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Comment by albertgoeswoof | Hacker News Reader

As a manager or senior <anything> a huge part of your job is communication and distributing information, and email is one of, if not, THE core method of doing this.

The author has decided to provide poor communication because she can’t handle her inbox. One word replies can be extremely misleading and will cost her more time overall than reading and replying to her emails properly. I would be fuming if I was her boss or worked for her.

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> The author has decided to provide poor communication

On the contrary! The author has decided to provide efficient, immediate, communication, instead of vaguely planning to send a more detailed reply later if she maybe gets around to it.

If everybody treated email this way it would be 100x more efficient. If her reply doesn't contain the info you need, just reply back asking for the info you need, and she'll reply within minutes.

But what if you don't know the information you need to know? Or if you're worried about looking incompetent by asking because she always sends such curt replies? Or maybe you're just hacked off that you crafted an email to try to convey a point in a clear, concise manner and she just responded with a one word reply and you have no idea whether she read it and understood it at all

They all sound like your problems, not hers.

They’ll be hers when she’s fired

You just wrote a concise reply as advocated by the linked article.

Isn't this what instant messaging is for?

I'm a big fan of the "executive summary" approach. Give a one or two sentence overview, followed by the details if anyones interested.

I once worked with a senior engineer who would write incredibly long, detailed emails to the point that his manager would ask, how do you have time to write these and not complete this (underspecified, unrealistic) task? He ended up getting PIP'ed and fired. I counseled him many times to keep his emails to 4-5 sentences tops. He just couldn't do it.

I like it. As an employee, it also takes the pressure off for me to be verbose and match the formality of my managers emails. And a simple explanation like "I use short emails because they are quick and easy. Please don't read too much into the tone" the first time around would allay an employees concerns.

It leaves some things unsaid, but better to say them once. Like I sometimes reply "OK" or "got it" to a long request by a manager when I have nothing further to say, but if i DO have questions/concerns, they know I will say more. With that shared understanding, receiving an "ok" saves us both time and energy. Its really great.

Came here to say this. It's great if you're the boss, but did you notice that in the article he says "I just assumed I understood what Mark Cuban meant in the one word reply"

If that assumption is wrong and involves millions of dollars or hundreds of person-hours, what happens to your company? This is only good if the response CAN be brief and still be adequate.

Yea I can see this backfiring over the long term.

A counter example is Nintendo, where Sakurai was literally recorded, so people wouldn't be confused about the project status and what he told them to do.

https://www.polygon.com/2013/11/20/5127488/a-day-in-the-extr...

micromanagement at its extreme?

> email is one of, if not, THE core method of doing this.

I've found this to be less and less true these past years with the rise of Slack.

These days, most of my email inbox searches come up empty because what I'm looking for actually happened in Slack.

Proprietary, closed software will never replace open source software with standars protocols. This sounds like wishful thinking but it's more of a statement of fact. Not only because all long-lived protocols we use have open standards, but also because for many companies it does matter whether they can host their own server or not.

I agree in general, single word emails either are or run the risk of being ambiguous and in many cases end up requiring followup to extract the necessary information. However in some cases they're all that's needed;

"Hey boss, here's a quote for the thing we buy, can I please get your approval for the spend?"

"approved"

That's perfectly sufficient, and it's a single word.

Also I've found single word replies are a nice way of telling if it's actually the big boss that's replying to you, or their PA :)

> provide poor communication

I see that as efficient communication. No BS

It's only efficient if it answers everything that's needed by the other party. Otherwise you've started an unnecessary back-and-forth when you could you have been short but thorough the first time.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

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