#3 - Holy hell I hate it when someone sends me a message with just "Hi". Just tell me what you want!
And I also do this when someone just pastes an error message without a question.
1. Current work
2. Today work
3. Review for when work
4. Far future work
Everything in 1 and 2 are lined up for work. Anything without clear action items requires follow-up and clearly signals non-urgency so it's in 3 which is the end of the day. And a 4 is just intentionally forgotten.
If you stick that in your github.com/username/me/README.md then it's documented behaviour.
I've tried ignoring it, but it's the sort of thing that sits simmering in the back of my mind. It's only one guy that does it. He's also the sort of guy who wouldn't understand what I meant if I tried to explain why I didn't want him to do it.
Chat is for back and forth.
And to pretend that this "conversation preparation" somehow takes (and interrupts) a worthy chunk of your day is either laughable or pompous.
plus, didn't we agree that chat is async and thus this "conversation setup" never happens? I am forced to respond to "how are you" in real time?
async convo = UDP "convo setup" = TCP, and it doesn't happen
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>> hi what's up
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> there's a bug, it does abc when you do xyz
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> ok I fixed it
versus
> hi, there's a bug, it does abc when you do xyz
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> ok I fixed it
pleasantries are fine, just include the point along with them
Email WORKS JUST FINE. You know what else works fine? A PHONE.
I know that actually calling someone on the phone seems to be traumatic for anyone under 35, but hey.
If it's really important--call. If it's not that important--why am I being interrupted? Send me email.
Chat--all the expressiveness of text with the interruptiveness of a phone call.
First off, this is needlessly hostile and ageist. Please stop it. I am over 35 and we do not need to keep on with this "well if you're young you are too stupid to understand the One True Ways of doing things." Age discrimination is unfair regardless of direction.
> Chat--all the expressiveness of text with the interruptiveness of a phone call.
For me, chat is far less intrusive than a phone call yet still has the back-and-forth that doesn't easily happen with an e-mail. If you send me a chat message, that's more than just "hi," I can look at it and formulate a brief reply and we can keep going back and forth as needed. We may also migrate the conversation to voice (and video!) or we may drop to a rate more like e-mail.
Either way, I do not need a ringing phone 15 times per day any more than I need 300 e-mails or daily chats that start with "hi" and nothing more.
Okay, that's the first real, valid argument I've seen against a phone call. I had no idea that these services had penetrated so far that they are normalized.
However, not all of us operate in "developer-only" land. People external to the company (at least, prior to Covid) would have phones but almost certainly not a "conferencing app". So, giving out your number would be a fairly normal thing to do in the course of business so giving it to colleagues would not be considered unusual--at least in the US.
Had your first message been "Hi! In the Foo module, do we really need the function Bar to be public?" you would have been all set after 8 minutes.
A chat, like email, is just a tool to get shit done.