> It's as if you called someone on the phone and said "Hi!" and then put them on hold!
Typically you both say a greeting then a conversation starts.
> Instead of being polite, you are just making the other person wait for you to phrase your question, which is lost productivity.
Please don't count every second of your life in productivity lost to someone else.
The root of the problem might be frustration with not getting something done, and that needs your reflection.
Or just wake up 3 seconds earlier, and if worried about lost sleep, get to sleep 3 seconds earlier or in the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger "sleep faster."
The difference is absolutely not 3 seconds. That's just the lower bound.
In the case that both people are present and available in the chat at the same time, sure, it's 3 seconds. If not, that extra "hi" can add latency of hours or more. Days if schedules and availability line up badly enough.
In the delay introduced by "hi", you've created uncertainty and ambiguity for your counterpart. They have no idea whether your "hi" is the prelude to something trivial, or something important, or whether it might might be relevant to work they were about to start.
"Asking to ask" is far from the biggest communication issue in the workplace, but it is bad etiquette and a very easy behavior to correct - so why not just make the barest effort to adjust the way you communicate to better fit the medium? Save the "Hi"s and "How are you"s for synchronous communication like calls or meetings. Chat has a different set of pleasantries.
My sister has this annoying behaviour on chats, she will send a "hi, how are you?" and wait for a reply to then proceed with the conversation. I don't reply messages promptly, usually leave it to be replied when I have idle time to get in the context of it, it's not a productivity thing but just something that eases me.
Sometimes it will go days with just that message lingering "hi, how are you?" until I reply to then after a few hours/a day I finally get what she wanted to ask. It's just annoying, I've told her I much rather receive a "hey, how are you? I need some help with X" or whatever else it is the conversation to be. It's just easier and effective async communication (we live in different timezones).
It doesn’t take the sender any more time to write “hi”<soft return>”my question is: xyz”.
Maybe the soft return is the key here. When I ask a question via slack it’s a single carefully formatted message, while my most irritating correspondents send multiple messages to convey a single question.
Oh, and don’t paste 80k log files in a message. make it easy for me to respond
No. I need to prioritize every task I do. If you just say "hi", I am unable to determine whether your inquiry is high or low priority for me. State immediately what you want from me. Then explain afterwards.
> It's as if you called someone on the phone and said "Hi!" and then put them on hold!
I called an australian government phone line recently, i was queued, then informed i could press 1 to register for a callback. I pressed 1. Then I was prompted to say my name, I did that. Then I hung up.
Some time later, I was indeed called back - by a robot. The robot greeted me, informed me it was calling back, and requested that I pass the phone to <my name recorded from earlier>. The robot then queued me and prompted me to press 1 when <my name recorded from earlier> was on the line. Since that was me, I pressed 1. After a bit more time being queued, I was transferred to a human operator.
edit: this seems quite bemusing / irritating, but to give the designer of this callback mechanism a little more credit, it was a phone line that businesses would call -- it would not be uncommon for person A to call from a business phone line, with the callback to the company line being answered by some other person B.
If people followed up immediately after they said "Hi", "nohello" would not exist, or it wouldn't be relevant. Saying just hi is a problem because often, people interrupt each other by "hi", followed by several literal minutes of "Typing..." on the bottom of the screen, or nothing at all.
How do you know it takes three seconds for the other party to continue the conversation they started?
It can just as well go like this:
- Bob writes "Hi" and I get a notification
- I enter the chat and wait for Bob
- 30 seconds later the indicator shows he's typing something
- 30 seconds later, still nothing
- 30 seconds later the typing indicator goes away
- I go away. Eventually Bob follows up with the actual content.
That was frustrating for me, not because of some issues I need to work with, but because Bob kept me on hold while he's trying to figure out what to say.
Absolutely - immediately getting upset that folks that didn't spend their teenage years on IRC (I did, but still) don't know the etiquette is just as annoying as not knowing the etiquette.
Honestly, the example given in your first quote is a bad one, because a synchronous medium (like a telephone call) is fundamentally different from an asynchronous one (like a chat—or email).
It's actually much more like sending someone an email that just says, "Hi!"
You'd find that weird and off-putting, wouldn't you? Not putting at least some part of the point of the conversation in the initial email completely violates the expectations for how email works.
Chat works fundamentally the same way. Yes, you can treat it as being synchronous—but until you have established an active synchronous conversation (ie, until you and the other person are clearly online at the same time, talking in real time), proper etiquette should be to treat it as asynchronous, like email, and plan one's opening communications accordingly.
I always say: "They're Instant Messages, not Instant Answers". Your recipient might not be immediately available to interact, so the polite choice is not pressuring them to greet back before you continue.
If you just write “hi” I can’t tell at a glance if this is something I need to respond to as soon as I notice it, or if it can wait a few minutes while I finish something else. I can’t tell if it’ll probably take 20 seconds to sort out, or if I’m likely to be derailed for an hour, which may also affect how and when I respond.
In some types of work, individuals are supposed to do their own time management, and carve out chunks of time for activities that require sustained concentration, and respond appropriately to occasional requests, which are a mixture of low- and high-urgency. For example, someone who needs to read complex academic papers, but occasionally might be interrupted for an urgent production incident. For them, time management is all about avoiding distractions - like synchronous conversations about trivial matters when they're supposed to be working.
Other areas of work have far less need for uninterrupted blocks of time. A manager doesn't just change tasks every hour, they often also respond to e-mails and chat messages during meetings. For them, time management is all about choosing between overlapping meetings, and managing the length of their queue of work by rejecting and delegating tasks. And of course talking to people is the core of their job.
For the former, sending a 'hi' message without the context needed for them to triage it into urgent or non-urgent means they're interrupted twice instead of once - which is pretty inconvenient.
For the latter, though? A dozen interruptions per hour is completely normal, what's the problem?
There is absolutely zero overhead for the person messaging to simply add more context to their opening message regardless of the situation. They're going to have to give the context anyway. If it's an emergency, just say "Hello, there's a fire", if it's informal say "Hello, you heard about Eddy?".
If we stop treating asynchronous communications mechanisms (chat, email, etc.) as synchronous (voice/video calls, face-to-face), the urgency issue goes away for everyone.
Async comms should regularly (and, perhaps, by default) be muted to enhance focus. Let them collect and allow the person to manage their own time. "No hello" allows them to have the question ready for them to address when they process their incoming queues.
Synchronous comms should be used to get immediate attention on an urgent issue that needs to be addressed immediately, or be used for tight, rapid iteration in a discussion (e.g. rapid design discussions). Because it necessarily takes attention away from another task, the activation energy should be higher.
5 points by dfboyd on March 11, 2022 | parent | context | next [–] | on: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)
46 points by dfboyd on Jan 23, 2021 | parent | context | prev | next [–] | on: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
I am the original author of the document this document was based on. It was an internal Wiki page at Google written when I was an SRE. After I wrote the original page, someone put up an internal shortlink at "go/nohello". After I left Google, someone took the Wiki page content and [illegally, since it was Google confidential, simply from being on the internal Wiki], and put it up on the net at "nohello.com".
Even better when it's your superior sending a "Good morning" before proceeding to type something for 15 minutes, putting you into a state of elevated anxiety.
I think it's a South African thing, but just about any call I receive from a number I wouldn't be expected to recognize, be it from cold calling spammers or legit service providers, starts with "Hello, how are you?" to which I respond with "Sorry, do I know you?".
I wish call centres and companies would explain to their agents that it's not like approaching a customer who has walked into a physical shop where the customer already has the context of who they're talking to. Whereas on the phone I have no idea who it is that has called me, it might be an old acquaintance, it might be a call back I'm expecting about something, or might be a cold call that I want to hang up on as soon as possible (which is most of the time).
So legitimate callers would get the friendliest response from me if they simply started the call with "Hello, I'm calling from <place>, regarding <thing>, am I speaking to <your name>?"
In the U.S., the norm is to start with, "Hi, this is <name> with <place>. May I speak to <your name>?" and you're right, it's vastly better! Even when they're lying, at least I know what they're lying about! If they say they're calling about my car warranty or some other common scam, I can just hang up and they won't have a recording of my voice saying anything but hello.
The one that really gets me is when a doctor's office calls me about something, but their outgoing number is different from the number I have to call to reach them, and then they start asking me authenticating questions like my DOB and address.
No, buddy. You just called me from a number I do t recognize. I'm not going to give you identifying information!
Then they offer to give me a number where I can call them back, as though that resolves the issue. I'll call you back at your published number, where I always call you, but any old scammer could give me any old number to call them back and it wouldn't make it legitimate.
I just wish they would stop training all their patients to be scam victims.
By an insincere "how are you" they are extracting information on your current mood to engineer a proper communication protocol that is required to extract as much value for their personal objective as possible. I'm not disagreeing with you, just explaining their motivations to do it.
I'd add: also confirm promptly that you understood the answer and are good.
Sometimes after posting an explanation that has taken you time to think and write, you want to know if the other person understood it and if this is enough, and also if you can go back to your other stuff. Without an acknowledgement, you would likely keep the subject in your head in case the person needs more from you. With a simple "ok", "thanks", or a thumbs up, you can clear your head and go back to other things.
I might sometimes fail on this I think and it's mostly because I have to think a lot or test the solution before I know if I understand it and that it provides enough context.
I often do this and forget to upvote correct SO answers as well. I find a solution, realize that I have to research a bunch of other things, and spawn twenty more tabs and the SO answer gets lost in the pile. What's the point of upvoting SO answers if you haven't been able to confirm that the solution is correct?
I guess I sometimes might do this with chat responses as well. But yeah in that situation something like "Thanks I will try it out!" is probably the appropriate response.
This annoys me, along with people asking about a jira but just sending the number. That means I'll need to copy it and go to my browser to type in the URL and the jira number.
Chances are the colleague was just looking at the jira in their browser, so why wouldn't they copy/paste the link...
I think this is in part people's memory. People will often just mention a ticket by ID and lots of in the people in the room seem to know what they are talking about. I find it nearly impossible to remember associations between "random" numbers so I will always need to build that into a URL and look it up.
But yes, when written please, please, please just use the URL. It is at worst the same if people recognize the number, much easier if not. Plus people can quickly just check it to make sure they remembered correctly. Also shout out to ticketing software that puts the title into the URL so you get the confirmation and reminder without even clicking the link.
GitHub and GitLab are awful here. Their default merge and squash messages reference tickets with stupid short forms like #123 or other/project#123 which aren't clickable except in their web-UI. It feels like a form of lock in. I would much rather that they just put a full URL so that I can click it when reading a Git log.
I've used that page in a retrospective. Didn't said who exactly it was to avoid issues, but I though it was obvious.
It didn't changed anything, I guess it's like others mention, it's something that some people have been done since childhood, and it would be very difficult for them to change that.
I now just simply ignore any "hi" or "hello" message as if I've never received them, and only reply actual questions.
It’s funny because I do hate this behaviour at work. But also my youngest son is always saying “can I tell you something?” instead of just telling me and I find it adorable. Right up until the fifth or sixth repeat at bedtime, at which point the answer becomes “in the morning”. We should try not to begrudge people their human foibles. Your time is precious, but probably not in the ways that you think.
Asking to ask in person is in a different category. You are always immediately present and able to answer.
The whole point of this is that it is being done in an asynchronous medium, where the participants may never actually be online at the same time, but can still communicate just fine.
I have a complicated relationship with this situation. On the one hand, just tell me what you want. On the other hand, if you feel rude go ahead and send me a hello first. But on the other other hand it distracts me until you say what you want. But on the other other other hand if I'm doing something else I shouldn't be stopping to check my chats which are necessarily not urgent. But on the other other other other hand what if it is urgent? So then I check it and it just says "Hello". And I can see them typing so I wait 3 or 4 minutes. And then they stop and the typing bubbles go away, so I go back to what I was doing and then they finally send their question: "How are you?"
If someone says just hello in a chat window I don't respond and if it's someone not in my team and I can I might block them as well. They want something and want to expend the minimum resources on pleasantries to get it. That means they're rude. If you want something get straight to the point or we can have a pleasant chat for hours about the weather and our pets.
If the person trying to communicate with me doesn't understand or isn't aware of the advantages of asynchronous communication, I won't teach them, and I'll communicate as if those advantages don't exist. For example:
I tried to set my status message to something like "Please ask me the question directly", but people didn't like it.
And I hate to have to take my mouse, click on the notification, read "Hello", answer "Hello" and wait 30 seconds watching the "is typing" dots...
I'm thinking of writing a macro (I have many) that answers "Hello" to the last message with a key combination. That way, no interruption if I was typing. A new notification will happen when the actual question arrives.
Maybe an application for an AI chatbot! It can get all the chitchat over for you and only then give a notification when a real question is asked.
A question other than 'Can I ask you a quick question?' God I hate that. You mean two questions, since that was a question already. And why does it always have to be 'quick'? Does no one ever have a meaty question that will take effort to answer?
I know; I'm a crusty old fart. But boy howdy would I use that AI chatbot if it existed.
There was a point this had become so pervasive I set my Slack status to "I am currently busy working on a prioritized issue. Please open a jira and then speak to management if the case is urgent." then moved slack to another workspace and muted sound. That was my form of time management and it worked well for me personally, most of the time. One can always check with their manager if they are cool with this.
I've worked entirely remotely at companies of a variety of sizes since 2017 and didn't know people do this. Who are the people who do this? I don't mean to imply they don't exist. I genuinely want to know who they are. Like is it a generational thing? A role thing? Someone else's thing?
You get some weird shit depending on company cultures.
Tools also affect it. Teams is terrible for “structural”, long-lived team chats (oh, the irony!) like are totally natural in, say, Slack, so tends to push more stuff into meetings and ad-hoc group chats. It’s a really bizarre (and endlessly irritating) design choice. You also can’t “digress” within the same channel like you can in Slack without spamming the main chat.
Worse tools = people use them differently (worse) like calling more and doing more private messaging. Add corporate, division, and individual cultures and preferences, and you can get all kinds of weird stuff going on, including the bare “hello”.
IME, it's partly a generational thing. People who grew up before instant, asynchronous digital communication became common seem more prone to treating chat conversations like a phone call or face-to-face conversation.
But I think a lot of it is also just individual and regional foibles. Some people feel very strongly that a conversation must begin with meaningless pleasantries or it's horrifically rude. Some people feel like it's rude to just ask you a question without first asking if that's OK—even if that's your role.
We could really do with a lot more explicit communication about communication in our culture, corporate and otherwise, setting boundaries and expectations up front.
I much prefer when people acknowledge my availability first. Otherwise, if i am busy or unavailable and they then end up answering their own question, i would be wasting more cognitive effort to answer it than i would than to respond to a "hello".
The whole point if async messaging is that you'll reply when you're available. It's built into the system itself.
There's no reason to add delays on both sides so people can hope they finally overlap and can have a synchronous chat. If that's what you want, just ask for a time for it in the initial message.
More often then not people will eventually type out their question, even if you don't greet them back. I just tune out the bare "hellos" and it turns out fine. It's not a big enough issue to buy a domain over.
The whole pleasantries is a waste of time. In chat, tell me what you need in the first message. At the start of a meeting, get on with an agenda. I don't give a damn how your weekend was or want to discuss it. Get to the point and stop wasting my time. In email, don't tell me you hope you find me well as it is irrelevant and empty. Tell me what you need in the least words possible. In other words, stop with the flaff and get to the point.
I just learned to not care. I say "hi" to notify that I'm there and let them type. When an answer is required from me I pay attention, think and answer. Until then I ignore it.
I found it so much easier for me to learn not to be (too) distracted than to lose my mind trying to educate humanity to adapt to me.
you: Hi
co-worker: Hello.
you: I'm working on [something] and I'm trying to do [etc...]
co-worker: Oh, that's [answer...]
It becomes clearer what is going on here when we compare to the robot-robot conversations from Annalee Newitz's book Autonomous:
The mantis beamed Paladin a hail. Hello. Let’s establish a secure session using the AF protocol.
Hello. I can use AF version 7.6, Paladin replied.
Let’s do it. I’m Fang. We’ll call this session 4788923. Here are my identification credentials. Here comes my data. Join us at 2000.
The initial Hi / Hello exchange establishes a session. Once the session is established, it is possible to begin data transfer at the application layer.
This is a technical problem masquerading as a social problem, which can be addressed by a technical solution.
Instead of expecting colleagues that only support establishing sessions by hello-ing to switch to an alternative protocol, it is possible to support both hello-ers and no-hello-ers by using a similar trick as found in launchd and systemd to reduce startup time by decoupling dependencies between services with a socket. Suppose service A says it depends on service B, and wants to send some data to service B. Instead of blocking service A being started until service B is up, the service manager can allocate a socket, give it to service A and say "here is your connection to service B" and then defer starting service B until service A actually starts trying to communicate using the socket.
Here's how a similar trick can hide the latency of colleagues that only support hello-ing: we offload the responsibility of establishing the chat sessions to a session manager, which is integrated into our chat client. When a colleague requests to begin a session by 'hello!'-ing, this message can be recognized by the session manager as an attempt to establish a session, suppressed and hidden from the user, and the session manager can automatically respond with 'Hi.' to establish the session. colleague is comforted by receiving the 'Hi.' and can trust that a session is established. When colleague begins transmitting data at the application layer, the data can be forwarded to the user as normal and surfaced by the chat program.
Getting upset with people for disturbing your concentration whilst having an IM open is like moving to a house by the airport and complaining about the aircraft noise.
There are great tools on these things that help you prioritize and snooze notifications and ensure yourself some quiet time.
Sending a message in chunks can be reasonable action. I used to work with a guy who needed several notifications to start paying attention. Instead of typing "Mike?" several times afterwards, it made perfect sense to type "Hi" before
It's great to just have URL and when I do get a 'Hi' message I just paste that back exact one back. It might seem passive aggressive but at this point I'm experiencing frustration with the practice -- to the point I'd nearly call it rude as it's just that inconsiderate to say Hi and wait.
Instead of nohello.com, why not just have emailmeinstead.com?</snark>
Everyone has their different communication preferences.
Personally I have never felt like the no-hello thing is worth caring about - its chat, just let it happen. It is not like you are trapped there unable to do anything else waiting for them to type their question. Just ignore it until it is worth responding to and get on with your day?
The other person isn't necessarily waiting for the response. At the least, its a communication that you are about to ask them something, i.e. check back here in the next minute or so while I type out my question.
Also, "Hi" is a good way of finding out if a person is present, sometimes you might ask to call them instead of typing your question.
It also might be the case there are multiple people who can answer the question, so you want send out "hi" to a few of them to see who will respond right now.
If you might ask to call, just ask to call. "Hi! I have a question about X that would be easier to explain on a call. Do you have time to hop on a call for 5 mins?" is a better way to start the conversation by a factor of about 10,000.
You can even send this to 3 or 4 people and let anyone who doesn't respond first say you caught so-and-so first and are good to go now. Or just delete the message.
> At the least, its a communication that you are about to ask them something, i.e. check back here in the next minute or so while I type out my question.
This is part of what makes it such poor etiquette. You've created this ambiguous, open-ended distraction for the other person. You expect them to divert focus away from what they're doing so they can poll the chat channel waiting for you to get your thoughts in order.
At least include some context so they have a better idea of what you're about to ask.
Not a single one of these is a valid reason; they all add a distraction round-trip and getting straight to the point achieves the same outcome without the RTT
As others have said, don't ask to ask. And don't make me have to divide my attention, checking to see or waiting for something you may or may not eventually ask.
throwaway598|1 year ago
Typically you both say a greeting then a conversation starts.
> Instead of being polite, you are just making the other person wait for you to phrase your question, which is lost productivity.
Please don't count every second of your life in productivity lost to someone else.
The root of the problem might be frustration with not getting something done, and that needs your reflection.
Or just wake up 3 seconds earlier, and if worried about lost sleep, get to sleep 3 seconds earlier or in the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger "sleep faster."
CipherThrowaway|1 year ago
In the case that both people are present and available in the chat at the same time, sure, it's 3 seconds. If not, that extra "hi" can add latency of hours or more. Days if schedules and availability line up badly enough.
In the delay introduced by "hi", you've created uncertainty and ambiguity for your counterpart. They have no idea whether your "hi" is the prelude to something trivial, or something important, or whether it might might be relevant to work they were about to start.
"Asking to ask" is far from the biggest communication issue in the workplace, but it is bad etiquette and a very easy behavior to correct - so why not just make the barest effort to adjust the way you communicate to better fit the medium? Save the "Hi"s and "How are you"s for synchronous communication like calls or meetings. Chat has a different set of pleasantries.
piva00|1 year ago
Sometimes it will go days with just that message lingering "hi, how are you?" until I reply to then after a few hours/a day I finally get what she wanted to ask. It's just annoying, I've told her I much rather receive a "hey, how are you? I need some help with X" or whatever else it is the conversation to be. It's just easier and effective async communication (we live in different timezones).
sturza|1 year ago
cancerhacker|1 year ago
Maybe the soft return is the key here. When I ask a question via slack it’s a single carefully formatted message, while my most irritating correspondents send multiple messages to convey a single question.
Oh, and don’t paste 80k log files in a message. make it easy for me to respond
larschdk|1 year ago
shoo|1 year ago
I called an australian government phone line recently, i was queued, then informed i could press 1 to register for a callback. I pressed 1. Then I was prompted to say my name, I did that. Then I hung up.
Some time later, I was indeed called back - by a robot. The robot greeted me, informed me it was calling back, and requested that I pass the phone to <my name recorded from earlier>. The robot then queued me and prompted me to press 1 when <my name recorded from earlier> was on the line. Since that was me, I pressed 1. After a bit more time being queued, I was transferred to a human operator.
edit: this seems quite bemusing / irritating, but to give the designer of this callback mechanism a little more credit, it was a phone line that businesses would call -- it would not be uncommon for person A to call from a business phone line, with the callback to the company line being answered by some other person B.
npteljes|1 year ago
pavlov|1 year ago
It can just as well go like this:
- Bob writes "Hi" and I get a notification
- I enter the chat and wait for Bob
- 30 seconds later the indicator shows he's typing something
- 30 seconds later, still nothing
- 30 seconds later the typing indicator goes away
- I go away. Eventually Bob follows up with the actual content.
That was frustrating for me, not because of some issues I need to work with, but because Bob kept me on hold while he's trying to figure out what to say.
rozenmd|1 year ago
danaris|1 year ago
It's actually much more like sending someone an email that just says, "Hi!"
You'd find that weird and off-putting, wouldn't you? Not putting at least some part of the point of the conversation in the initial email completely violates the expectations for how email works.
Chat works fundamentally the same way. Yes, you can treat it as being synchronous—but until you have established an active synchronous conversation (ie, until you and the other person are clearly online at the same time, talking in real time), proper etiquette should be to treat it as asynchronous, like email, and plan one's opening communications accordingly.
ASalazarMX|1 year ago
vundercind|1 year ago
That’s why it’s a shitty thing to do.
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
reg_dunlop|1 year ago
Are you ok with not having the conversation?
michaelt|1 year ago
In some types of work, individuals are supposed to do their own time management, and carve out chunks of time for activities that require sustained concentration, and respond appropriately to occasional requests, which are a mixture of low- and high-urgency. For example, someone who needs to read complex academic papers, but occasionally might be interrupted for an urgent production incident. For them, time management is all about avoiding distractions - like synchronous conversations about trivial matters when they're supposed to be working.
Other areas of work have far less need for uninterrupted blocks of time. A manager doesn't just change tasks every hour, they often also respond to e-mails and chat messages during meetings. For them, time management is all about choosing between overlapping meetings, and managing the length of their queue of work by rejecting and delegating tasks. And of course talking to people is the core of their job.
For the former, sending a 'hi' message without the context needed for them to triage it into urgent or non-urgent means they're interrupted twice instead of once - which is pretty inconvenient.
For the latter, though? A dozen interruptions per hour is completely normal, what's the problem?
protl|1 year ago
placatedmayhem|1 year ago
Async comms should regularly (and, perhaps, by default) be muted to enhance focus. Let them collect and allow the person to manage their own time. "No hello" allows them to have the question ready for them to address when they process their incoming queues.
Synchronous comms should be used to get immediate attention on an urgent issue that needs to be addressed immediately, or be used for tight, rapid iteration in a discussion (e.g. rapid design discussions). Because it necessarily takes attention away from another task, the activation energy should be higher.
yjftsjthsd-h|1 year ago
It's still needless overhead. Just because interruption 13 is proportionally less painful doesn't make it free.
blueappconfig|1 year ago
Me: "Hello!"
Colleague: "Do you have time?"
Me: "Okay"
User is calling
sigh - Picks up
Me: "Hello?"
Colleague: "wait i need to get my headset"
Me: "Okay..."
Colleague: "Do you know about **"
Me: "Hmm, sort of but i need to look into it. i will get back to you"
spend 20 minutes figuring it out
Me writing in chat: "Okay think i know the answer now: **"
Colleague: "You dont need to look into it. Its working now."
dfboyd|1 year ago
46 points by dfboyd on Jan 23, 2021 | parent | context | prev | next [–] | on: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013) I am the original author of the document this document was based on. It was an internal Wiki page at Google written when I was an SRE. After I wrote the original page, someone put up an internal shortlink at "go/nohello". After I left Google, someone took the Wiki page content and [illegally, since it was Google confidential, simply from being on the internal Wiki], and put it up on the net at "nohello.com".
negus|1 year ago
lijok|1 year ago
endre|1 year ago
jonathanlydall|1 year ago
I wish call centres and companies would explain to their agents that it's not like approaching a customer who has walked into a physical shop where the customer already has the context of who they're talking to. Whereas on the phone I have no idea who it is that has called me, it might be an old acquaintance, it might be a call back I'm expecting about something, or might be a cold call that I want to hang up on as soon as possible (which is most of the time).
So legitimate callers would get the friendliest response from me if they simply started the call with "Hello, I'm calling from <place>, regarding <thing>, am I speaking to <your name>?"
smeej|1 year ago
The one that really gets me is when a doctor's office calls me about something, but their outgoing number is different from the number I have to call to reach them, and then they start asking me authenticating questions like my DOB and address.
No, buddy. You just called me from a number I do t recognize. I'm not going to give you identifying information!
Then they offer to give me a number where I can call them back, as though that resolves the issue. I'll call you back at your published number, where I always call you, but any old scammer could give me any old number to call them back and it wouldn't make it legitimate.
I just wish they would stop training all their patients to be scam victims.
reportgunner|1 year ago
gregoriol|1 year ago
Sometimes after posting an explanation that has taken you time to think and write, you want to know if the other person understood it and if this is enough, and also if you can go back to your other stuff. Without an acknowledgement, you would likely keep the subject in your head in case the person needs more from you. With a simple "ok", "thanks", or a thumbs up, you can clear your head and go back to other things.
worldsayshi|1 year ago
I often do this and forget to upvote correct SO answers as well. I find a solution, realize that I have to research a bunch of other things, and spawn twenty more tabs and the SO answer gets lost in the pile. What's the point of upvoting SO answers if you haven't been able to confirm that the solution is correct?
I guess I sometimes might do this with chat responses as well. But yeah in that situation something like "Thanks I will try it out!" is probably the appropriate response.
brisketbbq|1 year ago
Chances are the colleague was just looking at the jira in their browser, so why wouldn't they copy/paste the link...
kevincox|1 year ago
But yes, when written please, please, please just use the URL. It is at worst the same if people recognize the number, much easier if not. Plus people can quickly just check it to make sure they remembered correctly. Also shout out to ticketing software that puts the title into the URL so you get the confirmation and reminder without even clicking the link.
GitHub and GitLab are awful here. Their default merge and squash messages reference tickets with stupid short forms like #123 or other/project#123 which aren't clickable except in their web-UI. It feels like a form of lock in. I would much rather that they just put a full URL so that I can click it when reading a Git log.
conor-|1 year ago
Do that enough times and eventually people start to get the hint.
TrianguloY|1 year ago
It didn't changed anything, I guess it's like others mention, it's something that some people have been done since childhood, and it would be very difficult for them to change that.
I now just simply ignore any "hi" or "hello" message as if I've never received them, and only reply actual questions.
To each their own.
thom|1 year ago
danaris|1 year ago
The whole point of this is that it is being done in an asynchronous medium, where the participants may never actually be online at the same time, but can still communicate just fine.
foinker|1 year ago
Efimeridopolis|1 year ago
nuc1e0n|1 year ago
swaptr|1 year ago
alexpc201|1 year ago
- Hi
- Hi
- Do you know what time it is?
- Yes
- Can you tell me?
- Yes
And so on ad infinitum.
jpl56|1 year ago
And I hate to have to take my mouse, click on the notification, read "Hello", answer "Hello" and wait 30 seconds watching the "is typing" dots...
I'm thinking of writing a macro (I have many) that answers "Hello" to the last message with a key combination. That way, no interruption if I was typing. A new notification will happen when the actual question arrives.
JoeAltmaier|1 year ago
A question other than 'Can I ask you a quick question?' God I hate that. You mean two questions, since that was a question already. And why does it always have to be 'quick'? Does no one ever have a meaty question that will take effort to answer?
I know; I'm a crusty old fart. But boy howdy would I use that AI chatbot if it existed.
LinuxBender|1 year ago
There was a point this had become so pervasive I set my Slack status to "I am currently busy working on a prioritized issue. Please open a jira and then speak to management if the case is urgent." then moved slack to another workspace and muted sound. That was my form of time management and it worked well for me personally, most of the time. One can always check with their manager if they are cool with this.
smeej|1 year ago
vundercind|1 year ago
Tools also affect it. Teams is terrible for “structural”, long-lived team chats (oh, the irony!) like are totally natural in, say, Slack, so tends to push more stuff into meetings and ad-hoc group chats. It’s a really bizarre (and endlessly irritating) design choice. You also can’t “digress” within the same channel like you can in Slack without spamming the main chat.
Worse tools = people use them differently (worse) like calling more and doing more private messaging. Add corporate, division, and individual cultures and preferences, and you can get all kinds of weird stuff going on, including the bare “hello”.
danaris|1 year ago
But I think a lot of it is also just individual and regional foibles. Some people feel very strongly that a conversation must begin with meaningless pleasantries or it's horrifically rude. Some people feel like it's rude to just ask you a question without first asking if that's OK—even if that's your role.
We could really do with a lot more explicit communication about communication in our culture, corporate and otherwise, setting boundaries and expectations up front.
ano-ther|1 year ago
So the extended etiquette is: if you don’t have time, it’s ok to not reply.
[1] There’s also the concern that your message appears on someone’s shared screen during a video call.
smeej|1 year ago
squigz|1 year ago
It seems that both of these problems would be solved if the sender just gets to the point?
supermatt|1 year ago
smeej|1 year ago
There's no reason to add delays on both sides so people can hope they finally overlap and can have a synchronous chat. If that's what you want, just ask for a time for it in the initial message.
exitb|1 year ago
squigz|1 year ago
reportgunner|1 year ago
sys_64738|1 year ago
initplus|1 year ago
reg_dunlop|1 year ago
What would be the message you eventually receive about my behavior?
And if you bring up my non-response in the future, and I do not verbally respond, what would your impression be of my communication style?
Phenix88be|1 year ago
penguin_booze|1 year ago
gwhl|1 year ago
I just learned to not care. I say "hi" to notify that I'm there and let them type. When an answer is required from me I pay attention, think and answer. Until then I ignore it.
I found it so much easier for me to learn not to be (too) distracted than to lose my mind trying to educate humanity to adapt to me.
shoo|1 year ago
This is a technical problem masquerading as a social problem, which can be addressed by a technical solution.
Instead of expecting colleagues that only support establishing sessions by hello-ing to switch to an alternative protocol, it is possible to support both hello-ers and no-hello-ers by using a similar trick as found in launchd and systemd to reduce startup time by decoupling dependencies between services with a socket. Suppose service A says it depends on service B, and wants to send some data to service B. Instead of blocking service A being started until service B is up, the service manager can allocate a socket, give it to service A and say "here is your connection to service B" and then defer starting service B until service A actually starts trying to communicate using the socket.
Here's how a similar trick can hide the latency of colleagues that only support hello-ing: we offload the responsibility of establishing the chat sessions to a session manager, which is integrated into our chat client. When a colleague requests to begin a session by 'hello!'-ing, this message can be recognized by the session manager as an attempt to establish a session, suppressed and hidden from the user, and the session manager can automatically respond with 'Hi.' to establish the session. colleague is comforted by receiving the 'Hi.' and can trust that a session is established. When colleague begins transmitting data at the application layer, the data can be forwarded to the user as normal and surfaced by the chat program.
https://www.torforgeblog.com/2017/11/15/read-the-first-four-...
https://lwn.net/Articles/389149/
ivorbuk|1 year ago
There are great tools on these things that help you prioritize and snooze notifications and ensure yourself some quiet time.
cauliflower99|1 year ago
broken-kebab|1 year ago
s_dev|1 year ago
dang|1 year ago
Don't ask to ask, just ask - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39762546 - March 2024 (37 comments)
Please don't say just hello in chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36623348 - July 2023 (126 comments)
No Hello: A New Wave - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33906174 - Dec 2022 (57 comments)
How to gently enforce “nohello” to a coworker? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31578259 - June 2022 (1 comment)
Please Don't Say Just Hello in Chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31088433 - April 2022 (43 comments)
No hello – please don't just say hello in chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30642052 - March 2022 (77 comments)
Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30639225 - March 2022 (366 comments)
A better way to say Hello - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30094833 - Jan 2022 (1 comment)
No Hello (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29978860 - Jan 2022 (67 comments)
Don't Ask to Ask - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29603250 - Dec 2021 (2 comments)
No-Hello - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682658 - Sept 2021 (8 comments)
Please don't say just hello in chat (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25881800 - Jan 2021 (350 comments)
Don't ask to ask, just ask - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24259156 - Aug 2020 (101 comments)
No Hello (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24239880 - Aug 2020 (210 comments)
Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19648415 - April 2019 (265 comments)
Please Don't Say Just Hello in Chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868294 - July 2017 (46 comments)
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
postepowanieadm|1 year ago
cultofmetatron|1 year ago
like.. yes my dude, ask the question instead of asking if you can ask the question.
wcoenen|1 year ago
Then they will respond with "can I ask you another question" and you reply again with "you just did".
Finally they'll have to ask "can I ask you another question after this one" to which you can reply "yes".
npteljes|1 year ago
bun_terminator|1 year ago
reportgunner|1 year ago
I disagree with it needing cookies though.
GoodJokes|1 year ago
[deleted]
bigdub69|1 year ago
[deleted]
88rbh|1 year ago
[deleted]
sturza|1 year ago
mattlondon|1 year ago
Everyone has their different communication preferences.
Personally I have never felt like the no-hello thing is worth caring about - its chat, just let it happen. It is not like you are trapped there unable to do anything else waiting for them to type their question. Just ignore it until it is worth responding to and get on with your day?
Chris2048|1 year ago
Also, "Hi" is a good way of finding out if a person is present, sometimes you might ask to call them instead of typing your question.
It also might be the case there are multiple people who can answer the question, so you want send out "hi" to a few of them to see who will respond right now.
smeej|1 year ago
You can even send this to 3 or 4 people and let anyone who doesn't respond first say you caught so-and-so first and are good to go now. Or just delete the message.
CipherThrowaway|1 year ago
This is part of what makes it such poor etiquette. You've created this ambiguous, open-ended distraction for the other person. You expect them to divert focus away from what they're doing so they can poll the chat channel waiting for you to get your thoughts in order.
At least include some context so they have a better idea of what you're about to ask.
wepple|1 year ago
gregoriol|1 year ago
If you do post just "hi" in a message, your question should come within seconds after.
nkrisc|1 year ago
reg_dunlop|1 year ago
Oh by the way, I have a follow up question....
addicted|1 year ago
Why can’t you just say “hey, are you available for a call now?” Instead?