this is one way to do it. But it has its downsides too [and thus I find the webpage slightly pedantic for ignoring the tradeoffs]. I think the "Hello" is like "Syn." Cases where you may want to use hello are
1. You need an immediate response, if they are afk then you don't want to ask them the question at all because you'll ask somebody else.
2. You want to signal that you'd like to talk to them when they're free, but that your message is low priority. Generally I'd take a "hey" off-hours to mean "don't answer this unless you're on slack at your computer. Pong me back when you're in the office"
3. Some people care more about the communication being natural and human interaction than they do responding to the maximal number of things in a day. If we have to sacrifice our ability to enjoy our intercations with other people for our job, I'd ask that we don't sacrifice without a fight.
For 1, I'd rather just go ahead and ask, and if no response is forthcoming, ask someone else and then respond to the original with 'no worries, found out from ...'
If it bugs you just don't respond to the hello. If someone complains just say you were waiting for the actual content (no one just says hello on chat for no reason). You assumed that the hello was just to warn you that something longer was being typed and that you shouldn't immediately leave.
The nice feature of this approach is that you can immediately leave if you know that you really don't want to deal with whatever it is that is coming and can legitimately say you never saw it.
Yup. I ignore a lot of "hey"s, if you respond then it just incentivizes more later. No one has complained but I'd just complain back about their inefficiency. If it's an emergency, they can call me twice.
While I question the need to make this an entire website. I completely agree.
I have people who do that all the time on Skype. Say hello first then I need to say hi back and wait for them to actually ask their question. It is such an absurd waste of time.
Just include your question in your first message! Please.
I've personally found that I get much better results when I say hello first, as opposed to including everything in a single message.
My hypothesis: When you ask someone a full detailed question, the other person sees the whole thing at once, as one big daunting block of text, and they decide to ignore it for a while. Conversely, when you message someone saying "hi", it builds suspense. They start to wonder what you're going to message them about. They pause what they were doing for the few seconds while waiting for you to type out your full comment. Often times, they even reply saying something like "hello" or "what's up". All this increases their buy-in into the conversation, and makes them feel more invested. As a result, when they finally get your actual question 20 seconds later, they are a lot more willing to reply immediately.
Is it time inefficient for the other person to have to sit around for 20 seconds while you're typing in your actual question? Yes, sorry for wasting 20 seconds of your time. But that's a trivial tradeoff in comparison to me getting the information I need so I can be unblocked and productive.
If and when people start to reply promptly to messages, I'd be perfectly willing to stop using these tricks and hacks. But until then... hi.
But writing a daunting block of text will often take more than 20 seconds. What you wrote comes off as an incredibly self-centred point of view.
If you're writing big paragraphs right off the bat, then perhaps you need to think about what your typing and refine things a bit more before you break someone's attention from what they are doing.
As Mark Twain wrote, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” You shouldn't do this, even with instant messaging.
> If and when people start to reply promptly to messages…
And there's that air of entitlement again. There seems to be two wrong assumptions: First, that everyone is in front of their instant message client all the time; and second, that they're that invested in dropping everything they are doing to sink ten or twenty minutes of chat messages back and forth with you.
It sounds like you are talking about customer support chat. The "hello" problem this article talks about is more relevant to chats between coworkers or friends.
Other user types any of the common greetings alone (hi/hello/hey)
Client responds with: "this is an automated response - your greeting has been blocked until you provide a more meaningful reply"
Then filter out some rude/idiotic replies and keep filtering until the response's entropy is above a threshold and the sentence has some basic structure or presence of a couple of POS (eg a verb and noun)
This reminds me of a little anecdote. My colleagues in the office all used Skype, which was particularly handy for me as I was the only person who worked remotely (about half the time).
However, I always had the habit, when in the office, to eschew Skype and go see a person directly. It had the advantage of higher fidelity communication, and about half the time I'd figure out the answer to my own question before I got there.
After a while, I started turning Skype off when I was in the office (remember there were no other remotes at this time). This actually became an annoyance to one of my colleagues as they would have to, get this, walk across the hall if they wanted to talk to me. My ill concealed amusement at their ire did not go over well.
In person, face to face: the original instant messaging.
I see the logic here, though I would forgive people who didn't grow up on the internet for treating chat like real life (where no-one says "hello" without a moment's pause after). I think people are slowly catching on that they can do what the post describes
Absolutely DO say hello (or whatever intro, like a firstname) and DO wait for the other party to respond.
Why? Because I would hate to get "update: our quaterely results will be bad, we expect a 20% loss on our shares" popping up during a meeting just because I forgot to switch off the messaging app on my desktop.
I may be someone who is expected to see that but possibly not the other 20 participants.
A "ready for lunch?" can work without an introduction, though.
[+] [-] dfboyd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parent5446|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kartan|8 years ago|reply
2010-07-19 12:00:30 me: Hello
2010-07-19 12:10:00 co-worker: I have a question about Facebook. Are you the right person to ask?
2010-07-19 12:10:25 me: May be. What's your question?
2010-07-19 12:20:25 co-worker: I want to know ...
2010-07-19 12:21:10 me: No, sorry. For that, you need to contact ...
Fast version:
2010-07-19 12:00:00 co-worker: Hi. I don't know if you are the right question, I want to know ...
2010-07-19 12:01:10 me: Hello. No, sorry. For that, you need to contact ...
[+] [-] pvinis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juancampa|8 years ago|reply
Not a silver bullet but it might solve it in many cases
It reminds me of my old mIRC scripting days
[+] [-] nmstoker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hprotagonist|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanp2k2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strictnein|8 years ago|reply
Posting just "Hey" is kind of dumb, but starting with "Hey, do you have a minute? I have an issue" is fine. It's easy to respond to with "no, sorry" and keep working.
[+] [-] mgberlin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gdubs|8 years ago|reply
Except a lot of people are going to read that and then wonder – for what feels like an eternity – what's the 'issue' and how serious is it?
[+] [-] dingo_bat|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexandercrohde|8 years ago|reply
1. You need an immediate response, if they are afk then you don't want to ask them the question at all because you'll ask somebody else.
2. You want to signal that you'd like to talk to them when they're free, but that your message is low priority. Generally I'd take a "hey" off-hours to mean "don't answer this unless you're on slack at your computer. Pong me back when you're in the office"
3. Some people care more about the communication being natural and human interaction than they do responding to the maximal number of things in a day. If we have to sacrifice our ability to enjoy our intercations with other people for our job, I'd ask that we don't sacrifice without a fight.
[+] [-] sebbean|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] infinite8s|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] upofadown|8 years ago|reply
The nice feature of this approach is that you can immediately leave if you know that you really don't want to deal with whatever it is that is coming and can legitimately say you never saw it.
[+] [-] Jach|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway2016a|8 years ago|reply
I have people who do that all the time on Skype. Say hello first then I need to say hi back and wait for them to actually ask their question. It is such an absurd waste of time.
Just include your question in your first message! Please.
[+] [-] whack|8 years ago|reply
My hypothesis: When you ask someone a full detailed question, the other person sees the whole thing at once, as one big daunting block of text, and they decide to ignore it for a while. Conversely, when you message someone saying "hi", it builds suspense. They start to wonder what you're going to message them about. They pause what they were doing for the few seconds while waiting for you to type out your full comment. Often times, they even reply saying something like "hello" or "what's up". All this increases their buy-in into the conversation, and makes them feel more invested. As a result, when they finally get your actual question 20 seconds later, they are a lot more willing to reply immediately.
Is it time inefficient for the other person to have to sit around for 20 seconds while you're typing in your actual question? Yes, sorry for wasting 20 seconds of your time. But that's a trivial tradeoff in comparison to me getting the information I need so I can be unblocked and productive.
If and when people start to reply promptly to messages, I'd be perfectly willing to stop using these tricks and hacks. But until then... hi.
[+] [-] anotherevan|8 years ago|reply
If you're writing big paragraphs right off the bat, then perhaps you need to think about what your typing and refine things a bit more before you break someone's attention from what they are doing.
As Mark Twain wrote, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” You shouldn't do this, even with instant messaging.
> If and when people start to reply promptly to messages…
And there's that air of entitlement again. There seems to be two wrong assumptions: First, that everyone is in front of their instant message client all the time; and second, that they're that invested in dropping everything they are doing to sink ten or twenty minutes of chat messages back and forth with you.
[+] [-] rbinv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelDickens|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nmstoker|8 years ago|reply
Other user types any of the common greetings alone (hi/hello/hey)
Client responds with: "this is an automated response - your greeting has been blocked until you provide a more meaningful reply"
Then filter out some rude/idiotic replies and keep filtering until the response's entropy is above a threshold and the sentence has some basic structure or presence of a couple of POS (eg a verb and noun)
[+] [-] juancampa|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cerium|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ndr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lgas|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anotherevan|8 years ago|reply
However, I always had the habit, when in the office, to eschew Skype and go see a person directly. It had the advantage of higher fidelity communication, and about half the time I'd figure out the answer to my own question before I got there.
After a while, I started turning Skype off when I was in the office (remember there were no other remotes at this time). This actually became an annoyance to one of my colleagues as they would have to, get this, walk across the hall if they wanted to talk to me. My ill concealed amusement at their ire did not go over well.
In person, face to face: the original instant messaging.
[+] [-] nsaslideface|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Axsuul|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sebbean|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BrandoElFollito|8 years ago|reply
Why? Because I would hate to get "update: our quaterely results will be bad, we expect a 20% loss on our shares" popping up during a meeting just because I forgot to switch off the messaging app on my desktop.
I may be someone who is expected to see that but possibly not the other 20 participants.
A "ready for lunch?" can work without an introduction, though.
[+] [-] seattle_spring|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sebbean|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] axiom92|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juanpotato|8 years ago|reply