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Comment by ajfriend | Hacker News Reader

If you're asking someone for help, it would be nice if you asked in a way that's most convenient for them.

If you want to get help, it would also behoove you to ask in the proper way. For example support teams often work in a ticket system. Your slack message or direct email will either need to be transcribed into a ticket, or you could be nice and email the standard support email address which will create a ticket, use the designated support request webform, or whatever is the practice at your work site.

If you are coworkers and your office uses Slack then you're just being a dick. This is one of those cultural norm things that would be normal if it was the Discord of an OSS project -- hey we don't do support here, email project@dev.omg.lol but rude in an office.

If you don't like the office norm of Slack and wish it was email then too bad, same if it was the other way around too. It's now your problem to bridge Slack->email or email->Slack.

Do you know details about the norms at Meta, where the author is the CTO?

Ma'am this is Wendy's. We're talking about an article where someone is holding up their behavior as an example to others -- behavior that for nearly every office you can only get away with if you're the CTO. And even then it's probably still a dick move, but you can be a dick when you're the CTO.

This is terrible woefully out-of-touch advice if the audience is anything other than executives who have enough clout to make the world move around them. If you're one of those people that is important enough that you can make everyone who wants to talk to you use your preferred communication medium then this might be actionable advice for you.

I swear we as a society didn't understand, didn't value the work administrative assistants and secretaries did (organizing all your communication being one of them) and we've been trying and failing to replace them ever since.

No - you're expecting a busy person to stop - now - and create a calendar or to do item indicating when they're able they should help you,

or risk forgetting to help you.

...or needing to scroll back through hours/days of messsges (ones that actually could be immediately answered or discussed, hopefully),

to find all the times they've agreed to help someone,

instead of you putting your (intricate, and/or technical request, from the context) into an email, ticket, or whatever you've all agreed upon.

I think that is the inflection point.

If you don't have a system in place, as an org, many people just don't think about it - find the closest, easiest text box, Send-Tweet. Or holler across the aisle of cubes at someone who is trying to concentrate...

> instead of you putting your (intricate, and/or technical request, from the context) into an email, ticket, or whatever you've all agreed upon.

Emphasis mine, this is literally the point I'm making but from the perspective of an office that agreed to use Slack. Which is most offices that have Slack. If email or a bug tracker is the norm then you use that, and you would be equally rude if in that situation you tried to make them Slack you instead because "you don't check email."

You've agreed to use Slack for communicating and organizing...everything?

I know that's probably what their marketing department would like to hear, but that sounds horrific unless you're doing something quite mundane.

Which...if you're reaching out with a request time-dense enough that someone asks it be forwarded to email...it sounds like you're not doing mundane stuff.

etc

> If you are coworkers and your office uses Slack then you're just being a dick.

Oh, well the office also uses email. There are in fact places that use slack for time sensitive things and email for other things.

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