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Comment by rdiddly | Hacker News Reader

Ah, so you're one of those folks who doesn't answer my emails! Makes me pester you multiple times, by email, SMS, Skype, and if I'm truly desperate, the dog park. You're just outsourcing the work of communication onto me. When you ask for a favor I will pretend I didn't hear it! Winky emoticon.

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Thank you for pointing that out. Not answering one's E-mail is on my list of "rude things that somehow have become acceptable". It's part of individual companies' cultures. I've worked places where people can generally be relied upon to get back to you, and places where you might as well print out the message and shred it--it's not going to be responded to. The former means your working relationship with me is going to be smooth and collaborative. The latter means I'm going to treat you like a deadbeat and come around and nag you in person.

I actually really hate being that "Hey, didja read that E-mail I sent?" guy, but if you're not responsive, I am going to have to pay you a visit. And I have no idea when you're in the zone and when you're just chilling. If you would just answer your E-mail, then you get to do it at the best time for you.

One thing I've found helpful over the years is: When you are depending on getting a response, say so. "NEED RESPONSE BY EOD TUESDAY" Make it the very first thing in the body of the E-mail, or even make it the subject of the E-mail, since some people only skim the subjects.

Another tip is to state clearly what assumption you will make about their thoughts if you do not hear back in time: "If I don't hear back by EOD, we will go forward with the proposal."

EDIT: Another good tip I forgot to mention: If your E-mail is going to multiple people, and you need one or more of them to respond or take action, type their Full Name in bold and red then ":" then the specific action the need to take and by when. This helps people who only scan their E-mails, as their name stands out.

Most of these tips are actually pretty obvious, it seems silly to even write them down.

I like your tactical suggestion at the bottom, but I wanted to say that I rankle at the top.

Philosophically, I don't think a request for my attention creates an obligation to give it.

Practically, if I responded to every email I received, I'd spend all my time doing nothing but responding to email, then I'd still fail by running out of time.

It's actually pretty stressful. I've outsourced a lot of my email to a couple people who work for me, but there are still some that just go unanswered because the system isn't airtight. But it feels unfair to impugn me as rude for not being able to do a thing that becomes impractical to do at a certain point.

If your company pays you to give your attention when requested then it kind of does create such an obligation.

I'll grant you that if they have to choose, they probably choose total productivity over all emails answered. However, clearly not every incoming email requires an answer from every recipient. You are not being asked to reply to 100% of incoming emails instantly.

Ignoring direct requests for attention is both rude and in my opinion ultimately toxic. Imagine what would happen if everyone acted that way. It blocks information flow, holds people up, and ultimately doesn't solve the problem - you are just forcing someone to follow up some other way. It actually hides problems. Those can be that you are doing something wrong: poor at organising your email or your time compared to others; contiually optimising visible productivity at the expense of other people's time; poor communication skills. On the flip side, it can be that the company has poor email culture, suboptimal team structures/dynamics or just too much work for the number of employees. If your manager met you by the coffee machine when you were busy and asked you for something you wouldn't just walk away.

None of the best or most productive people I've worked with have been casual about dropping 40% of their emails.

It seems like you're imagining a different situation than I am. I'm talking about a large volume of outside email, the equivalent of fan mail, essentially. We have other methods of communication for internal stuff, like Slack.

I stand by my original assertion that your request for attention doesn't create an obligation to give any to you, though. I think the cultural norms around it (ie, give attention when asked) make sense at small scales, but break once you cross a certain threshold of people wanting attention.

Maybe, but the employment situation still changes the dynamics. You probably couldn't get away with this argument if you worked in customer support, for example.

I couldn't agree more that a request for my attention does not obligate me to give it; if it did, I could spend all my (work) day answering emails and all my leisure time watching adverts.

You're both right. Nothing, besides courtesy, obliges you to respond. But then, depending on the urgency of the request, we end up in the "follow you to the dog park" mode of communication GP talked about, which is less than ideal

I'd argue that getting more requests for attention than one can handle is a symptom, not a root problem. Tons of people needing your approval for something? Maybe authority can be distributed more evenly. Designate others who you trust to approve things on your behalf. Frequent pings for "status updates"? Maybe the project is not being run as transparently as it can be. Time to publish a wiki or something so these people can serve themselves.

I prefer it when people come to ask me in person. So much more efficient. A 5 minute conversation can sometimes replace days of back and forth emails.

your suggestions about calling out urgency and indicating the non-response action are great. I really appreciate when people do this.

The problem is when people conflate urgency with what's important to them.

Lots of "omg I need now, but worst case by EOD" that really should be "anytime this week would be great."

When someone has hundreds of other requests coming from all directions, plus his or her own work, you're going to have to take the effort to contact them directly if you want help.

If that isn't a compelling argument, keep in mind that many engineers have varying degrees of ADHD, and email is a huge distraction from getting what they normally do done. Every context switch is painful, so they often put it on mute.

Are you sure all of your communications are so critical?

There are also people who will chase others to the dog park to tell them that a CI build passed...

That last example sounds like someone incompetent at email and choosing teammates, chose one who's incompetent at deciding what's critical. Oops-a-daisy. For competent adults, having the recipient unilaterally decide what's critical (critical to whom? being a key question) is insulting.

Damned autonomy, damned free-will!

Yet still less insulting than those who conflate importance with urgency. Guess it comes down to the "competent adults" part; I've often found them to be few and far between at large companies.

i don't follow how you got to the snarky "critical" if andyidsinga is ignoring 40% of emails?

Well, because it would be reasonable to assume that 40% of a typical business user received emails are something that should be ignored.

e.g. 10% of all emails are critical, important or urgent, 30% of emails aren't critical but need a response, additional 20% don't need a response but must be understood, and 40% are just "organizational noise".

As long as they ignore the right 40%.

I get tons of emails from recruiters, marketers, etc. I reply to none of them, and I think it's unfair that by sending me mail that I don't want they are implicitly entitled to labor (writing a response) from me.

I don't think anyone was suggesting that you should reply to them. The complaints are about people who are unresponsive to direct questions from their co-workers that require timely responses (at least that's how I interpreted it).

this is true. People pester me multiple times : and my response is to try, over time to enable them to make decisions and not ask me for permission - then if the shit hits the fan its my fault (I also get a ton of credit if stuff works)

Also - the management-by-walking-around part ensures I get face/voice time with many people in my immediate circles.

If you're not in my immediate circle, and you're a stranger, its very true that the dog-park might be your best bet :)

I don't mean to down-play what you're saying though -- there is a level of frustration that can occur. I've just found that keeping human contact with people is the salve to not responding to emails.

In many jobs that's totally worth it—chances are very low a stranger will need something high priority from you, and people who work with you will know how to communicate.

Email is good for a lot of things, but not for expecting processing quickly.

If it's not important enough to message me twice, it doesn't need a sub-week-later reply. (Obviously, some caveats about important people, routine work messages, etc.)

I generally get back to people or read messages, but only when I spend an hour going through things when I have free time. I don't feel obligated to respond to random messages on their timeline.

Totally this. I also apply a similar rule to phone calls - barring few exceptions (family, expected important communication), I pick up only when I feel like it (and most of the time, I don't). If something is important, one can text me instead (thus letting me decide whether or not I consider it important too).

You're not entitled to other peoples' time. Email lets your interrupt people 24/7, if you don't take that responsibility seriously expect to be ignored sometimes. Your priorities are not their priorities.

If email is interrupting you 24/7 then you're treating it as a synchronous medium instead of an asynchronous one. I get a LOT of requests that I respond to with "can you email that to me?" because I'm often away from my desk and working on something else. Sometimes I'll look at subject lines in the notification area on my phone, but the only messages that get looked at immediately even during the work day are ones from a small number of people and notifications of antivirus events from our monitoring system.

>the only messages that get looked at immediately even during the work day are ones from a small number of people and notifications of antivirus events from our monitoring system.

Exactly my point, most get ignored. Complaining about people blowing off your emails is pricky. That people get push notifications for work emails on their phones speaks to my point. It's intrusive and nagging people over email/slack/etc is rude and a surefire way to make your colleagues hate you.

No.. Email is async communication, unlike Slack and chat software.

I send an email when I expect it to be read in the next 24 hours, but I can give enough respect for the other person's time to let them choose when to read it.

I don't know your nationality but around here we used to say that Americans were crazy with email, using it more or less as sms, bugging you if you didn't reply back in 5 minutes or so it felt.

I'm American. I check email once a day, max. Sometimes I'll just skip it all together. If stuff starts going sideways, I'll hear about it anyway. Most in my org sit in meetings half-listening while replying to emails or looking at their laptop/phone. I stopped carrying my laptop to meetings and only use pen/paper. Really helps with both my clarity of situation being discussed, and being more sensitive to noticing when I'm not adding value.

I encourage my team to limit email to once a day, as well as to decline meeting invites without a clear agenda or that don't state why they're needed.

This, parent comment is literally about nagging people.

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