Comment by gryfft | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gryfft | Hacker News Reader

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I think you're still missing the point that the question isn't about what kind of conversation the initiator is ready and willing to have, but rather about the information asymmetry and time/emotional costs imposed on the recipient. When you open a conversation with "Hello," *you* know generally what you want to have a conversation about and that this is a good time for you to have it. The recipient receives only the notification that you would like to talk about something and is left to imagine what that might be as you type, or wait for a reply to begin typing.

Beginning a text chat with "Hello, I have a few questions about xyz and was wondering if now would be a good time to talk?" is considerate of the other party's time and attention, and it does not cost you anything but seconds to provide this context up front.

Edit: you edited and lengthened your comment.

> The protocol is then something like: "me-to-person-a: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no respone. "me-to-person-b: hello". wait for 5 minutes. no response. "me-to-person-c: hello"

I'm sorry, this is _insane_! That's 10 minutes to send out 3 words of communication, and the people who don't get back to you right away will now be getting back to you later to clarify, further worsening your signal to noise ratio! You could have spent 20 _seconds_ composing the first message with a one sentence synopsis. "Don't worry, no one is dead" or "The factory is on fire" are useful to know up front. You could copy and paste it to the next two people if they don't get back to you.

...I really don't think there's "emotional cost" on the part of the recipient in entertaining a "hello", at least not in peer-to-peer scenarios.

Now, if you're someone's boss and hitting up a subordinate with whom there is known "bad blood" then I get the point about the "emotional cost" of a scenario where you write, close to the end of the business day, "hello", then your subordinate doesn't respond for 10 minutes. Then you go home, or get into a block of meetings that will make you unavailable to continue the convo for several hours.

But if you have that little emotional intelligence, you shouldn't be anyone's boss, and if a mere "hello" from your boss freaks you out, you should probably just quit then and there.

Again, this is not about you and your personal experience. You do not know what kind of day someone else has had, and when Slack has 25+ notifications and you have deadlines, little failures to be considerate DO take a toll, just like when someone honks their car horn at you for no reason or refuses to hold the elevator for you. Sure, it's not genocide, but it's inconsiderate. Just because littering isn't murder doesn't mean it's fine.

I think there is an emotional cost in receiving a work-related message that only says "hello".

My data point: it enrages everyone I know. And they lose respect for the person who said "hello" and wasted their time.

I can’t conceive of working in an environment where coworkers are enraged by minor communication differences. Like wow you just work with a bunch of assholes.

Probably that’s the thing to solve for, not “hello”, “query” vs “hello, query”.

No. It completely disrespects the recipients work and time by demanding a meeting with no agenda.

Everyone I work with feels the same. The “hello” people are the outliers and the rest of the office knows it.

The hello people? rofl

...there must be some psychology student out there to whom this thread is an absolute gold mine for their Ph.D. thesis. ...or maybe a standup comedian.

People are telling you that they find your behavior disruptive and rude, yet you continue to discredit their feelings.

You cannot control how a recipient receives your message.

> You cannot control how a recipient receives your message.

My point exactly. Only problem: If A hurts B's feelings, that doesn't automatically mean B has the moral high ground and A is therefore in the wrong.

If B plays the "hurt feelings" card after A has done nothing to give offense other than start a conversation with "hello" in a text chat where they had no way of discerning B's emotional state, then that's the best example I've encountered yet, of a situation where A's hurt feelings clearly seem like A's problem.

The unspoken context is that this goes beyond saying "hello".

In my experience, hello people usually present with the following comorbidities:

- inability to learn and retain new information.

- inability to own their work and take responsibility from end-to-end.

- tendency to push their own work onto other people and become a victim when the other person doesn't do exactly what they want.

Maybe the psychology student you mentioned could look into this phenomenon for their thesis?

...wow, and you got all of that from "hello".

Also, not sure if you saw my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33933186

I already established that (a) I'm one of those hello people. (b) I'm allowing this conversation to change my behaviour, based on the fact that I simply never had any idea that people could take offence from a "hello". If your definition of "learn" is "coming around to your point of view", that would seem to make me a counterexample to your psychological typology.

But it still rubs me the wrong way to think that this society is leaving the business of "creation of cultural norms" to crybabies. Show me a group that's complaining about being said "hello" to, and I'll show you a group that needs to check their privilege.

No, I got all that from my multiple years of repeated interactions with "hello" people and noticing a consistent pattern.

Maybe you don't fit that mold and just like to say hello and you are a good coworker without all the bad traits I mentioned. Didn't mean to make this personal... just sharing my observations of the past.

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