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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

> Hey, how’s it going? Do you know where I can find X?”

This is BAD advice. Always start with something generic. 99.99% of the time it doens't matter, but you need to be in the habit. Otherwise you will be in that .001% of the time where you send "Hey, how’s it going? About the plan to fire lay off Joe" and it turns out Joe is physically standing next to your target and sees the message. Maybe it never happens to you, but better to give the other person time to respond "in a meeting" letting you know not to discuss a sensitive topic right now.

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This isn't a justification to lead with something inane and generic. It's simply a reason why sensitive topics should be discussed in planned circumstances, like a phone call, meeting, etc.

Getting pinged with generic 'hi', 'you there', 'hello' messages that have zero context are one of the most disruptive things that one can be subjected to with real time messaging. If a message clearly states a need or intent, the recipient can glance at it and make an instant determination about prioritization of any response/change in workflow.

https://www.nohello.com/ explains why that particular point is actually good advice.

Not in all cultures. When I work with some I need to "hello", "hi", "how are you" and so on for small talk before we get down to business. Some people are down to business, some will decide you are impolite for not making small talk first. This type of thing is important when you have international conversations.

When I worked in sales, I do think small talks were helpful.

But if we are talking about in-house teams, my experience was always better to address issue immediately.

However I never had international in-house teams before though.

A real life pro tip is to turn off desktop notifications for chat messages so this sort of thing is impossible.

This criticisim is slightly misguided. Let's say you have email notifications turned on too, and Joe could be standing next to you. Do you expect everybody to start email conversations with "whats up?" just so you can establish a confidential environment?

It's all about the topic discussed. Most of the time you just need to get the question out there. It's not confidential but you don't want to waste time with an extra round trip. So just write it down. No matter chat or email.

And sometimes something sensitive comes up. Then you take precautions, like booking a meeting, or having an understanding within management that your mail inbox/chat contents/.. are considered confidential (which they should) or similar.

https://www.animalz.co/blog/bottom-line-up-front/ is the blog post that I can most credit with changing my written communication style. Knowing what's expected of me prior to engaging in a full-fledged conversation helps me triage, and also helps me prime the discussion when I context switch over to it.

This is why it peeves me when people constantly just go "hey do you have a few minutes to chat?". Just tell me what you want, there's no good reason to keep me in suspense.

Isn't that exactly the technique made infamous by the "Lumberg" character in Office Space? He would walk up with his coffee cup..."what's happening? did you get the memo?"

Didn't read TFA due to paywall.

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