
What I learned from turning my ‘Out of Office’ auto-replies on for a month - dajbelshaw
http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2013/10/01/what-i-learned-from-turning-my-out-of-office-auto-replies-on-for-a-month/
======
nextw33k
Aarrrrggggggg, out of office replied are the BANE of the internet.

Its an asynchronous medium, like the postal service. Its not a conversation on
the telephone. Replies are not expected to be instant. Anybody that calls you
up 1 hour later to find out why you've not answered is clearly "doing it
wrong"®. Use the correct tool for the job.

The guy could have stopped spamming people and just answered his emails once a
month instead for the same effect.

People that claim email is a bind or that they are a slave to it should have
it removed and see how they prefer life.

~~~
retube
Don't agree at all. Whilst it may be asynchronous, people do have an
expectation of a reply within a reasonable time frame - hours to a few days
depending on the relationship.

It is _incredibly_ infuriating when people are out for 2 weeks and don't alert
you to this fact. You end up wasting time waiting for a repsonse when you culd
have immediately sought assistance from an alternative contact.

It's not spam. It's polite and helpful.

~~~
masklinn
> Whilst it may be asynchronous, people do have an expectation of a reply
> within a reasonable time frame - hours to a few days depending on the
> relationship.

Not at all, unless frequent contacts are expected in which case you should be
warned through other channels.

> You end up wasting time waiting for a repsonse when you culd have
> immediately sought assistance from an alternative contact.

If you need fast turnaround, use a fast turnaround transport. That's what
instant messengers or phones are for.

> It's not spam. It's polite and helpful.

I completely disagree, especially when the numbskull using out-of-office
replies can't be arsed to turn it off for mailing lists. It's spammy, impolite
and unhelpful.

~~~
dorfsmay
Mailing lists are supposed to use priority=bulk.

Mail server are supposed not to reply to bulk email automatically.

~~~
jeltz
They also should include a List-Id and mail servers are not supposed to reply
automatically to those either.

------
caw
Here's my IT version of "Out of Office"

* People will seek you out if _they think_ they need you urgently. It doesn't matter there's a 24 hour help desk available by phone or IM to answer the same question.

* Colleagues will IM you every time they see you online, even if it's 1am and you only signed on because you're on-call and need to fix something urgently.

* Some issues resolve themselves if you don’t answer straight away, but they won't tell you, so you still spend time answering them.

* Email is a chore to many people, so they don't bother to read what you said, even if it helps them out.

------
zamalek
I while back I set up a rule on my mail server that would effectively OOF
respond if people in my company if they didn't CC my manager (indicating that
you should CC my manager so that he can triage whatever issue you may need me
for). People started coming to me with real issues (instead of the "reflex ask
the senior engineer") with valuable evidence (logs, etc.) - they not only
needed to convince me to use my time on their work, but my manager as well.
Some even found their answers on Google (I was in complete shock). That extra
barrier (my manager) was an excellent deterrent for people pawning their work
off on to me.

I have since turned it off, but people remain a lot more respectful of my time
(I may now be perceived as a dick because of it).

~~~
spongle
You are probably perceived as a dick, as am I these days but it doesn't mean
you are wrong. This is an unfortunate side effect of office politics and
double-standards.

My particular perception switcher was when people started starting side
conversations by forwarding JIRA ticket email notifications to me with
comments etc and emails with ticket references in asking questions.

I rejected these with a simple filter [A-Z]{1,3}-[0-9]{1,6} with "write it on
the damn ticket, peon" (in slightly friendlier language).

Everything turns up on tickets now and I get 4-5 emails a day compared to
80-100.

~~~
zamalek
> You are probably perceived as a dick

While having a good relationship with your coworkers is an important part of
being an employee; I am here to do my work. So if "I am a dick who gets stuff
done" so be it :) .

~~~
spongle
Spot on :)

------
scottmagdalein
"some issues resolve themselves" is not true. What you really mean is,
"someone else resolved the issue."

~~~
minikites
Sounds like you've never worked a computer help desk. Lots of times people
would call in and the problem would stop as soon as they got halfway through
explaining it. They just weren't patient enough.

Sometimes people would call in and through the process of describing the issue
they would figure out exactly what they needed to do, they just needed to talk
it out.

I think this is true for lots of things.

~~~
a3_nm
That's a known effect, the keyword is "rubber duck debugging"
<[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging>).

------
TeddyLondon
Love this!

Basically work email is horrible, do all you can to stop it.

It creates individual silos of knowledge that only people included are party
to, whenever someone leaves they take this with them (would you start a job
and take on someone else's old mailbox, yuck!)

It drags people into work 24/7, especially in global organisations but also in
9-5 local time type places, yuck!

I've worked hard to get everyone at the start-up I work at to stop sending
each other emails and use yammer instead - this has worked remarkably well
especially among the techies.

Make your life better and do what you can to stop using email.

~~~
lepton
I'm really surprised at this attitude. What is fundamentally wrong with email,
that I should do what I can to stop using it?

I prefer written communication since I find it more deliberate, and therefore
more productive ultimately (more thought goes into writing than into a phone
conversation; the pace is slower). Email lets me keep my written communication
all in one place.

I can see how it would create silos; I try to be liberal in cc'ing others to
avoid this and to be inclusive.

I don't understand how email drags people in to work in off-hours. I don't
typically expect people to have access to work email off-hours, although I
realize many do (myself included). For urgent questions yes, I'll pick up the
phone.

To be clear, I get 100+ emails on a typical business day. I'm sure if you get
a lot more, a different strategy might be necessary to manage them all.

~~~
TeddyLondon
I'll add to why I think it is so bad, there is so god damn much of it!

I am not trying to convert anyone but I would hate to get 100+ emails a day,
how do you get anything else done?

Since Monday morning (all of Monday and 3/4 of Tuesday) I have had 21 emails,
mostly I have been cc'd by customers and they are irrelevant for me.

For the out of work hours thing I have had a lot of emails out of hours and
felt that I had to reply - I do accept that if I turn off emails out of work
then I'm less likely to be dragged in out of work and maybe other people can
read stuff and put it to the back of their minds or just ignore!

I really felt it liberating to stop receiving so much email, I highly
recommend it!

~~~
VLM
"I would hate to get 100+ emails a day, how do you get anything else done?"

I run 200+ most days and a LONG time ago (decades ago) I set up three rule
based inboxs or whatever you want to call it, the junk that I know is junk and
will not look at unless I'm actively searching, could be important but
probably isn't (more or less the default), and the real inbox which is very
carefully filtered, only certain from addresses and certain subjects.

The name of the game is making as many rules as possible to permanently shovel
junk out of your official inbox and as few rules as possible to shovel real
content into your "real inbox"

To say people get personally offended if they are (in their incorrect opinion)
miscategorized would be a profound understatement. Always pretend you're
incompetent WRT email (I've only been using email on the internet since 1991,
I'm a total noob, so sorry) and I have no idea how to write rules and regexes
when confronted.

About 3/5 of emails I get I delete without looking at in one folder, 1/5 I
just glance at the subject line in that folder about once a day (usually the
morning) and then delete, and the remainder I actually care about enough to
read. Of those I read, most are irrelevant read and delete. In terms of actual
actionable items I get about one per weekday from email.

Is it "safe" to simply delete emails, unread? Sure. I honestly forget stuff
occasionally, probably more often than I incorrectly delete email.

The more intense the CYA culture, the more emails are sent but the fewer are
read. It inevitably converges on a blogging model where everyone could read
what everyone else is doing, but no one actually reads anything because
there's just too much. If you send an email you've proactively given yourself
the opportunity to blame the victim, who doesn't like that?

~~~
TeddyLondon
"The name of the game is making as many rules as possible to permanently
shovel junk out of your official inbox and as few rules as possible to shovel
real content into your "real inbox"" \- doesn't this just feel like your
treading water?

"If you send an email you've proactively given yourself the opportunity to
blame the victim, who doesn't like that?" \- there is a lot to love in that,
maybe I will fire up outlook!

~~~
VLM
"doesn't this just feel like your treading water?"

I've spent a fair amount of my programming career automating humans out of
inhumane jobs, so if anything it feels like work to me, rather than treading
water or grinding. Human beings shouldn't have to read a weekly email
announcing Casual Jeans Day Is Friday every single week or whatever.

There is some grind game aspect to it. Some people grind their virtual farm
production, I grind the minimization of my real email inbox. Some days I login
and see I have no real emails at all. Cool!

------
ljoshua
One of the biggest keys to this experiment is he notes that he will only be
checking email at specific times. If you are in a position to do so, this can
be one of the very best ways to get your email overload under control.

Love the experiment, and being explicit about this type of social contract
would help many of us have better communication patterns.

------
hawkharris
My understanding is that all communications on Twitter are public and that
users are forced to condense all of their comments into 140 characters.

Don't these limitations make it a dangerous medium for discussing detailed and
/ or sensitive project-related issues?

EDIT: I guess there are direct messages, but I'm not sure how often they're
used because I don't use Twitter.

------
dorfsmay
Paul Graham once said email is a To Do list that anybody can fill up. Made me
look at email differently...

------
gambiting
Hi Doug, I was in your presentation for Super Mondays at Newcastle University
yesterday. Just wanted to say thanks for coming,and congratulations for
getting to the front page of HC again, interesting how you mentioned that
yesterday and it happened today.

~~~
dajbelshaw
Thanks! It's all to do with getting to know the system. Popular HN threads
have a certain logic to way people format link titles. ;-)

------
InTheSwiss
When I am in crunch I always enable my OoO with a polite message explaining I
am in crunch and that I cannot respond to them immediately but will do within
the next few days. I also have a dedicated mobile number which I include
(which is different to my regular mobile) when I have for people to contact me
in there is a real emergency that only _I_ can resolve. Nobody has ever called
it :)

------
gadders
Looks like he's turned them on for his website as well...

------
tocomment
It's funny he thinks Twitter isn't asynchronous? Is he really getting more
work done if he's checking twitter every five minutes?

~~~
dajbelshaw
Twitter's a constant stream I dip in and out of. DM's, IRC and Skype chat
pings are for important stuff.

Works well. :-)

