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.
