Comment by xlii | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xlii | Hacker News Reader

I'd recommend trying to get to a room where family member/friend etc. is in their environment, throw casually "hey, can we talk" and move outside of the room waiting for them to come over.

They will expect something is/was wrong. Simply because people organically don't communicate like that. There is no N minutes pause between prompt and the message. Having separate communication prompt is signaling for bracing or softening, i.e. delivery of bad news.

Sure, a lot of people learned to cope with this, but that's definitely not normal communication. It's also wasting other people's time and showing lack of respect. Having someone wait on hook for 2 minutes while thoughts are being typed out is exact same type of power move as "yeah, I called you, but wait a sec till I finish my crossword". Is the other person online presence really indispensable to a degree that the thoughts cannot by typed out without it? As a counter move (if someone wants to be mean) you can respond "Hey, I'm here, but I'm starting my focus session right now, so I'll check my Slack/E-mail/IRC/Teams in 45 minutes, what's up?"

So yeah.. don't do this in professional communication.

Well, I can understand why some actually consider a message "hey, can we talk" more polite than simply calling without asking first, especially for developers. After all, they may currently be in the middle of doing something and would prefer not to be disturbed. OTOH, a message is already a disturbance, and most of the times checking your calendar should already give someone a hint about whether you are busy or not. Either way, providing a hint of what you want to talk about, e.g. "hey, can we talk about that spline reticulation issue?" is of course much better.

> After all, they may currently be in the middle of doing something and would prefer not to be disturbed. OTOH, a message is already a disturbance [...]

That is what has not sunken in yet in our new and fancy asynchronous world.

> Either way, providing a hint of what you want to talk about, e.g. "hey, can we talk about that spline reticulation issue?" is of course much better.

This is the big thing. "Don't be spooky" doesn't mean "interrupt me freely", it means "tell me cagey, coy, or avoidant and tell me what you want asynchronously before we start a conversation".

The problem is not interrupting someone with a request to talk. The problem is doing so without specifying what we need to talk about.

BAD: Hey, can we talk? (spooky, puts receiver "on hold", slow async communication)

GOOD: Hey, can we talk about scheduling the next deployment? (not spooky, gives receiver agency, gets to the point fast)

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