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Comment by mmaunder | Hacker News Reader

Chill out people. Get a little more patient and a little less nitpicky about protocol. You’re not that busy or important. None of us are.

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.

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I do think the context where these communication issues are the most painful are when there are already other serious problems. But if you have a whole org where a decent fraction of people engage in these patterns, it can turn your day into one substantially driven by pointless interrupts.

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.

Rules like the above are what causes a chilling effect on public comms and a rise in DMs. So chill out and create a relaxed space for your colleagues. If you need a low interrupt mode, get off Slack. If you’re in a job where you can’t, that’s a separate issue. If you have a time critical comms channel that’s being used for random chatter, it’s not a time critical channel.

Its just about being polite and wasting time.

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.

It's not the same, though. Chat is asynchronous, so the recipient doesn't have to wait with their device as they would on hold.

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.

it got so bad at my work they had to email out to the entire company to nicer. the one slack room with all employees and no one is allowed to leave is a mine field. anyone can post there, but if you do and your message is not deemed appropriate the slack police will descend to the threads and rip you apart. don’t even think about @here or @channel because there’s already 5+ emojis that will be tacked on your message to ensure you feel like a moron

> If it’s good enough for Lionel Richie, it’s good enough for you.

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

I like seeing what habits I might have that others could find annoying.

Important? Probably not.

Busy? Absolutely.

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