I think "no hello" evangelists should emphasize that you can say hello if you want, as long as you follow up with your actual question/request in the same message. The point isn't that the "hello" itself is a critical waste of some human resource, but rather that interrupting somebody with "hello" and then making them wait for something actionable is disruptive and frustrating.
This may seem obvious to many, but I don't think it's universally understood.
The marketing of "no hello" (nohello.net) is contrary to what those examples say. So maybe there is a better way to market it instead of "no hello". Like maybe "just ask the question", or "start with a query", or "Don't just hello".
I think the tone being kind of sassy and put apon over a small inconvenience shifts the focus from the more constructive parts of the message and in that sense I agree with the person you are responding to - the etiquette evangelists might be more effective if they did less spleen venting.
My boss always sends a hello first, usually 1 to 5 minutes before I get the thing I'm actually supposed to respond to. If she just sent the whole thing at once, I could determine if it's something I need to break focus for immediately, or get to in a few minutes.
You are welcome to think what you want. The opinion I've expressed here is based on my lived experience with the "no hello" concept as promulgated within a real life workplace---likely before this article was written, but I don't feel the article is a significant improvement on the other communication approaches I've seen. People are very imperfect readers and there is a reason the concept of 'burying the lede' exists.
I don’t like just hi either, but people tell me they do it because they don’t want to disturb me and don’t know if I may be sharing my screen - so it is well-intentioned.
I once was on a WebEx when the presenter was notified by her manager about the company car she would get for her promotion in a thread with many details. Very insightful.
The website is incredible. I spent a few minutes and I could not get to the end of it. I wonder how many copies of the software did that website sell - I'm thinking of buying one and I don't even own a Mac.
they can be in every tool I've used, and are also on by default, so I think this is a lot of people shooting themselves in the foot.
when I am on support, if you ping me with only "hi" or "hello" or some other simple greeting, I will simply not respond to you until you give me something actionable for me to look at. if you don't say your problem and provide some info about what you need, then I have neither the time nor the desire to pull it out of you. tell me what you need or I will not respond.
I could also have people at my desk looking at my screen as we go over some code or a project plan. Messaging services are for urgent matters which usually have some privileged info. If it’s just a non urgent question or request, send an email so you don’t interrupt people. Biggest issue with messaging services is that they easily abused for things that can done via asynchronous communication. They become big distractions.
Honestly as long as they second message comes promptly after the first this doesn't bother me at all. It's when the "Hey" is just left out there by itself that annoys me.
It's very mildly annoying when it leads to me staring at slack waiting for you to finish typing, but if that's the most annoying thing that happens on slack that day then it's a really good day.
I suppose, as long as these 4 messages arrive in quick succession you're fine.
If you wait a minute between sending each, that's where you should feel guilty :P
The multiple notifications often bother me, but I think it's a problem with the messaging app, not with the sender. It shouldn't send a new notification for each message if it just sent one a few seconds ago.
I don't think the problem described is staccatto bursts (at least I hope, I do the same thing), but adding a synchronous element to the communication that doesn't add thing.
I think what you do is pretty in line with this ethos - the other person is pretty free to prioritize your messages as they see fit
I think the "don't do this" examples are actually some of the least egregious examples of this problem.
I've got an infamous chat I here where a guy opened with "hey".. followed by a "how are you".. and like seven messages and 20 minutes later he gets to "we have a Sev1 incident, all systems down, can you look at it"?.
There is also a cultural component to saying hello/hi before stating your request. Almost every Asian/Indian person I have worked with starts a conversation this way. I asked a friend one time and they just said it is polite so I stopped caring
what is worse are people who are just clearly trolling for someone to come help them via vaguebugging.
"hey team, [although not actually on your team] is anyone seeing bugs in the latest release?"
this sounds like i'm about to get sucked into a game of 20-questions, and when you've got an issue tracker with 400+ open issues there's definitely still bugs in the latest release.
just spit the question out:
"i'm with <client> and we're trying to do <thing> and we're getting this error message <paste error message or point at a gist/pastebin if it is long>, is this a bug or are we doing something wrong?"
I would love if people would send just 1 big message instead of splitting it in multi lines and send them one of a time. I prefer to get 1 notifications not 3+ and having to check and then see the "X is typing " message
This all assumes the person doesn't have a reason to verify your presence before doing a brain dump.
Maybe they do. Maybe they want to make sure you're there; maybe their issue is dependent on the time; maybe they want to send/receive a TOTP; maybe the whole point of the conversation is to check whether the medium is functional; maybe they want to send you something sensitive...
"Hi, I have a time sensitive question about X, are you available to help for a minute?"
honestly that's much more likely to get a response from me than "hi" anyway, because I know it's urgent, assuming you're not someone who abuses the idea of urgent.
> maybe they want to send/receive a TOTP
"Hey, I need a TOTP real fast, are you around?"
And my response would be "no, I'm not sharing my TOTP with you" but alas
> maybe the whole point of the conversation is to check whether the medium is functional
"Hey, having trouble with Slack today, are you seeing this?"
Again, I'd be much more likely to respond than just "hi" that might turn into a real time suck for me
> maybe they want to send you something sensitive
"Hey, are you screen sharing? want to send you some budget numbers"
I really wish people would stop treating IM as a proxy for face-to-face interactions. It isn't that, because we are not face-to-face, but that's how these IM apps got their contracts, sadly.
Email forces people to wait, be patient, be clear about what they want to say since its much more obvious engaging in face-to-face conventions in that medium is hella annoying.
You could hint that the convo needs to be synchronous, e.g. "Hey, let me know when you have a few minutes to spare / can jump on a call" or something along those lines.
If you're sending a message like that, you should at least include a subject. "Hey, let me know when you have a few minutes to spare / can jump on a call to talk about the company's new live squirrels project"
This is all better accomplished by explicitly saying all of that:
"Hey, you around? I need a help with a $time-sensitive-thing" or "Hey, ping me when you're around, I need a 2FA code for $XYZ", instead of just "hello".
This message I will reply to if/when I'm around. I know exactly what I'm getting into. "Hi" could be I have a quick two second thing, or I'm about to dump 6 pages on you and expect a reply in a few minutes. I'll reply when I'm prepared to deal with the latter. Maybe.
Yes exactly. I'm agreeing that this is the right alternative and will get a response from me much faster than the empty "Hi". "Hi" <brief description of why I'm reaching out> is always superior.
That’s the point—it’s ambiguous. It’s better to use more words to indicate what you’re saying hi for than to try and force me to acknowledge you by hiding your reasons up front. That is a form of manipulation.
That is kind of a terminally online attitude about it don't you think? Exchanging pleasantries before getting to the point is a part of a lot of cultures in-person verbal communication and the point is to avoid the appearance or actuality of treating another person as a machine to be operated for maximum profit.
It just doesn't translate to online text communications at all, is so maladapted that it becomes actively rude.
Its gauche to call shennanigans on a simple faux-paus
I don’t know what your point is, truthfully. If we are to be considerate of our fellow human then in my opinion we should be aware of the medium we communicate on. I think everyone is smart enough to understand that just because I’m in your contacts list doesn’t mean I’m available, especially in a work context where just saying “hi” back removes me from whatever context I was in. Obviously if we are in person it is different.
This feels like the sort of thing that could be easily solved with technology. Something like: if I receive a message on slack with the message hi, how are you, hello, or something similar, wait 15 minutes to notify me about it. For all other messages, notify me as normal.
It's a social issue, not a technological one. People just need to be ok communicating with people who have different styles. Most people do not care to optimize their communication like this and will have a more natural way of speaking, including starting a conversation with "hi".
None of that is how communication works. It requires (basically equal) effort on the part of the sender and the receiver. Gatekeeping communication styles is just a symptom of not having control in other areas.
If people are annoyed by someone saying "hi" then yes, I think they are in the wrong and creating a hostile work environment. I've worked on a lot of different teams, and people who complain about stuff like this are always the single biggest drag on morale. Teams should practice tolerance, trust and flexibility, especially remote teams.
In a great many chat (as in one-to-many group chat as in, say, IRC -- where the 'C' stands for "chat" btw) it's perfectly okay when people join and start with just "hello".
I think TFA meant to write: "please don't say just hello in PMs to coworkers".
Not all chats revolves around leveraging synergies to maximize shareholders value while at work.
I view this not as a “you’re making me wait” thing but rather being kind to those of us who have anxiety. “Hi.” without any follow up can really derail a struggling person.
Statistically speaking 2/10 have an ongoing mental struggle so I try not to make the “hi” transactional and immediately follow up with the point in the same message.
YES. I completely 100% agree. Try to minimize the number of messages you're going to send. Just saying "Hi" and then also saying what you want to ask just makes my phone ring twice instead of once and that just gets more annoying with each subsequent message you send before I have a chance to respond.
This could be specific to French speaking culture but I am often contacted by individuals who start online conversations with either:
"hi, I hope you're well."
"hi, what's up?"
These introductions clearly tend to trigger me as I interpret them as someone who wants to ask for something but isn't brave enough to simply ask for it so she/he keeps walking around you desperately looking for a sign of welcome.
When this happens, I usually just reply with:
"Hi."
Then I pull out my popcorn and watch the "X is typing a reply" prompt come up then disappear, repeatedly for the next minute or two.
I often start a conversation with a colleague with "Hello, how are you?", to which they may answer "Good, thanks... just coming back from holiday, was nice". Then I can ask about their holidays, and have an actual social interaction with them.
They can also say "I'm good, how about you?", to which I can answer "I'm okay, it is a bit stressful these days", and maybe we get another social interaction from that.
You know... just like if I meet a colleague at the coffee machine. I don't come, say "Please review PR 1342 when you have time" and leave.
Of course, if I just had coffee with that colleague, then on the chat I may just say "oh btw, did you have a chance to look into PR 1342?".
I would assume those are the basics of social interactions.
Sounds a lot like cultural thing. In Scandinavian countries everyone will be much happier if you just get straight to the point. If you you want to have your PR reviewed, just ask `Hi, can you review PR 1342.` and the other person will answer `Sure, no problem`. There really is no point of fluffing up your request with random chitchat.
Yes, it could be. Maybe that is why I find this website a little bit offensive.
I would find it much more interesting to have a post about how different cultures deal with chats, rather than a website that basically says "Please do it my way. I even made a website for you to ask others to do it my way".
For instance, in my first job I was in contact with companies on the other side of the world, and would sometimes be pissed at them because of their "annoying" behavior. Until I realized that it was actually a different culture, and I was being a jerk to them. My solution was to try to be more open to different cultures, and not to publish a website explaining how people should just embrace mine.
Sure, I have no problem with that. I guess I just don't create a website called "pleasebepolite.net" where I explain how I like it better when people behave politely (for my definition of politeness).
Where I work people indicate their preference by saying "no hello" or "yes hello" (or rather the corp equivalent of it here). Works pretty well. This problem is entirely solvable!
These days, I start wiht a hello, and inline with that, a call to not respond if the person is OOO or it's outside of work hours, a bit of context on the problem, several links to the relevant code/pipeline failure, a specific request for what I need to know, another request to actually answer my question and not solve another unrelated problem, an unrelated sportsball comment, and then finally, what I actually needed.
Then when they're online I can just re-paste that.
I'm pretty sure this is what my chatgpt thinks whenever I say hi. I know it's annoying, but you respond so quickly and gladly, so I can't stop starting the chat with hi. I should stop this, or I would begin to do the same to real humans on Slack.
I find people routinely ignore this and still just say Hello. It’s a habit hard to get rid of. So just ignore the person saying Hello. Later I found some people complaining about how I am never available for “quick” chat.
It could be even worse — you could have a “good morning, sunshine”er among you. Yes, just that, followed by three or four minutes of a few crawling ellipses, on and off. Then, at last: “Got a minute?”
I can’t think of a single time that someone has done this. Is it a generational thing? I’m Gen X and probably the majority of people I chat with are also Gen X (other than my kids who are Gen Z).
Just ignore the 'hi'-sayers. Either they will go away or they will state the matter. Make sure their message is marked as read, so that they would understand.
I don't get those who get pissed because someone tries to be polite, or because they think every conversation should go in a thread (maybe you need a forum then?), or because they get too many notifications (just disable them?).
The solution to this is not technology, but rather anger control.
Saying just "Hi" or "Hello" is asking for a synchronous chat, whether by text or by voice.
Lots of people prefer talking to people rather then writing each other letters.
Yes it's arguably less efficient, but lots of things that people do are inefficient, and if they prefer that means of communication it doesn't really hurt and in my mind is just polite to oblige them.
I do it all the time in chat. I'll say, Good Morning [name], and wait for them to respond. It seems rude to me to just blurt out what I want. If I walked up to someone in an office whom I don't normally speak with, I would first say, "Hi. How are you?" and wait for them to respond. At the very minimum, I would say hi and wait for them to say, hi back before I tell them what I'm looking for. Same thing over chat.
The issue is that in-person, you can see the individual and whether they’re going to immediately respond (since, socially, it would be odd to delay in response to someone who is speaking to you in-person); in chat, you have no idea if I’m going to answer in 5 seconds or 5 hours. And the same for me as I wait for your response to my “Good morning to you, as well.”
I wonder if your tone and advice still make sense in these similar scenarios:
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.
> 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.
I've never had anyone ask me such a strange question. I think most humans know that when someone says "hi" you say "hi" back, I don't see how that could be confusing to new team members.
If I've already emailed someone and they haven't responded in 48 hours, can I send a message that just says "Hi" or is "Hi, respond to your email" more appropriate?
It’s as simple as “Hey gAI, I sent an email about xyz the other day, have you had a chance to look at it?” No need to say nothing but hi or be indirect.
If someone's not responding to their emails, they've already failed to meet me halfway in communication. It's not my responsibility to go even further before they make a first attempt.
What a weird take. Unless you have immaculate email filtering or receive very few emails, it’s not hard for emails to slip through the cracks. You can complain about someone “not meeting half way” in a phone call or IM with read receipts, but email is one way communication until you actually get a response.
> they've already failed to meet me halfway in communication
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”?
It just delays everything and wastes everyone's time. Nobody is complaining, more like a request that sending context with hello would save everyone's time.
Saying “hi” back implies that I have time to listen to you right now. Maybe I don’t, or maybe I’d like to wait to decide until I know what you want.
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.
While the original article doesn't mention it, I think there are two issues here, one of which you allude to.
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.
That wastes everyone's time. 'hi' is fine at a personal setting. At work, you waste time for a reply, then the reply to the reply, and only then the person will state their request. This can take hours if done across timezones.
How is it "wasting time"? It takes less than a second to type "hi". Presumably you have something you're doing while you wait to hear back, no? Not being uptight and pedantic is far superior to trying to "optimize" everyone's time by forcing them to communicate in an unnatural way.
Because the query is an interruption. Frustratingly, about 30% of the time (or more!) the person who sent me the hi doesn’t send their actual question even if I respond almost instantly after it’s sent, so I’ve stopped responding to a bare hi.
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.
Thank you for your thoughtful responses! A lot of my managerial style has been tuned for remote work and the #1 thing I try to stress is trust and tolerance. It's easy to take things the wrong way when remote or cut people less slack. Remote teams work much better with trust and flexibility at their foundation. Being nit picky is very corrosive and stress inducing, especially in a remote environment.
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.
The person initiating the interaction should make it as easy as possible for the other person.
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.
I think if "hi" is causing problems, you have larger process issues. For instance, it sounds like you're overloaded and understaffed. The issue isn't with "hi", it's with running the machine at too high a pace to absorb even basic social interaction without derailing. That's a problem.
Maybe a shift in perspective might help. It sounds like people need a lot of help from you. I'd help them and do it in their preferred communication style, building relationships in the process. Then I'd show management how much I was doing this and use my newly strengthened relationships with the team as a foundation to ask for a significant promotion. View people reaching out to you (even if you think the request is silly) as an opportunity.
Because the initial "hi" forces a context switch which the recipient (after reading and replying) has to either: Sit idle while the sender writes their actual question, or try to context switch back for a tiny amount of time.
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.
You don't do this:
Pilot: "San Jose tower, Cessna 54321"
Tower: "Cessna 321, San Jose tower, state your position and request"
Pilot: "Tower, Cessna 321 is five miles to the southeast"
Tower (starting to sound annoyed) "Cessna 321, and your request please?"
Pilot: "I'd like a straight-in landing on runway 30 right"
Tower (if pilot is lucky) "321 cleared for straight-in approach and landing 30 right"
Instead, you do this:
Pilot: "San Jose tower, Cessna 54321 five miles southeast, request straight-in landing 30 right"
Tower: "Cessna 321, San Jose tower, cleared for straight-in approach and landing 30 right"