Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

dontasktoask.com

247 pointschetangoti366 comments

Yes, this, 100%. I find it very annoying to get a notification popping up on my screen for you to say "hi" when obviously you want to ask me for something...and then you don't ask or say anything else until I stop what I'm doing and say "Hi! What's up?" back to you. After another 5-10 minutes of waiting for you to see me ask "what's up?" and then type out what is up, which we all knew you were going to end up doing anyway.

Like, come on. It's a chat app, you can see whether I'm available or not without probing. If you have something to ask/talk about, then ask/talk about it, don't wait for me to prove that my chat status is accurate. You can be friendly by saying "Hi" or whatever at the start of your message, but then include the message after. It's not hard.

Sorry... this is a huge pet peeve of mine.

Slightly more annoying is someone who you do not know giving you a "Hey, how are you doing?".

Try, "Hey Bob, this is Alice, I work on the QA team in Dublin. I'm looking at an issue I think you might be able to help me with http://jira.yourcorp.org/browse/ORDERS-1234. Would you have a minute to discuss this?"

> Slightly more annoying is someone who you do not know giving you a "Hey, how are you doing?".

This is a cultural thing - some cultures value small talk as a requisite step in person to person interactions, including in business. Americans do have a reputation of wanting to get straight to business and of dispensing with small talk though.

Speaking from experience in France, one can call the same business and make the same request with small talk (polite) and without small talk (impolite) and get vastly different outcomes. If one jumps straight to "I would like to schedule a tour of the winery today", one is more likely to hit a no than if one went in with "Hello, how are you? I was wondering if it would be possible to schedule a tour of the winery today?"

I loathe phatic expressions in general, but yeah, over chat with someone you don't know is about as bad as it gets. It would be great if people actually meant the question, but they almost never do.

That also isn't a good opener. Discuss what specifically about it? It's still waiting for a contentless "yes"/"sure".

Just begin the discussion.

I think a lot of people do this because they are bad/slow at typing and don't want to bother leveling up.

> how are you doing?

I’m so annoyed by the abuse of this phrase that I’ve taken to giving entirely inappropriate responses (based on context) when folks ask.

I had one person send "hi" to me. I ignored it hoping they'd send the question eventually without me saying "hi" back. After 30 mins they sent "hi" again...

I think from now on I'm just going to ignore it from the people who do it all the time. They won't get a response unless they actually tell me what they want.

Bonus points if the greeting is included in the same message as the inquiry, so as to not be notified multiple times for the same thing.

Isn’t it a bug of the chat app, notifying someone for each message despite having a UX which incentivizes sending a message each time you type Enter?

Just because the chat app shows that you are logged in, it does not mean that you are immediately available to chat. If I want to leave a message for someone with a response accepted at their convenience, then I send an email. If I reach out via chat, it's because I expect a realtime exchange. Again, because the little green dot appears next to user's name does not mean they are not deep in the tall grass and readily available to chat. To me, chat is just like walking up to someone at the cubicle to have a conversation. If I walk up to someone and notice they are deep in it, I don't bother them. Chat doesn't allow for that kind of signaling, so a "got a sec?" isn't a wast of time as it allows for them to not reply indicating "no" without stopping to type "no".

> "got a sec?"

The problem is that the answer to this is heavily dependent on what it is, especially because "got a sec" doesn't meaningfully time box the activity. I need something more to know whether this is something I can engage in immediately.

> Just because the chat app shows that you are logged in, it does not mean that you are immediately available to chat.

That is what “busy” statuses are for, most good IM solutions support this. If I message someone while they are set that way I accept they will ignore me until a later time. Even if not set to busy, I and accept a non-immediate response. For me in a professional context IM has become short-form email, with the advantage very-low priority cruft¹, and external comms², are not mixed in with local conversations.

[1] HR updates & other periodicals, mailing lists, unsolicited junk, alerts that I'm 2nd-or-plus-line contact for, ...

[2] which for me are not usually a priority as I'm not supposed to be client facing, if I'm contacted directly instead of the client using a proper support channel they'll get a slower response than via the proper channel³⁴, anything else encourages the incorrect behaviour!

[3] officially, direct comms like that are not covered by any SLA even if the same request via proper channels would get the “grade A, class 1, priority 0, emergency, all hands to their stations” treatment

[4] unless, of course, I'm expecting their contact as part of an ongoing issue I've been drafted in to deal with

"Just because the chat app shows that you are logged in, it does not mean that you are immediately available to chat."

It's 2022, chat app statuses are more sophisticated than just "online/offline" indicators. It will tell you if I'm busy, if I'm in a call, if I'm presenting, if I've been AFK, etc. If I'm online and none of those statuses are true, I can probably engage now.

"If I want to leave a message for someone with a response accepted at their convenience, then I send an email. If I reach out via chat, it's because I expect a realtime exchange. Again, because the little green dot appears next to user's name does not mean they are not deep in the tall grass and readily available to chat."

Saying "hello" before asking a question doesn't somehow increase the chances that I will be more available. You can ask what you need in the first message, and if I can't respond despite my chat status, I will get to it when I can, at which point we can have the realtime discussion. You don't get a realtime exchange by saying "hello" and then waiting for an answer.

"To me, chat is just like walking up to someone at the cubicle to have a conversation."

Except it's not. There is a distinct difference in the mode of communication here. You wouldn't walk up to someone's desk, hand them a letter, and then leave, but that's exactly what you can do with a chat. While chat is more real-time than email, it is still a written record and it's slower than an actual conversation; as a result, it comes with its own set of pros and cons that facilitate things differently.

"If I walk up to someone and notice they are deep in it, I don't bother them. Chat doesn't allow for that kind of signaling, so a "got a sec?" isn't a wast of time as it allows for them to not reply indicating "no" without stopping to type "no"."

Again, it does signal that, with status icons. And even if my status is green but I happen to still be busy for some reason, a chat notification is a chat notification. Saying "hello" is as much an intrusion as saying "hello, I have this problem with <x>, can you help me?" -- except if you just say "hello", then I have to respond and then wait more time for a second intrusive notification to find out what you need.

> If I reach out via chat, it's because I expect a realtime exchange.

This is not a reasonable expectation, and is why people ignore your attempts to initiate a real-time exchange.

That's not how chat works - you're using a wrong analogy, and probably causing confusion and frustration amongst your coworkers. Chat is nothing like walking up to someone. "got a sec" is a waste of time and an annoyance, the sooner you learn that the better. Just put the greeting with the question: "Got a sec, I was wondering if blahblahblah?" Or even better "Hey, I was wondering if blahblahblah". Then they can respond right away, or not, or say, "Give me a few and I'll get back to you". This is how modern chat works, please learn it!

“ If I reach out via chat, it's because I expect a realtime exchange. ”

I don’t make that assumption. My company is distributed across the globe. Some teams are offset by 12.5 hours. For someone not collocated, chat (via Slack) is closer to email except more focused.

I expect people to response to chats “at their earliest convenience”. If they are in different time zones, we try to pack as much into each response to maximize the communications. If they are collocated, once we start a conversation it usually continues in realtime.

You are wrong.

I say just 'Hello', if I suspect that asking my question outright, would get me delayed attention.

...so, if you think the person is reluctant to help you with something, your solution is to get them into a conversation unknowingly about the thing they can't/won't help you with?

I generally outright ignore people only saying 'hello' because it is mostly crypto spams these days if you actually reply.

I think it is better to just say it, or be ready to be ignored if the other end just don't know who are you.

Most people will not be thinking the same way you do.

Pet peeves are anxieties that haven't been properly dealt with yet. I'd encourage folks to mute the notifications at the OS level and habitually check your chat app as an alternative. The key cause is often the notifications themselves and some are more sensitive to them than others.

I would 100% miss messages that way, so it's not an option. But honestly, the anxiety isn't about the notifications (although those are annoying). It's about how if someone says "hi" without any info, then I say "hi" back and now I have to wait for a response before I even know if I can help or not. The anxiety is about time management, not notification toasts.

... I think maybe you need to rethink or work on that one.

Do you just run up to people and ask them a question in person, or do some kind of greeting first?

I don't think it's a bad thing that people share some mannerisms in IM that they do in person. Are you really stressed out? Either way, looking at the world at the moment, what a great thing to have as a huge problem.

> Do you just run up to people and ask them a question in person, or do some kind of greeting first?

The problem is not whether you're greeting or not. Nobody complained about having a greeting in their messages. The problem is that chats are very asynchronous; by the time I read your message you could've solved it already. There is absolutely nothing wrong in writing "Hey, I need help with <x>. I already tried <y> and <z>. If you have a few moments I'd appreciate the help". Then the answer would be "Hello! Oh, of course, the answer is <a>".

This is especially important if you're getting a lot of messages every day. At the end of the day, that amounts to a non-negligible amount of time lost, just because the person didn't write their problem right after their greeting - which they would've done anyway after your greeting.

The closer analogue would be leaving a voicemail or a note that says "hey, I want to talk to you ASAP" without any context.

What Pooge said. Chats are more realtime than, say, emails, but they are not as realtime as face-to-face communication, and should not be treated as such. Saying hello is great! Saying only hello and giving no other information is not.

This feels like one of those internet rules that stems from a neurodiverse IRC-type crowd

Neurotypical people use this sort of social foreplay as a way to handshake a conversation[1], where the tech types want an input/output process devoid of mood and feeling

It is silly and quite time wasting online too, but it's what they need to feel comfortable asking you questions. I figure if they need to adapt to some of my quirks I'll do likewise for theirs

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_talk#Purpose

For me it's not because I want an input/output type conversation, it's because I want to maintain asynchronous conversation.

If I reply "I'm fine thanks how are you" then you know I'm here and looking, you've forced me to into a synchronous conversation and now I will appear rude if I don't immediately answer your "I just have a quick question"

If you just post your question upfront, I can read it and prioritize it myself based on what I am currently doing.

I'm the 'engineer' side of the equation. But often I need async interaction with various others. So I just combine it all in one message:

Hey, Jo! I just have a quick question for when you have a moment: <question for Jo>

And leave it. I'll ping Jo again at a time interval depending on urgency - sometime this sprint? I'll remind about the message in a couple days. Need it today? I indicate that when I ask, and about 4hrs later I'll poke a bit to see where we are.

Yup. And for the sender you don't need to wait around to know you have the go-ahead for a response, if you ask it well enough you should be good to go the next time you look. The key is to say everything you wanted to say as clearly as possible. Save everyone time and get the answers you want with the most efficiency.

A buddy of mine does this via text message. He'll ask, "hey are you working tomorrow?", and it's 50:50 whether his next question is going to be

"can you pick me up from the airport?" (forcing me to quickly reply yes even if I might not want to, because he already knows I'm not working and I don't want to seem rude—why can't he just take the train?),

or "im in town, wanna hang out tonight? (sure, sounds like fun).

Wish he'd skip the leading question and not put me in a corner.

Because the method is indeed async, you can say "I'm fine thanks how are you" with no future expectation of immediate reply. It's okay. If they wanted sync, they would've asked for a phone call.

But, suppose you switch to sync. They ask a question. It indeed isn't important to you right now. Tell them you're busy with other tasks, and you'll reply later. It isn't rude, we all frequently work with others that have a lot on their plate.

> For me it's not because I want an input/output type conversation, it's because I want to maintain asynchronous conversation.

In the context of an IRC chat room, isn’t all conversation assumed to be synchronous? (Forgive me if this has an obvious answer, as I’m not too familiar with IRC culture.)

No that’s not the reason.

In large channel, asking to ask just straight up spam the channel.

In small channel, the communication is mostly async. And by the time someone saw your “Can I ask something” message, you are probably offline.

Exactly. I'm far from "neurotypical" but I definitely use small talk in real life when appropriate. It's just not appropriate for IRC or other media like letters, email etc.

Why would a neurodiverse person want a conversation devoid of mood and feeling? Maybe their feelings just work differently and you can't understand them.

Polling people with non-informative questions is a good way to distract them for no reason if they can't help you. I think that's impolite. As someone with ADHD, that can be disruptive and at times gets extremely frustrating because I can easily lose half an hour to a 1 minute distraction if it demands my attention. Give me some initial information to work with and I will be able to respond without losing my focus.

It’s good to remember that many of the people on here are not normal.

I had spent several weeks on an extremely technical problem when I realized Mother’s Day was coming up. Saw a giant oversized Winnie the Pooh bear that I knew she would like.

So in my extreme logical state I was thinking I would just slice off the arms legs and heads put them in separate boxes and mail them to her for reassembly. Very elegant solution.

A bit later when my mind wasn’t so analytical I realized my mistake. Clearly her house didn’t have room for a giant bear. So I sent her a Winnie the Pooh lamp instead. She was happy, and I didn’t need to disassemble her beloved childhood icon.

Personally it’s because I find conversations full of mood and feeling kinda boring, usually very light in substance and often gossip based

Also ADHD (inattentive) for what it’s worth. I understand the problem, I’m saying this solution is ineffective and just comes off a bit bellendary

You’re just gonna come off as some Big Bang Theory Sheldon-type asshat by giving people a massive document to read before they can besmirch your presence. Do they also have to read the XY problem article first or do you wait for them to ask a question before springing that trap card?

It’s not good optics for nerd kind and it’s way more hassle on both parties than is needed

I think that is part of it, and part is also copying a pattern that is appropriate in some situations into situations where it isn't.

Meaning: I totally agree with the article that asking to ask is a complete waste of time on Internet forums, especially technical ones. Those intro questions usually go unanswered, as they should IMO.

OTOH, what I thought the article might be about before I read it, is when people in RL say something like, "May I you ask a question?" before asking a potentially sensitive question. There are valid psychology reasons to do that in certain situations.

It's common for people to mimic conversation patterns, mostly unconsciously. They can get copied into situations where it is just a waste of time.

It's quite an assumption that people who dislike this kind of meaningless introductions are neuroatypical. I for one would more likely "ask to ask" in an offline situation, but wouldn't do it when sending a text message, because only the former makes any sense.

Is it wrong? I’ve only got my experiences to go by and I absolutely hate this social foreplay bollocks

ADHD inattentive for context, I just know you’re gonna come off looking like an ass if you force this sort of thing on anyone outside of a 2004 IRC channel

Yeah, I don’t think it’s just lazy or social habit that causes people to do this. Particularly when it’s an outsider (eg a sales person in an engineering team’s chat room) in a situation where some response is expected (eg a work environment), it can seem presumptuous to dump a question that will require a bunch of time to engage with. Asking to ask expresses “I realize I’m asking for a bunch of your time here and it’s okay if you don’t want to help [even if you could]” and it gives the room a chance to decline the question before getting far enough into it that it would appear rude to bail out.

I’m guessing a bit here from what I’ve seen. I don’t think this stuff is conscious. But I don’t feel like the authors of stuff like this are even trying to have empathy for why people do this.

You can still have your small talk. Just put it in the same message. Getting pinged for "hey" and then they spend several minutes typing was a waste of pining me when they could have just prepended "hey" to the full message.

I hate small talk more than you do. Promise. The logic here is if you're heading through hell, speedrun it

When you're the one asking for help, the onus is on you to accommodate the people who might help you.

it’s also a law of power, by asking a small question first it forces them to either be rude and ignore you or be gracious and engage, and once engaged you ask a larger question (when it's even ruder to ignore you). Political donation drives, for example, start you off with a $5 donation. obviously the social rules are different in async modes.

Hi, in my case, it's not for the reasons you imply. I'm perfectly comfortable with and appreciate the importance of the "small-talk handshake", which is more critical in person.

That said, avoiding "naked pings"[1] online is a matter of reducing the amount of mental drain for me. This is especially important for your sanity if you're actively helping out folks on a chat channel (community, or internal). As noted in my comment[1], I don't insist on this, as it doesn't help being dogmatic about it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30641083

So I had to click through a link to find out you’re ok with, but prefer not to get, naked pings. Naked pings I had to click through a further link to find the full definition assuming I didn’t know what you were talking about

And I’m not even trying to ask you a question! See how much faff this sort of thing is?

If people doing that is non-facetiously testing your sanity, don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm, stop helping people!

No one is complaining about pleasantries, it's the fact that you're presenting nothing to start with. Just say "Hey, good morning. <Question>?"

I'm going to ignore a greeting with nothing following if I'm doing something else but if you say "Hi, we're unable to connect to the network shares, can you help?" You now have my attention.

> Neurotypical people use this sort of social foreplay as a way to handshake a conversation[1], where the tech types want an input/output process devoid of mood and feeling

Majority of "tech types" are neurotypical. Neurodiverse are minority in tech. There is more of them in tech then among teachers or something like that, but still.

And even neuroatypical use elaborate rituals before they ask question. Even autists in tech.

I understand the point you're making but I think you're focusing on the precise wording of my comment rather than the meaning

I am not a psychologist or therapist or anything, lets just assume I'm using the words wrong and grouping people inaccurately. I'm talking about the people who make internet rules like don't ask to ask vs the people that don't do that

> It is silly and quite time wasting online too, but it's what they need to feel comfortable asking you questions...

No necessarily. Asking "Any Java experts around?" takes little effort, while formulating a question for a Java expert could take significant effort. A "no" response for the first question could save everyone from wasting their time with the second.

This might be the rationale, but it's fundamentally very wrong. In the vast majority of "programming/tech discussion/help" spaces I frequent, the response to this is almost always going to be: "Maybe, ask your question."

It turns out that, a significant percentage of the time, the "preconditions" for the question are either: - Way too specific (i.e. yes, even a non java expert knows what "nullpointerexception" means) - Not nearly specific enough (i.e. no, I know Java but your issue is from a specific library with 1 page of documentation from the 90's)

This, in my opinion, is exactly what makes the 'asking to ask' so frustrating. It's impossible to know if I can answer your question without actually knowing what the question is. And if I ask what the question is, now I'm the one uncomfortable with the situation when it turns out to be something I can't help with.

edit: I also feel like it's worth noting, I'm aware that formulating a good question takes time and effort; however, in the "asking for help" / "giving help" scenario, it's very much common courtesy to do the most you can to enable people to help you. We want to help! But please ask a good question. (I do totally understand that asking good questions is a hard thing to learn, though! I started out asking very poor questions and slowly learned over time.)

> Asking "Any Java experts around?" takes little effort

which is precisely why this is annoying: it's asking for a social commitment without putting any effort in. It also reaches for the top shelf for no reason. Does the person's question really need a Java "expert"? Probably not.

> A "no" response for the first question could save you from wasting your time with the second.

Arguably if they were to find help _anywhere_ they would benefit from articulating their question in a clear and concise way. Let alone the high probability that through writing the question they might answer their own question, because we're all humans.

> A "no" response for the first question could save everyone from wasting their time with the second.

That “no” is never going to happen though. Every individual might know that they aren’t a Java expert, but they don’t know that every other individual is also not an expert. So there is nobody in a position to answer “no”.

> A "no" response for the first question could save everyone from wasting their time with the second.

If I have a question that takes time to write up, I'll need to spend that time either way. Better to write the question up front so I can copy/paste it wherever I need until I get the help I need than to ask "any Java experts around" and proceed to waste anyone who responds' time while they wait for me to actually compose the question.

I don't think it's necessarily a neurotypical vs -diverse thing. It's more about social awareness that certain forms of online communication work differently from offline communication and as a consequence, different rules of etiquette apply. Remember "netiquette"?

It does stem from IRC. But I can't remeber where it was that I first read that rule and the link to this domain

I’d imagine this domain might ring a bell in that case

http://mywiki.wooledge.org/NetEtiquette#Just_ask_the_questio...

Also famed for the “XY problem” that nerds always assume now wanting to look clever, often used incorrectly

http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem

Neurodiverse? Neurotypical?

What genre of classification is this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity

Anecdotally, I started encountering this terminology about 5 years ago I think. The linked wikipedia says it was coined in 1999.

I don’t think people do this because they want to be polite. The ‘hello’ is basically the start of what is the human equivalent of the TCP three way handshake.

- Hello (SYN)

> Hi (ACK)

- How are you doing ? (SYN, ACK)

Basically, they are trying to set up a synchronous channel over what is essentially an asynchronous medium. This is even more annoying than just slowing down the answer, they are demanding your undivided attention during the conversation.

You know you are on HN when hello/hi is explained in terms of SYN/ACK and not the other way around... Jokes aside this is actually called a "phatic expression" in linguistics:

> In linguistics, a phatic expression is communication which serves to establish or maintain social relationships rather than to impart information. Phatic expressions are a socio-pragmatic function and are used in everyday conversational exchange typically expressed in situational instances that call for social cues [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression

The worst thing though is when the SYN,ACK has 10 minutes of latency on it and the receiving end is blocked waiting for it.

It's a bit like going up to someone in the office and saying "Hi", they reply "What's up" and then the first person just stares at you...

Somehow I always fall for it when really I should just go off and make a cup of tea.

> I don’t think people do this because they want to be polite

Actually, yes, we really are (were). I don't have a problem with it, but the people who do have a problem with it seem to have a problem with it with the intense burning passion of a thousand suns so I've stopped doing it, but don't attribute malice to people who were just trying to follow social conventions.

I worked at a company that would send these sort of messages over Slack, including a priority, and expect some kind of ACK back within a certain amount of time. It was the worst thing for productivity that I've experienced in a working environment, everyone hated it except for the CEO and CTO who implemented it.

Receiving the SYN message already distracted the programmer who received it. If the sender had included the entire question or opening message all at once, then the receiver could decide if it was worth their time to answer at that moment.

Instead the receiver of the message needed to break away from their thought process and devote time to determining the scope of the question.

Do not recommend.

I look at IM as closer to oral conversation than email. If you want async communication, email. If you want async communication from someone who wants synchronous communication disable notifications and reply later. I don't see why people have to expect all people to communicate in the same cold, unfriendly way.

> Basically, they are trying to set up a synchronous channel over what is essentially an asynchronous medium.

Yes, it is just a workaround for missing features of explicit seession begin/end that are in other mediums.

> This is even more annoying than just slowing down the answer, they are demanding your undivided attention during the conversation.

Why is that annoying? IMHO it is a sensible trade - i offer my undivided attention and expect an undivided attention from the other side. As long as such conversation is beneficial to both sides then it is advantageous to giving it full attention instead of continuously task-switching on-and-off with each reply.

Paying proper attention was always core to effective human communication. Will we ever adapt to being async all the time?

You should introduce them to RFC 7413.

As much as I think this should just be common sense, when I see this URL in someone's status message/bio on a work messaging platform, it strikes me as condescending and unprofessional.

This would work great as a bot in your chat server that autoreplies to these single word greetings

"In our work environment, synchronous communication is important! If you were intending to set up synchronous communication, please mention why, along with your greeting!"

What are your thoughts on individuals publishing READMEs on how best to interact with them? Similar sort of thing or sufficiently different?

While I like the concept from one angle, on another angle I'm not reading a fucking manual every time I want to talk to someone, it's just not happening. Especially since we know people will just start adding shit to it every time something happens they don't like and we'll end up with pages of interaction rules. No thanks.

I’ve only seen that once and I thought it was insane. That person was fired less than a year later, so to me, it’s an extremely negative signal.

I have no seen that yet. Is that prevalent somewhere? Seems like a lot of effort to talk to someone as sibling says.

I could see that but only if the bio might be read by paying customers of your company. Internally, encouraging people to use their and your time more productively seems like a good idea.. excessive deference in the workplace is communication blocker.

I would never post something like this. I'm just as peeved by "hello" type chat messages as everyone else here, just as I am when someone walks into my office and starts talking to me while I'm doing deep work. But I never want to make a colleague feel bad by doing so. The long term benefits of maintaining a warm and friendly work environment far outweigh the occasional annoyance. Also, most people are smart enough to pick up on subtle involuntary social cues. There aren't many repeat offenders.

This reminds me a lot about when people ask "Hey, are you doing anything Saturday afternoon?"

Which is trap.

Because if you say "no" then you don't have a polite excuse to decline to help someone move houses, troubleshoot a fiber install, or go for a hike.

The polite way to ask is "hey, can you help me move on Saturday? I have a truck and 3 others already."

I'm a socially awkward person and always feel bad diving right into requests like that.

> Which is trap.

This is a completely normal day-to-day conversation topic I have with my buddies via text.

> Friend: What're you getting into tomorrow?

> Me: Not much man, doing some chores around the house. Got a pork butt I need to butcher. Typical Saturday.

> Me: What about you?

At which point my friend will either directly ask or otherwise mention that he is moving. At this point I may volunteer all, some, or none of my time depending on what life has.

I often will say "you there?" or "you busy?"

This means I don't have a single question, it means I want to have a synchronous conversation. There are lots of reasons for the latter. This is what I would prefer people do with me as well, and if I am busy, I feel like I can ignore the message until I have a few minutes to talk (often with voice/phone)

I say this as someone working from home, thousands of miles from most people I work with and also far from most people I communicate with socially online (such as family). I find this approach of "just send a question and they can answer asynchronously" to be one of the reasons that working from home can be damaging to mental health. Natural human interactions, where there can be a real time back and forth, are positive things. Not necessarily always, but especially if I haven't communicated with a person in weeks, I'd much prefer this sort of thing.

If there is a specific topic I want to talk about, that can be expressed in a few words, sure, I'll say that. And if it really is just a simple question that can be answered directly, I'll just ask. But the point is that those are not always the case, and depending on the job each of us has and our relationship, it might be unlikely for that to be the case.

I've been working remote for ~7 years. The way I would handle this is simply saying something like "You available? Wanted to get a few minutes to discuss X/Y/Z"

When you're attempting to set up synchronous communication, it's essential to let the other person know what the communication is about, and what level of focus you need from them, so they have time to prepare and ensure they have enough time for a proper dialogue. Can't count the number of times someone has said "you there?" while I'm in a meeting, which in my mind is "I'm available to answer simple questions" but not available to jump on a voice call, which is what they wanted originally.

I will usually fully ignore those. If someone wants to have a synchronous conversation, I want them to state that.

Instead of saying "You there?" I would prefer "You have 5 minutes to discuss X?" or "Do you have a moment to hop on a call to chat about ?". That way I can make a decision on if I have time for it or not, instead of having to reply with "I'm here, what do you need?" only for it to end up being something that I didn't want to be disturbed for.

"If someone wants to have a synchronous conversation, I want them to state that."

The people that I would send a "you there?" message understand that my message is shorthand for that. They might respond with "in a meeting" or "gimme a few minutes" or if they are available for a synchronous conversation, "hey" or "what's up?"

I have a couple contacts that are "on the spectrum" and I deal with them a little differently. They seem to need things spelled out a bit more explicitly. But those people tend to get left out of many discussions, and don't seem to do as well careerwise in the long term, because they don't really connect on a human level with people.

This still seems like an example where you could directly state your request and avoid some unnecessary ceremony. When I want to have a synchronous conversation, I don't send "you there?", I send "Could you call me when you have a minute? I want to chat about <some topic>."

Yeah, it depends on who I am talking to. If it is someone I am fairly friendly with, or family, I'm less likely to do that. If there is a single topic that is why I am reaching out, sure.

That would be fine but you could give some context with that initial approach so that the other person can decide if they can stop or not.

i.e. "Are you busy? Could you help me with blah blah"

If you're getting bombarded with "you there?" from 20 people because some service they use has gone and right now you're trying to fix it for them all, well that can be stressful too.

If you just "Hi." with nothing else they might never know to get back to you on a completely different issue.

"If you're getting bombarded with "you there?" from 20 people because some service they use has gone and right now you're trying to fix it for them all, well that can be stressful too."

Well it depend one what your job is and what your relationship to that person is. I wouldn't send a "you there?" to someone in IT when I need something fixed. But I would to someone I've had an ongoing working relationship with and when we communicate, there is typically more that one single issue to discuss.

What I do when needing a synchronous communication is ask "do you have time right now for a <conversation/call/chat>?"

That way the person knows I want something synchronous, and they have the option to say no and give me a time when they can be synchronous.

These are my 2 least favorite ways of being reached.

"Are you there?" This phrase makes me feel like I'm being accused of not being available if I don't reply and I find it rude and inconsiderate of other's time.

You busy? Of course I am...?

I would leave both of these on unread until the end of time.

You can still add some context on what you want to talk about. “Hey, do you have a minute. I want to pick your brain on xyz”. The recipient can then say, “Hey, I’m focused on abc right now and I can ping you in 15” or engage in the conversation. It gives the option. A simple Hey is like acosting someone on their way to a meeting to talk about your problem. They have no option but to engage. Personally, I’ve gotten used to being firm on these things and just don’t respond to these messages. They usually send an email or setup a meeting or ask me the question in a meeting we’re both in. Clearly it’s not urgent enough for me to drop everything and respond.

And some people will think you're rude as a result.

You should always try to give context. Examples...

Are you available to answer some questions about Docker?

Would you have time to help me with this nginx config?

Do you have time for our 1-on-1?

I try not to say "have a minute" because conversations rarely last a minute or two if we're going to do it voice.

As a manager, I try really hard never to say, "Can we talk?" without context.

There is still no reason to not state your questions upfront, even if the answers are best delivered synchronously. Withholding that kind of information makes you appear dishonest in a professional setting.

You should still add the topic in your first message. "You around? I have a few questions about X and Y and was wondering if I could grab 10 minutes of your time to talk them through?"

If you just want a synchronous conversation per se, ask a #social channel if anyone's around for a real-time chat. If you want to have a specific synchronous conversation with someone (one-off or regularly), schedule it; this is what calendars are for!

you can still say "hey, I need your help with xxx, do you have time now?" then at least other side know that to expect, can estimate how much time its needed to reserve for this synchronous communication and might later just replay with something like "sorry, I don't have time for this right now, but you can reach Yyy, he is also familiar with this topic"

If someone hits me with a "hello" and nothing else, I may opt to respond with a waving emoji reaction. Not all of the time, but sometimes for sure (depending who the recipient is).

It gently encourages people to include something actionable in their first response, as it is likely they won't get a notification (or see the UI cue) that I reacted to their message. So they go about their day and will eventually come back to the dialog to see that I did indeed acknowledge them.

I like the idea of nohello.net, but in practice, it's a little crass to actually deploy effectively to colleagues.

Really the solution is to move all non-urgent communication back to email so that when someone DOES hit you with a hello, you know it's something that needs addressing ASAP, and you can entertain the conversation knowing you're unblocking something important vs. being distracted for no good reason.

This is also sometimes called a "naked ping"[1]:

  <Bob> Alice: Ping

  <Alice> Bob: Pong?

  <Bob> Alice: Can I talk to you now? I have a question.

    [LONG SILENCE...]

  <Alice> Bob: Sure. (Inside Alice's head: "Sigh, please ask the question, already!")

    [Again, in some cases, this is followed by a LONG SILENCE...]

  <Bob> Alice: A vague question with not much details.

Now, imagine what a test of sanity it becomes if it happens several times throughout the day, week, month.

Note, though: I don't mind "naked pings" myself; they don't bother me much. But I of course appreciate "fully dressed up pings".

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/No_naked_pings

This reminds me of the chat situation where a coworker will start with "Hi!" typing indicator.

In either case, it's like "yes, you have my attention. I cannot focus on anything at all until you hit enter, and I also can't reply because I have nothing to reply to".

I also can't complain like "hey if you're going to interrupt me can you just say the whole message so I can actually reply instead of being held in absolute suspense for many seconds of my life?" because that would be, frankly, even worse than what they're doing, which was done out of a kind of ignorance of etiquette.

I (politely) summarize this on IRC as: "Had you asked your question to start with, my response would've been your answer."

I'll respond with "hi", except I'll wait a few seconds to try and break their train of thought. Sometimes it works and the typing indicator goes away for a bit. I think I get less of these lone "hi" messages than I used to, so it may even be having an effect on them.

It really only works if there's a typing indicator and they've already started the next message, otherwise you're just giving them what they want and reinforcing the bad habit.

There's a similar 1 page site for that problem: https://nohello.net/en/

https://nohello.club

What I do in this instance is mute that person for an hour or so and leave to do what I was doing. It means a less quick response to the person but keeps me sane a lot of the time.

Which is why a lot of people set their status message (on Teams, Slack, etc.,) to "nohello.com"

Indeed, which is why I have turned off the "someone is typing" in the UI.

Related (are there others?):

No Hello (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29978860 - Jan 2022 (67 comments)

Please don't say just hello in chat (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25881800 - Jan 2021 (350 comments)

Don't ask to ask, just ask - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24259156 - Aug 2020 (101 comments)

No Hello (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24239880 - Aug 2020 (210 comments)

Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19648415 - April 2019 (265 comments)

Please Don't Say Just Hello in Chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868294 - July 2017 (46 comments)

This advice applies best in business settings. Business is transactional and it's very rare that someone wants to "get to know you". Those who do, will let you know by getting more involved or talking to you outside of these types of requests, not just out of the blue.

I'm a huge fan of no hello & "just ask" in our future world of async work.

https://sbmueller.github.io/nohello/

The opposite applies in interpersonal relationships. There you should ask to ask every time:

“Hey John can I ask you about your ex Gina? If now is not a good time, let me know when.”

John might not want to talk about Gina. Or he might not want to talk about an emotional issue before a big meeting at work. Or he might want to know what exactly you want to know and establish parameters of the conversation before diving into it.

Great point!

> I'm a huge fan of no hello & "just ask" in our future world of async work.

That is just a conflict between people who prefer async and who prefer sync communication. For sync communication, "hello" and "bye" are just markers for begin and end of a session, with implicit expectation that people focus on the session in between.

https://nohello.net/en/

I want one of these sites for this flow-destroying scenario:

Bob: Hi

Me: hey Bob. What can I do for you?

(Five minutes later)

Bob: how are you?

Me: I’m ok Bob. What do you need?

(Five minutes later)

Bob: Do you know much about the daily Foo sync task?

That “how are you” gets me because its meant to be polite but it has the exact opposite effect. It’s funny because developers are often characterised as lacking social skills, but it’s usually the non-developers (analyst, PM etc) who do this.

Maybe also one for good old:

Bob: <screenshot of blank page, address bar omitted>

Bob: Do you know what's going on here?

That reminds me of the time someone sent me a screenshot of the homepage of the website, and the email just said "please fix". I will get right on that.

This is a related but slightly different phenomenon. Frustrating the recipient, but probably not detrimental to the sender. Asking to ask in an IRC channel is definitely detrimental to the sender, though.

haha, when I read OP, I thought exactly of "Hello".

In my experience, this is almost entirely a regional cultural problem. I've never had an American or European coworker do the extended "hello" handshake. I've had a lot of East Asian and South American coworkers do it. I'm talking about fresh-off-the-boat (or still living there) people of other cultures. There's a strong culture of exchanging greetings and smalltalk in some places before getting to the point, especially if they're going to ask for a favor. It drives me nuts and completely backfires, because I'm less-inclined to engage with or help someone who makes me perform a social ritual before we get to the topic they're reaching out for. I tend to ignore them until content worth reacting to arrives in a message, but even ignoring a "hello" is a time-wasting distraction. By all means engage in smalltalk face-to-face if you haven't met up in a while, or even electronically if it's truly just a social call, but if we're coworkers, get to the damn point already.

I am the original author of the document this document was based on. It was an internal Wiki page at Google written when I was an SRE. After I wrote the original page, someone put up an internal shortlink at "go/nohello". After I left Google, someone took the Wiki page content and [illegally, since it was Google confidential, simply from being on the internal Wiki], and put it up on the net at "nohello.com".

Yeah, kinda makes sense a SRE at google would get annoyed at people even saying hi.

Did you manage to fix your stress levels or are you now bouncing around working massively hardcore jobs and burning out once a year, then taking a few months off and repeating?

I took a pay cut, got out of that game. And holy shit, life is more relaxed doing security incident response than SRE ;)

When I was at Google I just disabled chat. Not worth it at all. SRE comms for people who are actually on-call happen on IRC anyway.

It's definitely not just a problem on IRC, Slack, or Stack Overflow. In real life, if you go up to someone and say something like, "Hey can I talk to you for a second?" The following is almost always true:

a) They do not want to talk to you for "just a second," it will take much longer. b) It is a serious conversation that will require a lot of emotional energy c) It will immediately pre-empt anything else that you are doing right now

So that's why it's bad form. You don't take that same form to total strangers on the internet.

I don't mind a little chitchat if the person is responsive. I had one guy say "hi, can I ask you a question?" I responded within 30 seconds. The guy disappears and isn't heard from for 14+ hours. Kinda annoying.

They registered an entire domain for that?

It sounds like a fairly typical StackOverflow Meta posting. I read stuff like this constantly. There's a lot of SO folks that won't answer any question, unless it has already been solved, by the asker, in their question, so they can criticize it. The place is a lot less useful, for me, these days, than it used to be. I ask excellent questions, and I don't need to have someone call me "lazy," because I didn't throw the seed into the nest.

It's not wrong, but it's also not gonna change anything. Askers gonna ask.

Either one is fine. I wish that people messaging me "hello" and their inquiry together vs separately were one of my top 500 problems.

I've been fascinated by just how passionately enraged the people who do have a problem with this seem to be whenever it comes up on here. I've stopped doing it out of deference to them (it literally never occurred to me that it could possibly bother anybody), but there are people who seem to go into monitor-smashing rages when it happens.

Plenty of normal people have a pet peeve about getting texted out of the blue with just “wyd” or “U there?”

That would be the normie equivalent of sending a “hello” on Slack or Teams.

I hope they add value instead of just saying hello when they see people irl. Because turning don't say hi into a crusade is sure wasting more of my time than just accepting an awkward hi from time to time. I passionately hate the syntactical police! I thought tolerance of peoples' differences was supposed to be all the rage these days.

I'll blame stackoverflow. It's lead us to believe that anything but a precise, specific questions with clear use cases and previous attempt is going to get scolded for not meeting the guidelines.

It takes time to formulate a good tech question. "Why isn't my API getting called" is a easy question to ask but not likely to get much feedback. "Why isn't my API getting called I'm using library <X> and callback <Y> and routing framework <Z> and I've already read the documentation which says <XX> should work?" is a better question but harder to formulate. It's not surprising that someone wants to check to see if there's anyone in the void willing to answer first.

Formulating a question that doesn't waste your time requires me to shift perspective to figure out what information you need. As a result, half the time formulating the question leads me to discovering the answer. I'd consider that time well spent regardless of the answers I get.

The problem has been present basically forever. Well before stackoverflow.

What you really want to do is read the "how to ask questions the smart way" page by ESR:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Very short message, but concise.

I think it very much relates to the sentiment of Nardwuar's TEDx talk: [0]. He's an interviewer. He's interviewed practically everyone alive with music, from Nicky Minaj to Kurt Cobain and back! almost every genre !

And you know what the message is from his talk ? Just ask.

You wanna do an interview with X person ? Just ask, do it!

He doesn't wait for anyone to push him, he wants to do something, he does it. He interviewed Billie Eilish and even interviewed Cobain before the 2000s !

refs

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkSUazeI2nM

Interviewing Cobain after 2000 would be even more impressive!

yeah, lol I just realized he is dead. Nice joke. But he was kind of an ass in that interview so yeah.

I used to have this problem with our triage call center in India. I'm in the U.S. It was like pulling teeth trying to get to the point. Most annoying were the delays between pleasantries... You've interrupted what I was doing three times and then ghosted.

Them: hi

Me: Hello, how can I help you?

[Two minute wait]

Them: How are you?

Me: Great, what do you need?

[Ten minutes later]

Them: Do you have a few minutes?

Me: Am I on candid camera or something?

> ..which is just lazy. If you're not willing to do the work to solve your problem, why should we?

Eh, don't think I agree here. The initial ask is low-effort but so is the initial response expected ("I could help, what's up?"). It seems fair to want to aim for something like:

    A: low effort ask
    B: low effort response
    A: high effort ask now that you know someone's listening
    B: high effort response

to avoid things like:

    A: high effort ask  
    (no one's around, effort wasted)

I disagree with a "high effort ask" being a wasted effort if no-one's around.

Just because no-one's around now doesn't mean someone won't be around later. And writing down your thoughts can often be enough to crystalise your thinking to the point of having a new idea about a solution. So, you've either solved your problem for yourself, or you can share it with the person that does help in the end.

If you're asking for help it's useful to show where you're up to in your thinking and giving details on what you've tried already.

Furthermore, once you've written it out once...you can copy and paste that to ask someone else later, if you don't get a response!

    A: high effort ask

From experience, this is never wasted. At the contrary, stating a problem clearly very often helps finding the solution, without bothering anybody else :)

In an asynchronous medium like Slack or IRC, the effort _isn't_ wasted, because the question will stay there, allowing people to see it later who weren't even around when the question was first asked.

Just like you don't email someone saying "Hey" waiting for a reply before you ask your question.

Slack and other chat platforms could easily filter these messages and only send when the initiator has added context.

I type: “Hi”. The chat platform shows a message bubble: “Alice won’t see your message until you add some content.”

This should probably be an opt-in feature for the recipient, not a global behavior.

This doesn't bother me so much as I would just not reply until the question comes. What pisses me off is when someone asks: "Can someone just quickly do x for me?". It trivializes the amount of work you are asking me to commit to doing. It's a task that only someone skilled in that particular technology can do. Why don't YOU quickly do it? Oh, because you can't.

Reminds me of that old yarn: "Can I ask you a question?" "You just did."

This makes a totally valid point in online communications.

I will respect a no-hello but I personally welcome hellos. I've even put it in a yes-hello on my chat bio. Some people just cannot robotically start a conv and get to the point. I am ok indulging them. If I am busy il just ask "so how can I help". I am glad we have not turned into complete APIs yet!!

Just add hello before whatever you have to say! also, no “have a minute” or anything like that, the beauty of text communication is that I can respond to it whenever I want!

If you want my undivided attention schedule a call. Send me a couple of preferred times before asking mine. You will get what you want faster.

On the topic of good communication, I have a huge pet peeve with something that I find super common with phone calls, at least over here in South Africa (I don't know what it might be like elsewhere).

Almost any time I get a call from any business, almost always from numbers don't recognize, 99% of the time the first thing the other person says to me is "Hello, how are you?".

When this happens, my first internal thought is "Excuse me, but do I know you?".

I don't think it's some deliberate sales strategy of cold callers, I suspect it's that they think of it like an in person conversation where this is perfectly acceptable with a stranger, except they fail to consider that I as the caller recipient have absolutely zero context of who I'm talking to and it's likely to piss off someone who is in a meeting or otherwise has a lot of work to do.

The professional way for someone from a business to phone you is to announce where they are calling from and what the call is in regards to, something like "Hello, I'm calling from Acme in regards to...", or "Hi, I'm Bob from Acme and I'm calling in regards to ..., how are you today?".

This way, I can instantly know whether or not it is someone from a business I have a pre-existing relationship with that I actually do probably want to talk to, as opposed to the more common caller who is cold calling me in an attempt to get me to buy something from them.

So when I get a call with "Hello, how are you?", I've now taken to responding with "Sorry, would you please first tell me where you're calling from?".

Then I'm either very friendly if it's a company I know, or for other companies I don't know I just state plainly "I don't have a pre-existing relationship with your company so I suspect this is a sales call and I don't have time calls such as these. Goodbye." and I hang up before the person even has a chance to respond.

I feel like the author is not highly aware of social norms, nor how they change depending on context, culture, and confidence.

Many inexperienced users- the kind who often need help the most- are coming from a place of low confidence. They don't even know if this is the right place to ask this question. They don't even know if they're asking the right question. That's the nature of being inexperienced. I'm glad they're cautious and trying to be polite!

If you don't want to help such people, don't lurk in channels designed for helping people.

Re inexperienced users : you want to encourage them to learn and build confidence. Ignoring their "polite" ping-pong messaging isn't going to do them any good. Sure, don't be a jerk, but do mention "don't ask to ask - just ask" in a friendly way.

> If you don't want to help such people, don't lurk in channels designed for helping people.

and where do i go to not get these questions from senior engineers?

This was a problem long before we all got sent home and the proliferation Slack.

Instead, someone would just pop their head into your office: “Hey, hi, how ya doing? Can I ask you question?”

Bro, you just did. Get on with it.

No, you can always just not even look up and say, "I'm super into this, so come back in 15" or something less condescending than whatever attitude your body expression has with "Bro, you just did. Get on with it" floating in your mind.

Don't bro me dude! ;-)

If we're all devs, we all understand when you've got 12 layers of vars in your head in a mental traceback that all goes poof when you just reply with a "not now". If it's a marketing type person making the interruption, you're just perceived as an asshole. That's on them. They're in marketing so they have no soul anyways ;-)

Discussion from 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24259156

One step further, don't start a conversation with "X is broken, can you help me fix it?"

Tell me what you did so far, actual behavior and expected behavior. Pragmatically speaking, I get a lot of coworkers asking questions (like several per day) so if your question is formulated poorly, it has a very high chance of slipping through the cracks simply because the easier to answer questions will take priority.

True words for 1:n communication. For 1:1 communication it's a different thing though. I really prefer people to warn me before dropping a bomb

While it's polite, IMO, to include some form of greeting or other pleasantries, in any kind of asynchronous communication medium, I do not want to wake up to (or come back from lunch to, or whatever) someone saying "Hey" or "Can I ask you something?" Chances are, by the time I've said "sure, go ahead", the person won't be there anymore, and then both of us just have to wait frustratingly.

>I really prefer people to warn me before dropping a bomb

Why? These "hi" or "are you there" or "can I ask a question" are useless to me. Also in the reverse role I find it useful to just type up my whole problem. Sometimes in the middle of typing it all up I will figure out a good solution and then just not send the message. Even if the person is not there to help you, you can always copy paste your message to someone else.

Which is why when someone says "do you have a minute" or "can we talk", I don't know if they're about to drop a bomb! It is stressful!

Use the asynchronous channel to set up a synchronous channel over a medium that's actually designed for it, then!

I had an overly polite couch surfer from South Africa who couldn't find my place in the Tenderloin of San Francisco. He really struggled because he kept asking people "pardon me, may I ask you a question?", which is what nearly every panhandler asks before they ask you for money. I told him that he should learnt to be direct (at least in America) and simply ask for directions.

IMO, it depends what kind of communication you’re trying to initiate. Chat can be used for both “one-shot” asynchronous queries or notifications (the example in the link) and for synchronous, interactive discussions—chats!

If we could reach cultural consensus, it’d be great if a bare “Hello” / “Hi” / “Hey” let me know you’re attempting to initiate the latter.

I completley disagree with this. It depends on the person you are talking to. If this is a support chat or you are dealing with someone who is only there to take questions then yes... just state your question.

In every other scenario, when someone says hello, greet them back. Exchange small talk if you must. That is just basic human pleasentries which for some reason is not allowed when you're using a keyboard? It's politeness, don't be an ass about someone hitting you up on slack with a greeting. You are a person like any other not a support robot.

Chat rooms made for support with a "no hello" rule should be designated at work or for a n open source project when technical requests and discussions happen.

PM/DMs should have the same etiquette as a person walking up to your cubicle or office. They will knock/greet first. They won't just show up and start blurting out code snippets and urls.

no because an in person convo doesn't have a 2-10minute delay of complete silence between the hello and what they are asking for.

example just from yesterday:

them 10:10am Hello

me 10:10am hey what's up

them 10:20am hey do you remember me? I used to work with so and so

me 10:20am yeah I can help you with any questions now

them 10:45am nvm I figured it out by reading the error message.

I'm not full time support, I'm a dev on a team. So that kind of interruption without any context at all derailed my work believe it or not. Fine for a legitimate issue, not that great when you didn't even read the error message.

when someone comes up to you in person they probably have their full question formulated. online they can just say hi without embarrassment apparently.

You should be strict in what you send and generous in what you accept. If someone says hello then of course say hello back. But when saying hello to someone else, include your content in the same message.

Yes, we should skip basic human pleasantries when using a keyboard. There's plenty of time for those on voice and video chat.

I often just ignore and wait for a follow up.

With you here, the weirdest part is that about 25% of the time the person doesn't say anything else if you just leave it.

Yeah. They're waiting for you to confirm that your avatar status is actually correct and that you do in fact exist and can respond now. Which is like... "if I can't respond, you saying 'hi' won't change that, and if I can, then you may as well give me something to respond to beyond 'hi' anyway."

I've seen a lot of this in internal Slack channels. There's 0 probability that I'll engage someone who is looking for an "expert in $x" even if I think that I could help. The worst is when a 3rd party tags you in with a comment like "oh hey, you know about this, can you possibly help?".

I'm guilty of the occasional "ping" -- but often its after what I think are their normal hours (whatever that is anymore!) and its someone I've interacted with before. I don't necessarily ask the question immediately because I don't want to make them feel like they have to answer it if they're not actually working. Often it's a question that will only save me ~15 mins of time. Or there is someone else I can ask if they're not immediately available.

I personally find the anonymous "Hi $name" really annoying and it often comes on slack from a random IT person from a support ticket I've filed. Why they can't start with, "Hi $name, I'm following up on ticket XYZ. ..."

But I don't find 'ping' annoying. Weird.

I really feel like none of you work in an environment where people ignore inconvenient requests, which must be really nice, link your /careers page, whatever, but -- if you lead with the thing they don't want to deal with, you will be ignored more. I am intentionally spending the time to go through a round of SYN-ACK. That puts the social pressure of an ongoing conversation on the recipient to explicitly decline instead of reading the thing they don't want to hear and just ignoring it. This is more efficient than for me to try getting answers from four people, all of whom ignore messages and hope it will be someone else's problem.

(I am also guessing this is less of an issue when you're not trying to coordinate across timezones)

It is even worse when it comes from an inept salesperson. Asking to ask is just bigger annoyance. Worse yet, it is a terrible sales method because you'll never get to your pitch.

Intro, yes. Asking permission, no.

Use the set up to frame the discussion. Only ask questions you know the answer to. Make them answer in the affirmative repeatedly. Why give an opening for rejection at all?

Being interrupted by a sales call is bad enough. Being interrupted by someone who botches the pitch on a product I would never want and will never hear about due to ineptitude is a face palm. Humans never cease to amaze me. Not only will I marvel at the fail, but I'll write useless comments about it later.

People aren't APIs.

Please follow up with MAIL, RCPT and DATA after your HELOs to me.

This makes me want to respond to all the hi-only messages with "ACK" from now on.

A chatbot could act as an API to handle most of the small talk people use before asking the actual question.

I use this link often. I'll respond to a "hi" with "hey, what's up", and turn the text into a link to this site, like [hey, what's up?](https://nohello.net/en/) (I know markup links don't work here, but that's even better as an example).

I've "trained" most people who do this to just keep going and ask their questions, rather than waiting for me to respond. Though unfortunately they mostly still break that up into several messages, so it's still more annoying than it could be.

It works but probably comes out as rude in a lot of cultures.

Also don't use "Hey Team" as a lead-in when doing this.

I've seen "Hey Team, <asking to ask a question>" probably a thousand times now in slack channels at work to the point where it drives me completely nuts and is the best way to make me ignore you. If I'm not actually on your team where we have daily standups then unfortunately this tickles the same neurons that I have which reacts negatively to employer cheerleading nonsense about how we're all a "family" or whatever, along with reading like trolling to want to waste someone's time.

If you really want a question answered, the best way to get your answer is to write a blog post confidently giving the incorrect answer and post it on HN and Reddit.

In the replies, you will find many answers to your question.

This principle is also known as Poe's law.

I feel like this is a carryover from text messaging, where people ask things like “Hey! What’s new?”

Personally, I also hate that kind of text interaction. I vastly prefer a phone call for catching up, because at least each party’s attention is fully on each other and there’s a defined end to the conversation. I’m probably in a shrinking minority with that opinion, having grown up in a time when phone calls were ubiquitous. But when someone’s glued to their phone because they don’t want to be perceived as replying too slowly, what’s the point of texting?

We all have different personalities. Saying "hi" will frustrate some people. Not saying "hi" will tick off others. Same goes for leading into questions - most approaches can tick someone off.

For the safest approach, I agree with the concept that all the info should be in the same message. To an individual, "Hi! If you have some time, could you let me know <question>". To a group, "Hi, if there are any <topic> experts here, I'm trying to figure out <question>. Any help would be appreciated."

I do exactly follow the no-hello "rules" but I frankly don’t care about how my colleagues reach me. We are humans, they can just say hello. I’ll answer or not depending on my availability but even if I answer and they don’t follow up, it will not ruin my day.

If I don’t want to be disturbed, I just switch the notifications off. Magic, no more hellos.

I really don’t understand why it bother people so much. And I’m saying this having strong ADHD and applying no-hello myself. There are so much more important reasons to be upset in life and at work.

People are so grumpy. If you don't want notifications turn them off. If I approach you in person I don't say hi and spill out a paragraph. So saying hello to start a conversation is a low friction way to have a conversation in the same we humans do in real life.

edit: Are people really so unfriendly and impersonable that a simple hello is considered offensive? For the same reason I disable most mobile apps notifications on my phone, you can do same with instant messaging. Stop blaming other people's personalities.

I'm regularly on a support rota as first-line triage for things which have just started going wrong. I need to be interrupted for important things, but I would strongly prefer not to be interrupted for unimportant things, because undivided attention is very scarce on such a rota; doubling the number of messages while we perform the SYN-ACK dance doubles the number of interruptions. Setting my status to "does not receive notifications" forces everyone to read my personal how-to-interact-with-me user manual to discover whether I'm temporarily muted for some good reason, whether I just happen to be away from my desk and would prefer not to be interrupted but can easily come back if required, or whether I'm muted on general principles.

> If I approach you in person, I don't say hi and spill out a paragraph.

I don't know how you interact with shopkeepers or other such people who are there to help you, but I certainly do precisely that; I would consider it rather odd to start such a conversation with a "hi" that waits for a response. Surely, surely, the natural thing to say is "Hi, I'm looking for these shoes in size 10", rather than "Hi". Surely?

Sorry my teammates, peers and coworkers are not shopkeepers. If that is how you interact with your co-workers I don't want to work on your team.

How (not) to ask a technical question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53zkBvL4ZB4

Technically, yes. But this is forgetting how much of this is related to social contracts.

It's not necessarly:

> I have a question about Java but I'm too lazy to actually formalize it in words unless there's someone on the channel who might be able to answer it

But it could be:

"I have a question about Java, but nobody knows me around here, so instead of flooding the chan with a wall of text, interrupting the flaw of all the discussions around, I'm doing to introduce my interruption progressively"

This can be done much more effectively than just “hey does anyone know Java?”

Something like “Hey I’m having trouble with X. Is anyone able to take a look?” is much better since you’re actually describing your ask.

Sure, I may know Java, but I may not know the answer to your problem.

See also https://nohello.net/en/ which has been posted/discussed multiple times this month and earlier nohello.com (2013) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29978860

Not a new problem, same old thing happens despite the platform. Cultural/people issue as are many.

I agree such meta-questions are annoying. However, I saw many times a situation when a new guy joins some Telegram chat and asks a question, only to get an avalanche of angry and overreacting "go read nometa.xyz a hundred times" replies. Of course the guy never writes to this hostile chat again: he did noting bad but was treated like a piece of shit. And it's always the same people complaining, most of chat members just don't care.

yeshello.net

Thank you for making me feel happy about something I never realized I had. None of the people I interact with regularly would get even minimally annoyed by getting a hello in their inbox.

I can only imagine how hellish your existence may be when you have to deal with people that are so finicky to the point that they even made a website to tell others how they may start conversations with them. What a big PITA to have them close to you ...

My managers did this, and I realized it was because people stopped using status icons any more and just appear busy or idle all the time. They didn't want to type a long request unless they had previously established contact. I also changed to not include the entire request until the person was at least responding in real time, although I always include enough context information in the first message.

seems kind of dumb - the author is presupposing what the intent was. Not to mention that it's important to have the other person actually acknowledge a conversation is happening.

how about:

A: Hi!

B: What's up...?

A: Nothing just wanted to say hi!

B: Oh, haha. How's it going?

A: I was just realizing we haven't spoke in forever. Where are you these days?

=====================================================

Let's say people didn't say hi.

A: Hey we haven't spoken in forever! Where are you these days?

<< Message failed to send >>

No conversation happens.

What's the difference between:

  Hi!
  << Message failed to send >>

and

  Hi! We haven't spoken in forever, what's up?
  << Message failed to send >>

What would you do different in the first case that you wouldn't do in the second case?

This is a great kind of conversation to have when you are e.g. both in the micro-kitchen milling around for snacks. The problem is Slack is not equivalent to the micro-kitchen, but to the whole office.

A response I often get is how "refreshing" it is to speak with someone who doesn't spew out fluff and gets to the point. And these are people who themselves ping-pong for 10 minutes before getting to the meat of a conversation.

This is a good example that what people do isn't necessarily what they appreciate or like. It's just a norm. Whether it's positive or not is quite a different aspect.

A bit off-topic perhaps but as a non-native speaker I'm always baffled by English smalltalk. People who reach out to me on Teams usually start with "Hi, how are you" and I never know what is the proper reply because I know the question is not sincere. Why not just say "Hi"?

(and this is nothing compared to the seemingly mandatory Monday morning elevator "how was your weekend" question)

It's not meant to be a sincere question, it's a phatic expression[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression

It's fine to treat "hihowareyou" or "heyhowsitgoing" as a word that literally just means "hi". It's never a real question; it's an automatic fixed expression for us. "Good" is the customary response (doesn't matter if it's true), but ignoring the question and just saying something like "Hey, what's up?" or "Hey, how can I help?" is also a fine response that invites them to skip any other smalltalk they might have planned. This is especially a handy approach for typed chats.

Not just English.

https://www.fluentu.com/blog/french/ca-va/

They are expecting - All good, what's up?

Wanna hear something really annoying? My nephew calls me and says "hello" when I pick up the phone. Even worse, he says it like it's a question. "Hello?"

We usually end up saying it at the same time. Then he waits for me to say it again, like he didn't hear me the first time.

I find it kinda funny. It's like a power move, or a troll move, or he's just a knucklehead.

Part of the problem is proliferation of Slack. Don't get me started on using a central server of a 3rd for-profit party, but here I just refer to asynchronous messages, e.g. inquiries, on a synchronous medium. Unless you need my attention right now, why use Slack, IRC, telephone or walk by my desk? Just send me an e-mail and be as courteous or curt as you please.

I find this super annoying in the context of getting help via chat from the support staff. They always say hi and then wait for you to reply (all this could take minutes sometimes cause they're handling multiple tickets at the same time and won't respond right away). Could just ask 'hi - what seems to be the issue?'

These "preludes" are like tapping on the shoulder, except they are async and when you see/"feel" that "tap", there might be nobody there anymore... And then you start same thing backwards, with "hey you did have a question.." .. a forever ping- pong without any reasonable info in it..

Are people building these single serving sites (there’s also https://dontasktoask.com/ on the HN front page right now) as part of some SEO backlink scheme? Get a couple URLs linked a bunch of places then start linking out to sites from them?

In terms of IM etiquette this feels so far down the list of my complaints, way behind "stop sending me screenshots to things that are available live on URLs or UNC shares".

Or like "it would be literally less work for you to copy/paste the hyperlink to the ticket than it was for you to type in the ticket ID manually".

> Or like "it would be literally less work for you to copy/paste the hyperlink to the ticket than it was for you to type in the ticket ID manually".

Not necessarily. When you've been spending a couple hours per day on a ticket, the ID starts to stay in your head. I can still remember the ID of a couple of the more annoying ones from several years ago

Also, with Mattermost at least (and I assume others) it's pretty easy to configure it to change "Ticket 12345" into a link to the ticket server side

Yes! I'm with you there. I didn't see it much in IM services, but Reddit is a pro in terms of "Let me post the screenshot of the Tweet instead of linking to it".

I agree strongly with the advice on the page. But more interesting is the fact that the author seems to have registered a domain for just this one piece of advice. I know there are other examples (some are linked) but this wouldn’t scale for me. I have so much crucial wisdom to share that the registration fees would kill me.

These are the people who write one line emails with no punctuation.

We get it, you're a super mega busy person and I am just one of the many people you will interact with today, and therefore I shouldn't expect common courtesy. No worries. I'll make sure to communicate with you as little as possible from now on.

This is a cultural thing and it's annoying.

We have french and indian companies here in Sweden with their own culture of saying hi to everyone "good morning sir" "good morning madam", every damn morning.

They are the same ones who say "Hello how are you?" in chats now that people are working remotely more.

Also something that goes very well with this is the age old saying, "just ask, don't ask to ask".

I always find it a bit annoying when people approach in chats just to ask if they can ask something.

Especially back in the days (yes) of IRC it was annoying because messages on a channel tend to easily drown in other messages

What I want to know is why someone would buy a domain and build this fancy website just to make this one simple point.

Same thing also on the front page rn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30639225

This comment was originally posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30642052 (before we merged the threads), but I suppose it applies just as well here.

So if people encounter a repeat offender, they don't have to write it up and explain it in detail, but can just send a link.

It is just part of a human-centric session initiation protocol.

A major reason people do it is to query presence-at-keyboard before continuing. Maybe the matter is time sensitive, maybe they don't want to disclose something immediately without setting context, finding something out first, whatever.

"A major reason people do it is to query presence-at-keyboard before continuing." That's what in-app statuses are for: so they don't have to wait for an answer to that, they can just look.

"Maybe the matter is time sensitive." Asking whether I'm there and waiting for a response before continuing takes longer. If it's time-sensitive, they can just ask what they need in the first message, and then move on if I don't reply within a decent enough timeframe.

"Maybe they don't want to disclose something immediately without setting context, finding something out first, whatever." Context? "Hello" is not context for anything other than the existence of the person, which I hope I'm capable of inferring on my own. Similarly. what could they possibly find out from "hello"?

> It is just part of a human-centric session initiation protocol.

It is the session initiation protocol for face-to-face communication. If you straight approach someone off in their own la-la land with a question, chances are they won't even hear it. "Hello" attracts their attention first.

Chat does not have that problem. If they are not paying attention at the time, they can read the question later. It does not disappear after it is stated.

Different tools for different jobs.

> Maybe the matter is time sensitive, maybe they don't want to disclose something immediately without setting context, finding something out first, whatever.

Still no reason to not provide some kind of meaningful background,

* "My computer won't turn on and I have a presentation in a few minutes. Can you help me with it? If I don't hear from you soon I will try Joe."

* "I have a sensitive matter to discuss with you that I cannot divulge until you have read the email from Mary. Please let me know when you've had a chance to do that."

* "What do you think about X? After you let me know I'll fill you in on Y."

Right: I think everyone gets that; but it is that very concept that is irksome, as the entire reason to use chat apps for many people is to NOT have presence-at-keyboard EVER. Like, the answer to "are you there?" is, an hour later, "no", followed by immediately task switching away from the window again. The "no" is honest: I wasn't there when you asked, and I also am not really there now either. It is akin to trying to obtain synchronous communication with someone by sending them a letter with "hey, you there?" and a month later getting back "yo! what's up!"... you didn't really achieve much other than "this communication mechanism worked once"; and, if you want to do that in a way that makes it clear you aren't trying to establish synchronous communication--•I am sorry, but I am new to chat: are you actually seeing this message?"--I am more OK playing along.

The goal here--and I think a better way to present it than just trying to say "don't say hello" or trying to point out that someone else is being rude (which is a subjective way of analyzing things that I think people should avoid without empathy)--is in some sense to teach people what asynchronous communication means and how to achieve it, as I honestly don't want to and kind of can't have synchronous communication with anyone whom I don't really really really care about at the level of "a close personal friend or loved one" (and then if you find that rude, I guess you will have to deal with synchronously talking to someone else, at best my assistant, as I just really don't have time to synchronously talk with random people; but that's the problem: I know "hi; you there?" is a trap to try to make me feel bad for not staying synchronous once you pounce on my answer later).

I find this particularly frustrating when the person saying “Hello” is in a different time zone. I regularly work with people who are offset by several hours and we have little to no work time overlap. That may mean that it takes 24 hours to get to the next step in the conversation.

My company is new to messaging, only getting teams fully set up two months in to lockdown/WFH v1.

People still write messages like this...

-------------------------------------------

Hello <Name>,

Thanks,

-------------------------------------------

I know who its to and from, its a two way chatting application... it bogles the mind sometimes.

This is far superior to the opposite problem of too little info.

I like these type of articles where someone tries to understand why they feel a certain way about something. As a long-time IRC user I definitely feel that asking to ask is wrong, but never really thought about why I feel that way. This seems to sum it up well.

This sort of attitude always made me feel like an outsider and a newb in communities. Looking back, it seems it’s just a pet peeve that has the consequence of raising the barrier to entry. There are just way more constructive and welcoming ways to say this stuff…

On one hand, this is a valuable rule that can improve communication.

On the other hand, if any one has the time to share this, they have time to say "Hey, what's up?". For a site about improving communication, it has a surprisingly irritating and condescending tone.

Don't answer the question, provide the information the asker needs.

This is a vital design and engineering skill. Clients come to you with solutions they themselves came up with, but you're supposed to query their underlying problem and offer a better solution.

Definitely hate when someone delivers the only hello and then just nothing for next 30mins...

Has anyone else noticed a serious escalation in references to this phenomenon the past couple weeks? I've seen highly upvoted posts on it both here and on reddit all of a sudden and am just curious where the momentum is coming from so abruptly.

I used to do this a lot because It thought it's more polite to check in with "can I ask you a question about <something>?". It took me way too long to realize this behavior was actually annoying lol

Sometimes you have to adjust the amount of information you are allowed to disclose depending on who you are talking to. And you don't want to exclude people based on this as any amount help can move you forward.

Feels like you could build an auto-responder that detects this, like a low tech version of that Google feature where it screens your calls and asks them why they are calling before giving you the option to answer.

Usually the implication of "hello" is "hello, is now a good time, I got a complex issue that's in your area of expertise?"...

Which, I mean, is what I actually type out when I need to bug somebody.

I usually go for: I'm trying to do X but I'm facing issue Y. I tried Z and W but to no help. Could you give me a hand when you have some minutes?

It shortens the conversation and if the person doesn't know how to solve, they can point to someone else right away.

I've just learned to ignore those messages. It might not be nice, but if a stranger (although colleague) just says hi, what am I supposed to answer? Just say what you want. Saves time of both of us.

Hello

Hey! What's up?

...?

World

I think when it comes to any communication, the best method is the reverse hamburger method: Meat, bun, meat.

Start with exactly what you want, no fillers. Then some fillers. Then do call to action.

Unless you want to tell me something that is hard or awkward to express in writing, send me a single wall of text. One topic / one initial message should be a given.

This comes up from time to time on HN. Humans aren't machines. As self-important and busy as you think you are, why not take a beat and respond with 'Hey' and ask them how they are.

Humans are more than just social creatures - we actually NEED social interaction to stay healthy. Remote work is hard enough. Being alone in a room for days is hard enough. Don't be afraid to remove the stick from your behind and add a little social padding to your conversations. It's good for you, and it's good for the person this site is telling you to get cranky at.

> Being alone in a room for days is hard enough

Why do we still do this? Shouldn't we adapt to partial remote as permanent reality? The urban way of life was completely transformed by the office

These things always come across as people being surprised humans aren't just super smart chat bots. Who cares if a friendly greeting adds 2 minutes

It isn’t just 2 minutes. I’ll have people ping me “Hi” and I could be busy on calls for a few hours and they won’t have added any context in the interval.

I reply “Hey, what’s up?” and by the time I respond they are busy and take a few hours to respond with their ask.

If they had the ask in the initial message I could’ve had the answer in my first response.

There is nothing wrong with pleasantries. Nobody is saying that is the problem. The problem is requiring a response before making your ask.

If you’re just chatting to chat that is another matter.

Too many extroverts invading our nice safe online spaces ever since public health measures shut down their usual channels for in-your-face satisfaction.

Regarding the “hi” ping, it would be funny to create a bot to auto respond with “hi”.

And auto respond to “how are you doing” with “good”.

The sender can now type their question.

My slack status has been the following for 2 years with great results:

(Please ask your question :slightly_smiling_face: - I won't respond to "Hi")

I've found that saying hi in a tech related chat just adds noise, but in a social chat there's no issue and can lead to conversation.

Corollary: In online chat, do this:

    Quick question, does the foo widget support splines?

...instead of:

    Quick question.

X: "Can I ask you a question?"

Y: "You just did."

Did the author really pay for a domain per topic? Seems to be numerous others that are <title>.com

ahh, the airing of irc grievances!

When peoples find annoying to be just saluted... strange times. But I'm an old fart...

I've always instinctively done this, although I'm generally the exzception.

We just need chat script: If (helloGoesWell()) ask('when is that thing')

Why are people feeling like they need to ask to ask you?

It probably goes back to the Usenet days where the group on C++ was absolutely horrific to developers because they were only there to discuss the language specification and you asked a question about implementation or whatever the hell their tribal rules were.

I think many of us are still scared shitless we are going to be verbally abused for asking for help in the wrong room so we hide behind conversational formality- like asking for permission to be heard.

This is actually also relevant for customer support

It should be, although I have had recent experiences where I give all relevant information at the beginning of the exchange but they still ask for it piece by piece because that's what's in their script. Possibly this is because the start of the conversation is handled by a robot.

It's complaining for the sake of complaining. Sometimes you need to test the water first. Some online communities are rather hostile after all. As shown by this silly website.

Hostile? What, are they going to break down your door and beat you? If they say mean words when you ask a question just close the channel and try somewhere else. I'm well aware you might think I'm proving your point with this response.

"got a sec?"

"sure"

[3 minutes pass]

"so, what do you think about..."

Always add “I tried this and that already”.

Dude, chill out, they’re literally just saying hi. Not every communication in the workplace has to get right down to brass tacks.

Walking up to say "hi" and have a casual chat with someone who's deep in focus work at the office is just as unreasonable. You don't know whether people are "available" on Slack because they're open to a casual chat (as at the water cooler) or because they want to be not totally unavailable should something urgent come up (like being at their desk). Since you don't know, it behooves you to treat it as the latter.

I'm guessing you never worked with support of any kind. When you're working with something important, having to stop what you're doing to "say hi" to 10 people is such a colossal waste of your time that at one point you decide it's easier to just ignore people who don't know how to communicate asynchronously.

I find this rule annoying itself.

Take the freedom you have to communicate in any way you want, and use it.

want to

scream

when

someone

types

their

thoughts

as several

separate

messages

and seems

unaware

that

every

message

is another

notification

Also this.

"hi

can you talk?

i had a question

about this ticket

let me get the number

ticket DSD-342

can you help me out?"

My brain: "...that could have been ONE NOTIFICATION instead of a barrage. And you could have answered your own question about my availability by looking at my status in the app. God ffs."

What I type: "Yeah, sure, let me look at it. What's up?"

I think it's fine if you're actively chatting with someone but obviously not if you're starting a conversation with some kind of request.

I do this, i think its a hold over from WhatsApp.

Its easier to divide statements by hitting enter then using punctuation.

That's a flaw with the notification logic.

thank you for making this

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