No Hello (2013)
nohello.com
nohello.com
I always wondered if people wanted to wait until the messagee was sat on the other end of the keyboard giving their full attention. If this is the case a phonecall would be more appropriate imo.
One of my biggest annoyances.
I have gotten in the habit of just responding "yo" and going back to whatever I was doing.
Could be minutes to an hour before I come back to the chat
Either way I go back to what I was doing until I come to a convenient stopping point, typically between 1 and 5 minutes.
It wastes so much time for everyone involved.
I sometimes wonder if these same people think I'm being rude when I write a message like "Hey, xyz, I was wondering if you knew PDQ about ABC?"
Like, are they expecting the convo to go like
me: "Hi"
them: "Hello"
me: "How's your day been?"
them: "fine"
me: "Crazy weather"
them: "yeah"
me: "Do you have a second to chat about ABC"?
them: "Just a sec"
me: "Ok"
them: "Ok, shoot"
me: "Do you if PDQ about ABC?"
them: "Oh yeah, it's 123"
them: Hello
*hour or two passes*
me: Hey how are you?
I used to be part-time sysadmin back in the day, and I fondly remember the benefits of not answering quickly.
Morning: "Hey how do I configure XYC in ABC?"
Afternoon: "I figured it out, it's in .abcconfig"
This was very counter-intuitive for me since I wanted to do a good job and answer quickly, but later I realized it's better for everyone to follow an informal (but well-defined) SLA.
But why is that your problem to be infuriated about? If they weren't bothered by doubling the time to a response, why should you be? And if they are ... why should you be?
Just curious, because I think of myself as being pretty sage but that sort of response would sit with me for awhile.
once i establish rapport and recognize our mutual humanity, then future engagements i can get straight to the point without people just feeling used
of course some people get offended by the preliminary niceties, but they are in the minority, so best to bet on the common case in absence of further knowledge
There should be one like this for email too, if your email is simple... put the content in the subject line! Like, if I'm telling someone the date/time for something (that doesn't warrant an "invite"), I'll put it right in the subject line. When I'm telling my coworkers I'm taking a few days off, I'll put those days right in the subject line...etc.
Using chat for support. The first thing it asks is "Please explain why you need assistance"...
I fill it in with all the pertinent details...
Then, when the support person finally comes online their first or second message is: ...and how may I help you today?
Why the hell did I just spend the time to type that in to my phone if I know have to type it again for you.....
And if the account number doesn't exist or doesn't match the name, they know immediately that one or the other was mis-entered.
Cues such as hesitation, discomfort, etc., may also be present.
The far more prevalent case is likely simply to guard against mis-keyed digits.
Similarly in heathcare, virtually every caregiver handoff involves asking for name and DoB. For the caregiver this helps confirm they are (literally) on the right page (patient record). Patients may see this as tedious.
Actually no... The most effective Social Engineering attacks are ones with simulated chaos going on in the call, and simulated high emotions by the caller..
There is no evidence or actual theory making a person repeat the same number over and over again does anything about annoy legit callers
This sounds very much like security policy created in the same manner of "everyone must change their passwords every 30 days" which we know now makes things LESS secure not more.
>>The far more prevalent case is likely simply to guard against mis-keyed digits.
Again your data input validation should be taking care of that before you ever reach the agent in the first place
Other points taken.
>confirm information accuracy, no mis-entered information,
There are a ton of better ways to do this...
>or unauthorised access attempt.
making me retype the same info in the same session is in no way a security enhancement..
Though given the state of infosec at most of these companies I would not be shocked if they think it was
This culture of nitpicking text communication styles has been with us for decades and isn’t going away soon. Same on IRC and Prestel before that. And it has always been about providing the enforcers with a sense of power and reinforcing tribalism around those who know the rules and those who need to be forcibly educated.
If it’s good enough for Lionel Richie, it’s good enough for you.
He explained it. Its the equivalent of calling someone for help and putting them on hold.
I think it's okay if you at least give the topic of your question or start asking it in the first line and within five seconds or so get to the point.
But if you just give a greeting or something and then delay, it wastes people's time.
A standalone hello is actually more efficient in time-sensitive situations. The sender needs to know if the recipient is actually available so that they don't waste effort typing a question that won't get answered in time.
Broken habits in an org that can exacerbate this:
- People don't feel safe saying stuff in a group context so there's a large number of DM conversations at any one time.
- The chat app is actually used for time-critical issues and sometimes an immediate response is strongly expected. People feel obligated to rely on notifications.
- There's in general a poor commitment to supporting a "low-interrupt" mode of work for some roles.
I was about to downvote you, but this last shout saved you.
"Sometimes life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one." --- Stella Adler
Busy? Absolutely.
Like, if you're saying it's not working: say that. If you're saying it's not doing what you expect: say that. It's the QA version of "we have to talk" and I'm instantly anxious until you clarify.
In chat, something like 1/4-1/2 are "is X working?" followed by total silence. Sometimes they really are just asking if it's running, i.e. does X still exist. Sometimes they're having a failed build on a different system because their dependency manager cache is broken and it's blaming random libraries. Sometimes the frontend is busted.
What they're doing in practice is asking for 1:1 dedicated help on literally anything, so the only reasonable choice for a responder is those unicorn devs who know everything somehow. They almost never exist, so those "questions" go unanswered for a long time.
It sucks how some environments are worse than others. I think the biggest quality for software developers is humility. Without humility you could end up with some nasty devs. I have worked with people who get personallu attached to their code being quality but they dont follow project protocol or write hacky code.
This sounds pretty similar to the "askers vs guessers" cultural difference. If it's okay to receive a 'no', then you're free to ask whatever. If you're expected to know before you ask, then you can't ask until you know what the answer will be.
But, yes, it's valuable if someone is asking can clarify "here's what I tried..".
- Use spacing to make your message easy to parse.
- Have clear questions that are easy to jump back and respond to. Have them separated out by spacing, and preferably numbered.
- If there's something I need to copy paste, an email address, a specific id, a phone number, then put it on it's own line. Then I can double click and get the whole thing rather then dragging the cursor to do it.
The very first thing you should type after your initial greeting should be your question(s). Don't bury the lede.
You can provide all the additional explanation (i.e. what you were doing when it broke, where you've looked, what you've tried, etc) after you ask your questions. By asking up front, you frame the conversation so that the person you are communicating with can read your supporting information with the correct context.
But how do we feel about people breaking their thoughts up?
Into individually
sent
Messages?
Like this?
One
Right after
The other.
Anyone else find the constant badgering of dings and vibrations when colleagues communicate like this to be a real teeth grinder when you’re zeroed in on work (or trying to take a short pomodoro / coffee break and space out for a bit between tasks)?
I say this as someone who has been working remote with various teams for nearly seven years.
Crucial to the success of any remote team is feeling comfortable sharing and communicating via async and text based means.
You can always just turn $SLACKISH off and actually focus. If you're on call or in a situation wherein you need to watch messages and respond immediately - you're not going to reach flow state anyways.
Do not disturb and other notification settings exist so you can decide when you get dings.
I'll leave my bite sized messages for detailed threading, thanks!
[1] I have a set of scripts that trigger do not disturb on macos center notification and sets my status on slack to do not disturb and other relevant services etc but I have not been able to automate my phone settings the same way.
Yeah, but an option which I think would smooth this situation which I never see available is "give me a notification when they've stopped adding messages for at least k seconds".
If some of my teammates write chunky messages which are immediately actionable, I'm fine seeing the notification immediately. But if I put that in my settings, the a minority of people who send a stream of short drip messages which are only actionable when considered in aggregate seems super annoying.
edit: i guess FB shows chats in a small popup too, forgot about it bc i always use the big interface @ messenger.com
(hejka, zawsze smiesznie spotkac tu kogos z pl!)
Hej o/
The exercise of trying to concisely explain the situation and form the question is frequently enough to sort out a path forwards.
Not all coworkers enjoy being used as a chat-based rubber duck!
Slack, Discord, etc. wander in and turned chat into a _product_, and specifically a modern mAxImIzE eNgAgEmEnT product. No fucking chat app should send as many notifications as Slack and Discord do default, and they also shouldn't return to the same noisy default every time you join a new server, but they do. There's a good reason for this: constant pings make you use the app more because human brains are easily distracted, doubly so when something has been crafted to grab your attention. This probably results in a mix of actual stickiness and garbage interaction stats that product managers toot in internal meetings to demonstrate how good their ping flood is to clueless upper management, but the end result is that the distractathon defaults are just accepted as the way things are.
Overall, I think the problem here isn't the method of communication, per se. It's people placing unreasonable demands on your attention. Someone who came up to you in the middle of your break and started rambling a vague request would be annoying in the same way, even though the method of demanding your attention is different.
This is superior than just sending one big block of text.
Is it no less valid than the rapid fire messaging on the one extreme and large paragraphs of words on the other?
1. On the first message of a conversation I prefer a wall of text, because that lets me read all of the details really quickly.
2. If the conversation is likely to be short I prefer the one message after another since my attention is already on the chat, and I might as well be reading what they're typing rather than watching the "x is typing..." indicator.
3. If the conversation is going to be long I much prefer a call, I don't have the time to wait for someone to type all day. Context switches are expensive so I don't like reading occasional long messages while I'm trying to work.
But I think personally that for cognitive work it's actually necessary to be able to turn notification sounds off and ignore chat sometimes if it is used routinely. And if the employer didn't understand then I would try to get another job if possible.
Plus it keeps attention from straying when the conversation is semi-critical but not critical enough for a call.
A coworker of mine does the opposite: 10 minutes of "X is typing...." The result is a finely crafted paragraph. But we could've done without 90% of it because I would've had an answer for him after the first sentence.
I agree that this spacing-out is annoying, but...there's an easy way to solve this problem at receiver-end.
Breaking it up lets me get to the point quicker than they do, and I'm ready with a reply by the time they're finished (or cut them off when it's appropriate and they're going down the garden path).
The dings are annoying but that's a problem with the chat apps. I turn off sound on my work laptop usually anyway.
And personally, I got into this habit in online games before voice chat and we all moved this over to ICQ/IRC and the habit stuck. It now feels very inefficient to do it the other way.
My younger co-workers who only seem to have known Slack and the likes find it really annoying.
Aside from the obvious issues with the annoying by default clients this is an unfortunate regression in desktop/mobile environments, they offer very little in the way of passive notifications. Silence and changes to the system tray icon used to handle this with a minimum of annoyance but now everything has to play a sound, flash the window or send a notification.
Then answer I came up with is that the asker wants an immediate-ish response.
But in this case, the "hello" makes sense not as a pleasantry, but as a way of finding out, "if I ask you a question right now, will I be able to get an immediate-ish response?"
It doesn't sound like this problem can be easily solved with "nohello", it sounds like a more involved solution might be needed.
Eh, I respond a lot quicker to questions than "hello", I can ignore a hello for hours.
If I am asking a question where your response isn’t blocking me, I’ll say that...
“No rush, it’s not blocking me. I have X,Y I can be working on”.
“I’m working a little late tonight. If you’re busy, this can be a tomorrow problem.”
I personally prefer a wall of text telling me everything they have already tried. If they have already tried my first ideas, I can decide whether I have time or not.
From: Pointy-haired Boss <boss@manag.dept>
Subject:
Are you in the office today to sit together?
phb.https://github.com/reactiflux/reactibot/blob/a4e4e9d211a11c4...
"You just did."
"May I ask another?"
"You just did."
"You are allowed 3 questions and you just used them."
It's a good opportunity to get some idea of how quickly things will move, and whether the other end is willing and able to have a solid chat at that time. This applies to being either party in the chat: the asker or the asked!
What's far more annoying is when the [typing] indicator goes on and stays on for a couple of minutes, at which point you are "rewarded" with a wall of text. By then, they have filibustered the chat, and are probably three steps down the wrong road if they got off on the wrong foot, and they need to be backed up and pointed in another direction.
If they start small and evolve it as a natural conversation with back and forths, then a whole lot of needless typing can be avoided.
I don't want to risk someone interrupting my chain of thought with some request that I can't / don't want to act on.
But if I respond to a "Hi" and then decide that I don't want to deal with the actual question, that's perceived as rude.
If you ask the question straight out, then I can decide to respond or not.
Which leads to more-than-once-a-week situations of "Hi - full question or comment notification that probably shouldn't be seen by co-worker/boss/client" popping up during the share.
A simple "hello" --wait for answer-- protocol makes it a quick way of checking if it's a good time.
Close friends get a pass because their "hello" might just in some cases mean "hey I'm lonely and want someone to talk to".
Granted, you don't always need to establish the recipient's immediate availability. But often chat gets used for questions that need answers almost now but don't warrant the time and emotional investment of a phone call.
If you don't do a status check, you risk the recipient not being available to answer your question in time. And if they aren't, you'll waste more time typing your question than you would have with a precautionary hello.
Like "Away", "DND", "Available", etc.?
You'll get a response much faster.
I'll often do something like
Hi <name>, <insert question>
It has a bonus point of not losing what you typed in case the chat window bugs out.
I have these VVs in my chatbox below each message, one V for delivered and one V for read. Please only reply if you have objections and/or questions and/or more time to think. Otherwise,
silence implies consent (until reply)
¹ You cannot expect third parties to follow these seemingly non-polite shortcuts of course, but it makes messaging much easier for those who are your most reliable peers. Repeating the same polite handshake/TIME_WAIT routines again and again and again quickly converges to the point where it is not even remotely polite².
² That may sound harsh at the face value, but I seen how good relationships suffered because of exactly these sorts of conversation. A busy person will answer "yes" to "busy?" when all their contact wanted was to meet at the evening. Or "in the city, can't talk" to "where are you?" when they meant "if you're near X, do Y". But all windows close during the day and at the evening it is too late to ask again, because kids, plans, etc. Repeat that few times and both be repulsed.
A: Hello
B: Hello
A: How do I do X?
B: <instructions>
B: Does that answer your question?
A: Yes
A: Bye
B: Bye
A: Acquire attention lock
B: Attention lock acquired
A: Information request
B: Information request reply
B: Reply satisfaction request
A: Reply satisfaction response
A: Release attention lock
B: Attention lock released1. Open the chat window, and type your question with no "hello". Do not press enter. 2. Instead, press Ctrl-A and then Ctrl-X to cut your question out of the chat window and into your clipboard. 3. type and send "hello" 4. Pause 2-5 seconds 5. Ctrl-P and enter to send your full question.
Type hello, shift-enter-shift-enter, type your message, enter.
That's also a fun one because I love breaking the "my weekend was great how about you?" monotony by actually telling the truth. I remember once going for an interview and the interviewer casually asked how my weekend was as we walked through the office. He wasn't expecting me to say that I didn't have a great time because I'd spent it moving out of my ex's place and a family member passed away the same weekend. How was your weekend?
I mostly dislike all these fake interactions we have. Show me something real any day of the week. If you can't service my request because your mind is on something else, I'd take that. Just give me a human, not a half-assed care-less social dressage.
The article sounds like the author will give their full attention to the chat application after replying "hello" until they receive another message.
You can just switch yourself to nonblocking mode and handle other events and wait until epoll marks this chat readable again, or if you don't have any sort notifications turned on, just check back when you have a second. Worst case, the person at the other end wastes their time, not you. If it takes you an hour, their bad. But chances are they turn to something else in the meantime and don't stare at the chat window for hours on end. Would be kinda bad if you were on vacation and accidentally left your chat client running.
On the other hand, is you, the question-receiver. The example starts with "CO-WORKER WAITS WHILE YOU PHRASE YOUR QUESTION" but that's not how I usually deal with these types of conversations.
If someone just writes "Hi" to me without something else and I'm busy, I won't reply until there is more messages, and instead continue with my work.
Although, ideally there would be no "Hi" messages. But, not everything goes as we want it to.
Most often it feels like an attempt to get initial attention because if they launch straight into something the start may be lost whilst the recipient is switching focus.
Clearly the point against this would be that you'll have the chat history available, but there are apps where the flashing up of the notifications is in the corner and they disappear inconveniently before you've focused. So perhaps I suspect it's an attempt to get that focus moved and then start with the payload.
There is some logic in this, annoying as it can be. People do really badly with focus when switching context, just look at how often someone will call you, you say your name (ie the person they were hoping to speak to usually) and then they ask if they could speak to <your name>, because they've been primed to ask this and didn't update mentally in light of new info fast enough to kill the needless question.
I don't advocate the initial hello, but at times, I've broken text up where I get the key detail follow up ready in advance before the initial gambit is sent. This stops it being a whopping paragraph. I'd only use this sparingly but it helps at times and there's a hint of the focus aware point in it.
Just say "Hello" back. You don't have to wait while they are typing. And if you are busy enough that you don't want to be disturbed, put "Do not disturb" on or close the chat client.
[1] newer, anyway. That was 2008 to this 2013. What's the 2018 version?
I find that saying hello and then waiting is more practical. If the other person is busy, then they won't reply and they'll reply at a more convenient time.
The article supplied an telephone analogy. Put yourself into the situation of the recipient. Would you or would you not mind being put on hold immediately after being called?
> I find that [doing something that does not affect me adversely, but does for the other party] is more practical.
That kind of reasoning for the benefit of oneself without consideration for the other side causes bad blood.
possibly some other social factors at play here, but still, my experience.
If it's such an emergency that it can't wait, then I can call them. But most of the things we think are emergencies aren't, and most things can wait longer than we think.
Consider too, that i might be blocked as long as i don't have an answer.
– Jog your memory for any input you might’ve been awaiting or could use from the “hello” person, and hit them back with a greeting + request or question.
– If they really cannot help you on anything and you are not inclined to chit-chat, just ignore the “hello” message until substance follows.
– If “hello” was too much of a bother at the moment, perhaps you should’ve been using DnD mode?
– An effective way to use DnD and remain accessible is to set up a periodic alarm to check instant messengers. If you find a lone “hello” when checking messages and you can’t think of any input you might want from that person, “hello” back and leave it until next alarm. Your counterparty will learn to get to the point quicker.
I like to be friends with my co-workers - and there are times where if you are hitting them up for an ask, and ignoring them otherwise, thet might feel like you don't value them as a person ... A greeting, a little gossip or "HR" repartée can make two people trust each other - which in the end can foster its own kind of efficiency!
And everytime during the stand-ups the person would be - "Oh, I couldn't communicate the issue on time, I will continue working in the issue today..."
I noticed this once because we spent two hours discussing about some topic.
(we have a milestone-based flexible release model, milestones could be scheduled every couple of months at times, so the person would slack quite a lot)
If you type the full message to the first person and don’t get an immediate response, as you paste the same message to other people, the first person or few people who didn’t respond immediately might waste their time duplicating work that someone else you reached is already doing.
Never respond to hi. :)
Q: Are you listening?
A: Yes
Q:
A: ?
Q: [typing]
It's equally polite to say "Hello" and type the question in the same message. Do you genuinely not see how saying "Hello" first, which for many people forces them to lose concentration as they mentally prepare to be asked a question, is worse? The author provides multiple, equally polite examples that respect people's desire to politely greet others and respects the concentration of the receiver.
THIS!!!
I have the unfortunate experience of somewhat regularly engaging with people who:
1. Act in a manner / do something they think the other party should appreciate, where
2. The other party does not in fact appreciate this, and is often burdened, bothered, or inconvenienced.
3. When informed of this, the first party both accuses the second that they are ungrateful (for not actually being helped) and controlling (for expressing alternate preferences, including often no assistance).
The cycle can reepeat, over precisely the same exchanges, repeatedly and over long periods.
Small children not knowing better is excusable. Adults not so much.
Kindness and consideration are not forcing your preferences down another's throat (exceptions for specific therapeutic expertise and treatment), but in offering to someone that which they express a preference for or interest in. So long as this isn't actively acutely harmful, one should oblige, aand graciously.
Keep in mind that "where the roles reversed" may not be a reliable guide. It's not what you would want, but what they prefer.
This lesson seems poorly assimilated by many.
For texting, requesting someone's attention and then wasting their time is rude. Get to the point quicker.
Good: Hello, can you help me with <<<explain the problem or request>>>
Bad: Hello.. <<wait for response>>
Chat is more like email, less like phone call treat it as such
If anything, people are trying to port their face to face comforts to digital async communication where it doesn't make sense and has the opposite effect.
Though I'd argue that the "how are you" frivolity that nobody takes serious doesn't make much sense face to face either. So it's only doubly unnecessary when you make someone go through that in a work Slack setting before they can unlock when you're actually pinging them about.
It's quite impolite once you think about it. Respect other people's time and get on with it. Every time you ping someone, realize you may be interrupting them, so get to the point in as few pings as possible.
You call it insane, but it's actually common sense once you think about it.
This could bridge the gap between the speed of chatting and talking.
Or are there unintended cinsequences I'm not accounting for (such as accidentaly copy pasting unintended info)?
If that screen sharing software world and messaging/chat software works had some sort of protocol/handshake not to step on each other, many frustrating situations can be avoided.
Previously discussed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19648415
Typical scenario:
Manager: hey
<an hour or so may go by>
Me: what's up?
Manager: nvm
I generally know who likes to talk with me and who just needs help.
Would you think it was rude if you saw this link as somebody’s status message?
Nowadays I’m just a stochastic replier.
Most (not all) tech that tries to “fix” communication in the office suffers from this problem though so I’m not blaming Slack alone for this. It just is what it is.
Because you see I had the palm tree emoji. AND a bit of text. Still got PMs and calls.
The emoji didn’t seem to matter.
Also I sent a college a message while he was on holiday knowingly so that he can see and may reply if he wants to when he comes back.
If you are on holiday (palm emoji) you are free to not pick up any calls and messages, until an unless you job is life critical and requires you to respond immediately at any hour.
It does give me a good chuckle to think how annoyed someone must have been to have made this site in the first place :)
Absolutely not; clearly communicating expectations makes life easier for everyone, which is (much of) what politeness is supposed to be about in the first place. The only possible suggestion I have is inlining a 1-sentence summary.
E.g. I would prefer if you said "I don't mean to be rude, but in my honest opinion you're looking kind of shabby these days" rather than "You're ugly" (statements exaggerated for emphasis).
I think this matters less in the context of the original thread (the "hello" back-and-forth).
I would be inclined to think it odd if I saw just one person with that status. When I saw every other person using it, it became less off-putting to me.