The 4 Types of Emails Programmers Receive | Hacker News Reader

The 4 Types of Emails Programmers Receive

kevinwilliampang.com

50 pointskpanghmc24 comments

I'm a sys-admin, not a programmer...for me, the "OMFG THE COMPUTERS ARE ON FUCKING FIRE!!!!!!!" emails, which are always CC'd to at least 10 people, end up being something stupid like

"Reset your password...that box, the one that keeps popping up telling you that you need to reset your password, what it generally means is that your password has expired and that YOU NEED TO RESET IT!"

My favorite is when a printer runs out of toner and I get an email saying "Help!" (which I loathe) "we're all 'down' over here and can't get anything! HELP! SORRY FOR BUGGING YOU!"

This drives me insane because:

A) Stop using "help", you're not 6 years old, you haven't fallen down a well

B) You know how to change the toner, there is a stack of toners sitting right next to your printer.

C) You're not "down", "everyone" is not "down"...you specifically cannot print, the printer is telling you that you can't print, and it's even telling you how to fix the problem, just LOOK AT IT!

D) Saying "sorry for bugging you" has got to be one of the most obnoxious things you could even possibly say. Stop. If you need something, just ask for it.

Comic related: http://newslily.com/comics/17

Also, in some ways this: http://newslily.com/comics/24

I also work largely as a sys-admin, but I do some desktop support as well.

I get a lot of vague emails. "My internet is down," is a favorite of mine, as it could be a network outage, a local computer misconfiguration, a page being inaccessible, or simply the user getting an error page from the site because the URL they bookmarked doesn't exist anymore. If it's an email problem, it's probably because they didn't read the error message.

I also loathe when people walk over to my desk and say, "I hope I'm not interrupting you. {insert problem}". Now I've already been interrupted, so my train of thought has been derailed (worst when programming). I then have two choices, help the person because I am now not so busy with something else that I can't help but reward their behavior by doing so, or brush them off and try to get back on track with my previous task and risk being a bit of a jerk in the process.

Either way, I've already lost out. I'd gladly take a vague email over a confused user walking over to my desk.

At least you get the descriptive "internet".

Lots of times I just get "I'm locked up"...

My favorite "I'm locked up" is when somebody else logs on to the workstation that the user normally uses. "Locked up" means "there is a different user name in the user name field that mine!".

Another favorite is when a user types their password wrong enough times on our iSeries system. It does something called "varying off" (disabling the terminal until I re-enable it)...so they keep trying...at all the rest of the terminals. Pretty effective denial of service attack if you ask me!

I remember one user who was furious with me because he had worked for the company for over a year, and WHY THE HELL HADN'T I SET HIM UP WITH AN EMAIL!!!?!?!

I had...the trouble was that he had to click the icon (which is on his desktop, and on his start menu) labeled "email". Oh joy!

Also, don't get me wrong, I love my job :), sometimes the users screw up, but it's generally pretty low-impact :).

This is how we handle those emails:

Reply to The Vague Email option A: This might be one of the 8 reported errors in your version, does any of the following apply to your situation (link-to-bug-tickets)? Please check if upgrading to version+1 beta (link) fixes the problem. If not, please if possible provide an exact step-by-step reproduction recipe, as described on http://somewhere/how-to-report-errors.

Reply to The Vague Email option B: This is not a known error, and XYZ works for me. Please if possible provide an exact step-by-step reproduction recipe, as described on http://somewhere/how-to-report-errors.

Reply to The End of the World Email: None. This is always more political than technical, so the department leader gets to handle these ... people.

Reply to The Red Herring Email: Yes, it is working. Can you please give details as described on as described on http://somewhere/how-to-report-errors ?

Reply to The Ideal Email: Thank you for the detailed report. We will start working on this issue immediately/next tuesday/next month. You can try workaround ZYX or download version+1 beta in the meantime. If the problem becomes urgent, please let us know.

I find that for each of these e-mails, I make a decision about what to do based on who the user is. Some users are much more careful about writing an 'End of the world' e-mail than others and should be handled accordingly.

The End of the World Email -- URGENT!!! System is down! NONE of our users can do XYZ! Please advise!!!11!

I'd love to get one that actually said "advise". I usually get "please advice".

"Please advise" is one of my pet peeves. It's almost always a passive-aggressive code word.

At least they're using the correct word. "please advice" makes no sense.

I sometimes use it when I'm actually looking for guidance/advice from the other person.. maybe I shouldn't.

Yeah, I find it's a part of that middle-management corporate-speak social-engineering language. I think the only way to deal with it is to give as good as you get. If they say "please advise", you counter with "managing expectations". Or something - you can usually just make it up.

People use the word "please"?

Only when it doesn't mean please.

Please do the needful.

Or what about the:

"My brother/brother in law/uncle is a plumber/chiropractor/architect and all the software they have sucks! How about they tell you what they want, you build it, and we can cut you in for 20%"

My favorite in that vein was a complaint about the quality of... CattleMax, a software package for tracking cows. It's a frontend for a database with fewer than ten tables. Somewhere in eastern MT are a couple of ranchers who'll be rich, if they can just get someone to write, support, and advertise this software in exchange for 10% of the net profits. Unfortunately, I am not that someone.

Actually, one of our customers started writing "Thank you!" e-mails one or two weeks ago. I guess my boss managed to convince her that twenty hours of support per day is not the norm.

I find I can get more of the last kind of emails when I'm working with one or two folks who appreciate knowing how to get their issues solved. i.e. I train the folks I work with on how to help me help them. It takes time and there are usually only a handful of people who will do this, the rest will continue to do what they always do. But every little bit helps. My biggest satisfaction comes when new employees learn from my favorite few without me having to teach them. :)

"We've been having this [really easy to diagnose and solve] problem and haven't been able to use your product for 3 days."

"I'm in the middle of doing a demo at [big prospect] and had [obscure problem] when doing [something nobody's tested]."

"Why didn't we do [proposed solution that was argued at length for weeks before choosing the current one]?"

"Thanks to [list of everyone except the guy that really did all the work] for working so hard on this release."

"My computer is messed up. It keeps saying X."

"It's right, believe it."

"Umm... really? Hey, that worked!"

I will say that I'm glad to have a few clients who'll throw me something like the Ideal Email.

I do a lot of free coding for people, and my most favorite email is "YOU CHEATED ME AND GAVE ME A BROKEN SCRIPT!" because they didn't understand how to use it.

I've almost never gotten the 4th and best type of email =/

I only count 3 types of email, I have yet to spot an example of the 'ideal email' in the wild!

You forgot the 5th one:

"We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding."

Sadly, we hapless programmers are the only ones who will ever read this blog post.

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