Please don't complain about how people use chat, it's super annoying. Just say "hi" back, it's not going to kill you.
1. You have a large number of peers who start chat conversations with “Hi, are you busy?” That question is begged with just “hi” and implies a forced urgency.
2. All your coworkers start email threads with “hi” and wait for peers to respond before continuing. If that seems ridiculous, you now have an idea what “hi” is like for remote workers.
I've been remote for 10+ years. I've never once had a problem telling someone "hi", even on large teams. I do find that the people concerned about these type of "micro productivity" issues tend to make for un-harmonious team members and ultimately drag down the productivity of the team, often to the point of chasing out good employees with their toxic attitudes.
For example:
> How am I supposed to respond to a bare 'hi' after I asked a question?
This hypothetical doesn’t seem to make sense (maybe I’m missing something). If the person is communicating ineffectively in email, what does it solve to send them a Slack (or whatever) message that simply reads, “hi”?
And it’s not always “hi” anyway. I used to have one of our C-levels DM me on Slack almost daily with some form of “hellllp!” No context whatsoever. Eventually I figured out they had a list of people they thought were helpful and would just spam that list for any kind of thing they needed. I stopped responding and got myself off their list. Problem solved haha.
1. Someone in a position of authority making context-less contact: "hi", "helllp!"... this is going to cause anxiety and fear in nearly anyone and leadership should avoid doing this at all costs.
2. Regular people communicating in a "normal" way by starting a conversation off with "hi". Maybe they're not so online as to be honed with IM etiquette, maybe they just like to say hi. Regardless, their intent is not malicious and a healthy and collaborative culture should be able to handle their natural (and quite popular) social communication style.
Just say "Hi. <Request>"
Moreover, now that I’m interrupted I can’t really go back to what I’m doing because I know that (presumably) a question is coming very soon, so the interruption clock has already started and I have to sit and wait while they painfully slowly type the actual question.
And then there’s the frequent case where I get a bare hi, but cannot get back to it until a few hours later, and then that person is offline — but I don’t know what they needed, so I cannot ask them and cannot send a response. If they’d have just included their question then I could just answer it and we’d all be better off.
I’ve just gotten to where I just refuse to answer a bare hi… if that’s all you’re willing to type, then I guess you didn’t need anything.
This is a very appreciable point (especially from a remote work perspective!) that I don’t think I really encountered before. Thanks for phrasing it this way!
I mentioned it elsewhere in the thread that I already disagree with “sharing” this website but it was from a vague perspective that it’s “rude”. This gives me a stronger point to make about it.
Neurodivergent individuals are expected every day to communicate in unnatural ways (to them). Everybody is different and everybody will communicate differently. People who have something to get done have their own responsibility to make sure their question or concern is addressed and saying "hi" with nothing else isn't doing them any favors.
I appreciate that you voiced this opinion and especially that you're willing to back it up. If it helps, there are some who are at least kind enough not to pedantically reply with a link to this website. I might sometimes even choose to respond back with a "What's up?" but I don't make a habit of it as a rule.
For example I work with multiple different timezones, I have meetings all morning. I can quickly answer questions if they’re straight to the point. Daily I’ll get 10-15 people contacting me about X topic. If it’s not straight to the point I can’t help, it will be after lunch before I can and then it’s probably too late.
“the link to the ticket”
“basic details they didn’t include”
“asking did they read the documentation”
“asking did they already contact X team”
Generally people who just say “hi” do everything ad-hoc and haven’t thought through the request.
1. Some nonzero time waiting in case of a prompt reply to the initial hi.
2. Some probably greater time waiting for an async response.
3. The time it takes to restore previous mental context and flow.
4. 1-3 again, but with the parties reversed. And, let’s be honest, probably for a longer duration.
All time spent to convey approximately zero information.
10:30:01 [Coworker] hi
10:30:12 [Me] hi
10:30:35 [Coworker] do you have time for a call?
10:30:39 [Me] sure
Versus:
10:30:01 [Coworker] hi, do you have time for a call?
10:30:16 [Me] sure
This example isn't really that bad, but it is showing basically the best case with a simple question. It gets a lot worse if the sender actually has to type out a long message, or if there's a gap between each response because the other person was busy at the time.