Ask HN: How do you deal with slow / phone culture? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with slow / phone culture?

2 pointsdirtybirdnj9 comments

I recently started a new job where I'm building a website and some software infrastructure for a brand new company. I have been a professional developer for over a decade and worked in many teams large and small, as well as both business and tech driven orgs.

The company exists because the person who founded another organization got some investment and now he's moving forward with part of the business the investment org isn't interested in.

The challenge I have is that I'm a very software / technical oriented person who is used to thinks like Slack, emailing to setup appointments and scheduling things in the future.

I am working with a group of people who are older than me who prefer email and telephone over anything else. Rather than scheduling time to talk they will just call each other up at random times. Often I will send emails with direct requests asking "what time is good for everyone?" and not receive a response at all. I want to plead with the team for better communications but I have not been at the organization long enough to have the political capital to make this happen.

Can anybody suggest articles / books / materials that might help me figure out how to best communicate with this audience? These are not new challenges but I'm failing to describe it to Google in a way that gives me any meaningful responses.

Thanks

> Often I will send emails with direct requests asking "what time is good for everyone?" and not receive a response at all.

Be more proactive. Make things easy for the people you’re communicating with. Don’t send e-mails asking others to schedule your meeting for you.

Send an e-mail with a proposed time. Include a meeting invite. Tell people to inform you if the time doesn’t work.

More broadly: It doesn’t sound like the rest of the company is struggling to communicate with each other, but rather that they’re not communicating in the exact way you prefer.

There is no singular “right” way for a company to communicate. Part of good communication is learning to adapt to how the company interacts with each other.

If the company likes phone calls, it’s time to learn how to like phone calls. Pick up the phone and make the call for someone you know isn’t going to read their email for a while. Learn the art of quick phone calls and keeping it short. Gradually try to use more email and let people know that you prefer email for yourself, but you’re not going to have much success if you try to force the rest of the company to change their entire communication style to match your personal preference.

>rather that they’re not communicating in the exact way you prefer.

Nail directly on head. I am trying to figure out how to reasonably make a case for what I think will work best. I am making attempts to communicate and I'm concerned that my attempts are either not conveying information properly, or people are not interested in the information I want to discuss.

I am socially awkward and dealing with stuff like this is exponentially more difficult than the technical work I am trying to schedule meetings for.

Paul Grahms essay on Maker / Manager schedule encapsulates this perfectly. How do you convince Managers to at least be aware of the Maker schedule and how different that is from theirs? How do you get people to care about this without coming off as whiney and demanding?

It's not about email / phone, it's about styles of thinking and order of processing. Social awkwardness has been a thorn in the side of my entire career and I'm trying really hard to do better at this opportunity.

If it's a small group simply picking up the phone and calling is probably more efficient compared to having an email conversation about when to talk.

I've been in this situation too and I gave up on trying to change the habits of the group.

I get this advice over and over... I absolutely hate making phone calls and I hate voicemail even more.

I prefer video calls since most of what we are talking about relates to websites and things both parties need to visually inspect.

I don't disagree with you, I just hate this feedback because I keep getting smacked in the face with the unavoidability of it

The point isn’t really that phone calls are better than video calls or that Slack is better than email or whatever.

The point is that you have to learn to adapt to how other people prefer to communicate. If they like phone calls, you have to learn to make phone calls. If the company prefers video calls, it’s time to get good at video calls.

But you have to at least meet in the middle. One person can’t force the rest of the company to communicate in their preferred channels (unless that person is the CEO)

I agree it's a 50/50 thing, both sides need to be willing to adapt.

I agree with the advice of learning to walk in step with those you work with. The main question of my post is how do I advocate for a more structured communication style to an audience that is either indifferent or hostile to this style.

These are super intelligent, friendly and capable people. I hope I am not framing them negatively, this post is not a dig at them, it's more of a question of how to politely push or bend things in a positive direction. I feel like the task I have at hand is like trying to get kids to eat their vegetables or herd cats.

> The point isn’t really that phone calls are better than video calls or that Slack is better than email or whatever.

One challenge with calls is when callers are ignorant that their unscheduled call can wipe-out the recipient's mental flow state.

I would engage an SMS-to-Slack gateway for texting, and expect a fee (you’ll see Twilio used). I expect email is third-class and you won’t be able to change that; voicemail is their email. Get a headset that’s comfortable for interrupt-driven work. When stumped for search terms, consider that there are successful positions working this way, agents for professional sports players, for example.

I have to say I think this is a little overkill. Email gets used, but conversations drown in gigantic threads.

I'm hoping to get on a few weekly calls with these guys, its just hard to know when to schedule them. Should I just propose a time and let them say no? I am used to being deferential to other peoples time so it feels awkward to claim a spot on someone else's calendar without discussing it first.

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