> It's as if you called someone on the phone and said "Hi!" and then put them on hold!<p>Typically you both say a greeting then a conversation starts.<p>> Instead of being polite, you are just making the other person wait for you to phrase your question, which is lost productivity.<p>Please don't count every second of your life in productivity lost to someone else.<p>The root of the problem might be frustration with not getting something done, and that needs your reflection.<p>Or just wake up 3 seconds earlier, and if worried about lost sleep, get to sleep 3 seconds earlier or in the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger "sleep faster."
It depends on the nature of your work.<p>In some types of work, individuals are supposed to do their own time management, <i>and</i> carve out chunks of time for activities that require sustained concentration, <i>and</i> respond appropriately to occasional requests, which are a mixture of low- and high-urgency. For example, someone who needs to read complex academic papers, but occasionally might be interrupted for an urgent production incident. For them, time management is all about avoiding distractions - like synchronous conversations about trivial matters when they're supposed to be working.<p>Other areas of work have far less need for uninterrupted blocks of time. A manager doesn't just change tasks every hour, they often also respond to e-mails and chat messages during meetings. For them, time management is all about choosing between overlapping meetings, and managing the length of their queue of work by rejecting and delegating tasks. And of course talking to people is the core of their job.<p>For the former, sending a 'hi' message without the context needed for them to triage it into urgent or non-urgent means they're interrupted twice instead of once - which is pretty inconvenient.<p>For the latter, though? A dozen interruptions per hour is completely normal, what's the problem?
Colleague: "Hello!"<p>Me: "Hello!"<p>Colleague: "Do you have time?"<p>Me: "Okay"<p><i>User is calling</i><p><i>sigh - Picks up</i><p>Me: "Hello?"<p>Colleague: "wait i need to get my headset"<p>Me: "Okay..."<p>Colleague: "Do you know about **"<p>Me: "Hmm, sort of but i need to look into it. i will get back to you"<p><i>spend 20 minutes figuring it out</i><p>Me writing in chat: "Okay think i know the answer now: **"<p>Colleague: "You dont need to look into it. Its working now."
5 points by dfboyd on March 11, 2022 | parent | context | next [–] | on: Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)<p>46 points by dfboyd on Jan 23, 2021 | parent | context | prev | next [–] | on: Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)
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".
Even better when it's your superior sending a "Good morning" before proceeding to type something for 15 minutes, putting you into a state of elevated anxiety.
I think it's a South African thing, but just about any call I receive from a number I wouldn't be expected to recognize, be it from cold calling spammers or legit service providers, starts with "Hello, how are you?" to which I respond with "Sorry, do I know you?".<p>I wish call centres and companies would explain to their agents that it's not like approaching a customer who has walked into a physical shop where the customer already has the context of who they're talking to. Whereas on the phone I have no idea who it is that has called me, it might be an old acquaintance, it might be a call back I'm expecting about something, or might be a cold call that I want to hang up on as soon as possible (which is most of the time).<p>So legitimate callers would get the friendliest response from me if they simply started the call with "Hello, I'm calling from <place>, regarding <thing>, am I speaking to <your name>?"
I'd add: also confirm promptly that you understood the answer and are good.<p>Sometimes after posting an explanation that has taken you time to think and write, you want to know if the other person understood it and if this is enough, and also if you can go back to your other stuff. Without an acknowledgement, you would likely keep the subject in your head in case the person needs more from you. With a simple "ok", "thanks", or a thumbs up, you can clear your head and go back to other things.
This annoys me, along with people asking about a jira but just sending the number. That means I'll need to copy it and go to my browser to type in the URL and the jira number.<p>Chances are the colleague was just looking at the jira in their browser, so why wouldn't they copy/paste the link...
I've used that page in a retrospective. Didn't said who exactly it was to avoid issues, but I though it was obvious.<p>It didn't changed anything, I guess it's like others mention, it's something that some people have been done since childhood, and it would be very difficult for them to change that.<p>I now just simply ignore any "hi" or "hello" message as if I've never received them, and only reply actual questions.<p>To each their own.
It’s funny because I do hate this behaviour at work. But also my youngest son is always saying “can I tell you something?” instead of just telling me and I find it adorable. Right up until the fifth or sixth repeat at bedtime, at which point the answer becomes “in the morning”. We should try not to begrudge people their human foibles. Your time is precious, but probably not in the ways that you think.
I have a complicated relationship with this situation. On the one hand, just tell me what you want. On the other hand, if you feel rude go ahead and send me a hello first. But on the other other hand it distracts me until you say what you want. But on the other other other hand if I'm doing something else I shouldn't be stopping to check my chats which are necessarily not urgent. But on the other other other other hand what if it is urgent? So then I check it and it just says "Hello". And I can see them typing so I wait 3 or 4 minutes. And then they stop and the typing bubbles go away, so I go back to what I was doing and then they finally send their question: "How are you?"
If someone says just hello in a chat window I don't respond and if it's someone not in my team and I can I might block them as well. They want something and want to expend the minimum resources on pleasantries to get it. That means they're rude. If you want something get straight to the point or we can have a pleasant chat for hours about the weather and our pets.
If the person trying to communicate with me doesn't understand or isn't aware of the advantages of asynchronous communication, I won't teach them, and I'll communicate as if those advantages don't exist. For example:<p>- Hi<p>- Hi<p>- Do you know what time it is?<p>- Yes<p>- Can you tell me?<p>- Yes<p>And so on ad infinitum.
I tried to set my status message to something like "Please ask me the question directly", but people didn't like it.<p>And I hate to have to take my mouse, click on the notification, read "Hello", answer "Hello" and wait 30 seconds watching the "is typing" dots...<p>I'm thinking of writing a macro (I have many) that answers "Hello" to the last message with a key combination. That way, no interruption if I was typing. A new notification will happen when the actual question arrives.
<i>Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat</i><p>There was a point this had become so pervasive I set my Slack status to <i>"I am currently busy working on a prioritized issue. Please open a jira and then speak to management if the case is urgent."</i> then moved slack to another workspace and muted sound. That was my form of time management and it worked well for me personally, most of the time. One can always check with their manager if they are cool with this.
I've worked entirely remotely at companies of a variety of sizes since 2017 and didn't know people do this. Who are the people who do this? I don't mean to imply they don't exist. I genuinely want to know who they are. Like is it a generational thing? A role thing? Someone else's thing?
I think the problem is that the receiver wants to be polite and answer. And the sender wants to be polite and not interrupt[1].<p>So the extended etiquette is: if you don’t have time, it’s ok to not reply.<p>[1] There’s also the concern that your message appears on someone’s shared screen during a video call.
I much prefer when people acknowledge my availability first. Otherwise, if i am busy or unavailable and they then end up answering their own question, i would be wasting more cognitive effort to answer it than i would than to respond to a "hello".
More often then not people will eventually type out their question, even if you don't greet them back. I just tune out the bare "hellos" and it turns out fine. It's not a big enough issue to buy a domain over.
Bit surprised by some of the sentiment in this thread. I wonder how people feel about Don't Ask? <a href="https://dontasktoask.com/" rel="nofollow">https://dontasktoask.com/</a>
The whole pleasantries is a waste of time. In chat, tell me what you need in the first message. At the start of a meeting, get on with an agenda. I don't give a damn how your weekend was or want to discuss it. Get to the point and stop wasting my time. In email, don't tell me you hope you find me well as it is irrelevant and empty. Tell me what you need in the least words possible. In other words, stop with the flaff and get to the point.
I'm curious about people who engage in this behavior: what would happen if I do not respond to your non-starter?<p>What would be the message you eventually receive about my behavior?<p>And if you bring up my non-response in the future, and I do not verbally respond, what would your impression be of my communication style?
This made me think about Crocker's Rules
<a href="http://sl4.org/crocker.html" rel="nofollow">http://sl4.org/crocker.html</a>
Entitled much?<p>I just learned to not care. I say "hi" to notify that I'm there and let them type. When an answer is required from me I pay attention, think and answer. Until then I ignore it.<p>I found it so much easier for me to learn not to be (too) distracted than to lose my mind trying to educate humanity to adapt to me.
re:<p><pre><code> you: Hi
co-worker: Hello.
you: I'm working on [something] and I'm trying to do [etc...]
co-worker: Oh, that's [answer...]
</code></pre>
It becomes clearer what is going on here when we compare to the robot-robot conversations from Annalee Newitz's book Autonomous:<p><pre><code> The mantis beamed Paladin a hail. Hello. Let’s establish a secure session using the AF protocol.
Hello. I can use AF version 7.6, Paladin replied.
Let’s do it. I’m Fang. We’ll call this session 4788923. Here are my identification credentials. Here comes my data. Join us at 2000.
</code></pre>
The initial Hi / Hello exchange establishes a session. Once the session is established, it is possible to begin data transfer at the application layer.<p>This is a technical problem masquerading as a social problem, which can be addressed by a technical solution.<p>Instead of expecting colleagues that only support establishing sessions by hello-ing to switch to an alternative protocol, it is possible to support both hello-ers and no-hello-ers by using a similar trick as found in launchd and systemd to reduce startup time by decoupling dependencies between services with a socket. Suppose service A says it depends on service B, and wants to send some data to service B. Instead of blocking service A being started until service B is up, the service manager can allocate a socket, give it to service A and say "here is your connection to service B" and then defer starting service B until service A actually starts trying to communicate using the socket.<p>Here's how a similar trick can hide the latency of colleagues that only support hello-ing: we offload the responsibility of establishing the chat sessions to a session manager, which is integrated into our chat client. When a colleague requests to begin a session by 'hello!'-ing, this message can be recognized by the session manager as an attempt to establish a session, suppressed and hidden from the user, and the session manager can automatically respond with 'Hi.' to establish the session. colleague is comforted by receiving the 'Hi.' and can trust that a session is established. When colleague begins transmitting data at the application layer, the data can be forwarded to the user as normal and surfaced by the chat program.<p><a href="https://www.torforgeblog.com/2017/11/15/read-the-first-four-chapters-of-autonomous-by-annalee-newitz/" rel="nofollow">https://www.torforgeblog.com/2017/11/15/read-the-first-four-...</a><p><a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/389149/" rel="nofollow">https://lwn.net/Articles/389149/</a>
Getting upset with people for disturbing your concentration whilst having an IM open is like moving to a house by the airport and complaining about the aircraft noise.<p>There are great tools on these things that help you prioritize and snooze notifications and ensure yourself some quiet time.
Sending a message in chunks can be reasonable action. I used to work with a guy who needed several notifications to start paying attention. Instead of typing "Mike?" several times afterwards, it made perfect sense to type "Hi" before
It's great to just have URL and when I do get a 'Hi' message I just paste that back exact one back. It might seem passive aggressive but at this point I'm experiencing frustration with the practice -- to the point I'd nearly call it rude as it's just that inconsiderate to say Hi and wait.
Related. Others?<p><i>Don't ask to ask, just ask</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39762546">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39762546</a> - March 2024 (37 comments)<p><i>Please don't say just hello in chat</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36623348">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36623348</a> - July 2023 (126 comments)<p><i>No Hello: A New Wave</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33906174">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33906174</a> - Dec 2022 (57 comments)<p><i>How to gently enforce “nohello” to a coworker?</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31578259">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31578259</a> - June 2022 (1 comment)<p><i>Please Don't Say Just Hello in Chat</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31088433">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31088433</a> - April 2022 (43 comments)<p><i>No hello – please don't just say hello in chat</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30642052">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30642052</a> - March 2022 (77 comments)<p><i>Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30639225">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30639225</a> - March 2022 (366 comments)<p><i>A better way to say Hello</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30094833">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30094833</a> - Jan 2022 (1 comment)<p><i>No Hello (2013)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29978860">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29978860</a> - Jan 2022 (67 comments)<p><i>Don't Ask to Ask</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29603250">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29603250</a> - Dec 2021 (2 comments)<p><i>No-Hello</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682658">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682658</a> - Sept 2021 (8 comments)<p><i>Please don't say just hello in chat (2013)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25881800">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25881800</a> - Jan 2021 (350 comments)<p><i>Don't ask to ask, just ask</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24259156">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24259156</a> - Aug 2020 (101 comments)<p><i>No Hello (2013)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24239880">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24239880</a> - Aug 2020 (210 comments)<p><i>Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat (2013)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19648415">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19648415</a> - April 2019 (265 comments)<p><i>Please Don't Say Just Hello in Chat</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868294">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868294</a> - July 2017 (46 comments)
my sentiments exactly. other peeve of mine "hey can I ask you a question?"<p>like.. yes my dude, ask the question instead of asking if you can ask the question.
Instead of nohello.com, why not just have emailmeinstead.com?</snark><p>Everyone has their different communication preferences.<p>Personally I have never felt like the no-hello thing is worth caring about - its chat, just let it happen. It is not like you are trapped there unable to do anything else waiting for them to type their question. Just ignore it until it is worth responding to and get on with your day?
The other person isn't necessarily waiting for the response. At the least, its a communication that you are about to ask them something, i.e. check back here in the next minute or so while I type out my question.<p>Also, "Hi" is a good way of finding out if a person is present, sometimes you might ask to call them <i>instead</i> of typing your question.<p>It also might be the case there are multiple people who can answer the question, so you want send out "hi" to a few of them to see who will respond right now.