People often joke on X about the lame DMs they get: Hi! Well, it’s not just X. Every (remote) organization, engineer, and team lead is confronted with these messages daily. ”Hi.” The oneliner that SEGFAULTS your entire brain because so many things could come after it.
This was a widely researched topic at Google, internally we used to have a header go/nohello and it covers exactly this.
Great post, Akos. A simple "hi" might seem harmless and nice, but it actually not only hurts your productivity but the other person as well. Because it demands multiple context switches and leaves the other person hanging till you come up with the real question.
Great article Akos. It's a very real problem you've mentioned.
"Hi" is used to do a lot of heavy lifting in such scenarios. Another similar thing is "Do you have 2 minutes?"
The trouble I think is that people are often just looking to get you into a conversation before revealing what they need. They aren't sure whether you are interested in the topic but still need your time. It's definitely not a good strategy and results in so many confusions as you mentioned about the balloons vs production issue example.
This was a widely researched topic at Google, internally we used to have a header go/nohello and it covers exactly this.
Great post, Akos. A simple "hi" might seem harmless and nice, but it actually not only hurts your productivity but the other person as well. Because it demands multiple context switches and leaves the other person hanging till you come up with the real question.
Great article Akos. It's a very real problem you've mentioned.
"Hi" is used to do a lot of heavy lifting in such scenarios. Another similar thing is "Do you have 2 minutes?"
The trouble I think is that people are often just looking to get you into a conversation before revealing what they need. They aren't sure whether you are interested in the topic but still need your time. It's definitely not a good strategy and results in so many confusions as you mentioned about the balloons vs production issue example.
Also, thanks for the mention!
I never understood why people wouldn’t add context to their message. A simple “Hi” in a text message is a very lousy way to grab someone’s attention.
It’d say the worst is a boss asking, “Do you have 5 minutes for a chat?” without adding some sort of agenda or topic of discussion.