this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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That's what I am thinking. There are some things that make sense to take while but it seems weird to me to ask for a semi-blank check like this. I have coworkers that are awful at responding (weeks oftentimes) and it's super frustrating.
If you need a fast response, don't use email. In general, here's my order of urgency and expected time to resolution:
I try to go as far down that list as possible, but no further.
If you're getting frustrated, it means you're probably going too far down that list.
This is wild to me, to be honest.
One of the great things about email, versus IMs and other more real-time forms of communication is that it gives the recipient the ability to address it in a more offline manner. In that way, I've always viewed it as more respective of people's schedule and work habits, since it's naturally asynchronous.
So I'm having trouble following the idea that people would view it as intrusive and obnoxious while also saying that the only way to get a reply from them the same week is to get in front of them with a real-time communication like a call or physical visit--way more disruptive to concentration.
The benefit of things like Slack is that you can ask a group instead of a specific individual, so I treat group chats like others treat email. You can do that with email, but there's always the risk that someone will forget to reply all (so multiple people will try to do the same work), or the annoyance that someone replies to the group accidentally. With Slack, I can easily check if someone has responded at my regular check interval.
I very rarely directly message anyone on Slack, because that's disruptive to their workflow. In the odd case where it needs to go to a single recipient and isn't urgent, I'll prefix the message with "not urgent" so they know they can safely ignore the message. The net result is that I can fit multiple use-cases into one system (broadcasts, less urgent one-on-one communication, urgent one-on-one communication), so I only need to check the one place.
At one company before we switched to Slack, I would have to check:
Email was our primary communication method, and that had some issues:
Slack fixed a number of these issues:
I can usually hold 3-4 separate conversations at the same time in Slack, which I think has reduced our need for meetings. I can give short responses without having to anticipate other potential questions, because I know they'll probably respond soon. So I end up engaging with Slack more often than email, but I spend less total time using it vs email because I don't need to think through my responses nearly as carefully.
I check my email like I check my mail, once every couple of days - once a week. We have faster modes of communication and (especially in a work setting) if something is time sensitive you can give me a call or text/IM.
If checking my email somewhat regularly means people will call/IM me less, sign me up. I can’t get anything done with synchronous communication on the regular.
I mean, all of this is subjective and relative to context, but if someone can't even respond to let you know they're working on it in under a week, you probably have multiple other issues in your company beyond the individual.
And what does "fast" mean? I'm sending emails that are not urgent to respond to, but it feels like that lack of urgency is milked for all it is worth. I send them to people I know are in meetings all day. That way it's harder for it to get lost. When 6 weeks go by and they've responded in no way, I don't think the problem is that I sent it as an email. Even if it were only like 6 business days, that just feels like they're either extremely disorganized or doing the job of three people (not the case with the biggest offenders at my company).
I honestly don't check my work email at all unless I'm expecting something. Like 95% of the stuff there is crap from corporate (person X in dept. Y is retiring, make sure to fill out that survey, etc), and if it's important, someone will mention it in our team meetings and I'll search my email for it. All of our real work happens on Slack (so #2), so we pretty much never go beyond #3.
This certainly varies by company and role, but at least for mine, emails are where you send something if you want to say you sent it, but don't actually want to follow up. So if we have a transient issue with one of our cloud services, I'll email their support department and consider the matter resolved. Maybe they'll fix it eventually, maybe they won't, but it's not worth my time to actually follow up. But if they do respond, that's pretty cool!
That said, if your company culture is to respond to emails quickly, then that's different. I've just never worked at a company or role like that, all of my actual work is over IM or meetings.
I mean, again, I wouldn't classify my personal expectation of a week or two to be "quickly" by a long shot. The usual offender here would expect me to respond to any communication channel, about anything, within minutes or hours. The company culture doesn't really set any explicit expectations about email other than it shouldn't be a channel for super quick communication.
To me in most of the cases I deal with, it's a common courtesy issue. Questions about a major product that millions of people use in production shouldn't be ignored, but they often are. If I sent the emails as Slack instead, it has historically been even worse of a problem because they are usually in a meeting and forget to come back to it later.
If that were remotely the case, I'd never even check my email. That's an odd standard to have, imo.
Then that person is a hypocrite. If they're expecting responses quickly, but using a medium that's not designed for fast responses, that's on them and you should tell them as much.
Then ping them again. If it truly is important enough to send an IM over, it's important enough to follow up after a couple hours.
And that's why I and pretty much my whole team doesn't check their email very often. Occasionally there's something interesting or useful, but almost never. Email is there to broadcast messages to the group that don't fit nicely into an IM, and they're usually accompanied with an IM to the group to look for that email.
That's how every company I've worked at has operated. I'm not in sales or customer support, so it's really not part of my job expectations to deal with email. If something needs to go to another department, it's probably above my pay grade anyway, so I'll ask someone else to handle it. I manage a team with almost zero interaction with anyone outside our group, and whenever I need to do something over email, I get explicitly asked to do so (e.g. I had to submit some paperwork for one of my employee's immigration work, which I did follow up on promptly over email).
We do family reunions every year as well, and those are organized on email, but my parents send a text whenever there's something important there (e.g. voting on where to go, what to do, etc). I pay attention to the email for the next couple weeks until things get resolved, then I go back to largely ignoring it.
I'm trying to do better about it, but honestly, there's almost zero repercussions for ignoring it. The things I've missed are miniscule to the amount of time I've saved by ignoring it.
You apparently live in a world where email shouldn't exist and almost doesn't. Even as a software engineer who rarely does anything important via email, I do not come close to living in that same world as you.
As for telling someone high in the company that they are a hypocrite, so much easier said than done.
Yes, it can be hard, but honestly, if I worked at a place where I wasn't comfortable calling out hypocrisy, I'd look for another job. I tell the people who work for me to call out my own BS, and if I don't fix it, to report me to my boss.
In fact, that's related to how I left my last job after working there for 10-ish years. My boss (CEO) fired me because I pissed off his wife (President) by not working crazy hours. I had been there >10 hours, and was notified of a problem and helped fix it from home. They were both there only 3-4 hours/day and did a lot of WFH, but we weren't allowed to do that. They ended up keeping me as an outside contractor for a couple years because my contributions were so highly valued, but they didn't want me showing up in-person anymore (I apparently really pissed off his wife when I stood up for myself).
Work culture means a lot to me. If email is a core part of the company work culture, I'll push back on noisy emails and get a good system in place. If it's not, I'm upfront about largely ignoring the company email and ask people to contact me in other ways.
Man you are way overblowing all of this so much. Email is not a big part of my work culture. I'm just complaining about how annoying people are who don't communicate worth a shit. Every company has those people. Doesn't need to happen often to be annoying, even
Also I find it a bit perplexing that you seem to suggest all emails carry the same weight (and that weight is nothing?). Within half a second I can easily look at a new email and tell if I can ignore it because they are sent to hundreds of people and doesn't require my attention. In the same half a second I can tell if it's from an individual, clearly making it something I should look at.
Maybe you're so averse to email because you get far more of it than I do? I have a couple folders for automated notifications that automatically get sorted, but excluding those I probably only get like 30 work emails a week. Even after a vacation it's not a lot of effort to go through the entire inbox.
That half a second to check an email is a meaningful context switch that disrupts flow.
I cannot believe I'm in the position of arguing in favor of emails mattering enough to reply to. I'm not even sure what your point is. Did I say that I love email? I simply said if we're going to even have it, you should be able to get a damned response to one.
My point is that expecting someone to read an email on your timetable is not reasonable because it is a massive, productivity burning distraction.
"my timetable"... My timetable is "attempt to make a production issue your priority at some point". But sure, make your assumptions or whatever.
Somehow you missed that I used email over demanding their attention when It was convenient for me which was a choice to be respectful.
But don't let me get in the way of your complexes
I'm not them but you seem to have different company cultures than the person you're responding to and due to that you guys aren't seeing eye to eye. I'm in the same boat as the other person.
My email is flooded with automated messages for workflows and company PR. Very rarely do I get something that needs my attention so email is like regular mail to me. We have other ways to ensure work (from outside my team) is completed and a priority to my team and email had been found to be lacking.
This means my company uses other tools to ensure requests are made aware to people without using email and we're all good with it. I'm not saying that to say we have the best or right solution, just that our company found what's best for us and maybe the other person isn't articulating the same has happened for them.
So, I don't know why everyone keeps thinking I like email. I don't. And from what you said, it sounds like you need better folders and filters. I actually find GitHub email notifications useful after tuning my filters. Having said that 97% of emails are useless. I just don't have a big issue with reading and responding to the occasional email if needed, and sending them to teammates that are in meetings all the time and miss slack messages. And the least those people can do is reply within a few days. It shouldn't be so controversial. Like do you all think I'm lying when I say I've tried slacking them and never hear back? I do not understand this pushback
I'm not opposed to sending an email back either, but that's not the method of communication we are used to at my place of work. Those emails are for interactions with outside entities most of the time. And email filters can work but just glancing at what I have every couple of days is enough to know I don't need to worry about what's going on in emails. They're backup to other systems that are in place that will alert is to critical issues.
Again though, we don't really have people miss slack messages. I'm suspecting this might be like the way some people say they use signal/Messenger/WhatsApp/SMS. People/companies just communicate differently and we just have different experiences within our lives. I posted my initial reply with that intent but I probably didn't make that clear.
You keep saying "a few days".
"A few days" is not a reasonable demand. Not looking at email more than once a week is an entirely legitimate approach to productivity. So is "email is not a legitimate way to contact me".
They clearly mentioned the actual ways to get issues dealt with. "Just use tooling to make email not dogshit" is a step down from using tooling that isn't dogshit to begin with.
Just no. It's weird that you think everyone has to view email as something that simultaneously exists while not mattering for any purpose in the slightest. And it's weird you think it's suddenly a challenge to communicate if someone has the courtesy to let you reply later at your convenience. "Oh I can reply whenever? How about never motherfucker!"
You seem pretty childish too, unable to tell the difference in an expectation and a "demand."
Complaining about someone not using a shit heap of a productivity killer of a tool when they've made it clear that there are actually valid ways to communicate is a demand by definition.
It's a demand that someone destroy their productivity to service your arbitrary bullshit.
Mental children may not understand that sending an "instant message" such as via slack is more of a demand than sending an email and expecting a response eventually.
It's truly bizarre that you want to fight with me about this. Not only is your opinion weird, it means nothing to me since you were a rude weirdo about it. Thanks for letting me know how to interact with you in the future though.
Yeah, this person is acting like breaking their concentration on something, to read an e-mail, is drastically different than doing the same thing, for a text. This is a ridiculous assertion. Unless you intentionally make it so you have to log into your e-mail every time you want to use it, but just leave slack, or whatever, open. If you do, that is your fault, not something wrong with e-mail. You can just see e-mail notifications, and then look at the window, just like any messaging system.
This person just has an irrational, personal, dislike of e-mail vs other communication methods. They are trying to make it seem like they have some sort of objective reason for their preference, and it isn't just a personal preference. This way they can try and force everyone around them to bend to their preferences, while telling themselves it is everyone else who is wrong. Like yeah, e-mail isn't the greatest thing around, however it still has some aspects that it does better than anything else, especially in a professional environment. There are rational, objective, reasons most companies still use e-mail, even though they all have slack groups too.
Thank you for being a reasonable person and taking the time to write that. I fully agree, and well said.
All communication is a massive, productivity destroying distraction when you're working on something.
Structured tools are designed to organize and control communication into channels that are designed to handle when and how you deal with different things. Email is not, and bad tooling doesn't come close to closing the gap.
He's throwing a tantrum over the perfectly reasonable "we have structured communication tools; email is not a legitimate way to contact me", and pretending forcing them to use an alternate, bad tool is somehow doing them a favor.
He's throwing a tantrum? Did you forget which account you are on?
"disgusting opinion" oh jesus fucking christ. Please tell me you are a troll, or like 12.
Fragmenting communication into anti-productivity tools then expecting a response is not less demanding.
The only "rude weirdo" is the person jumping down someone's throat for stating the fact that a "half second" is literally never a half second, and is very frequently hours of time wasted.
In the time you wasted raging at me, you could've replied to like 5 emails your colleagues are waiting to hear from you on but you have a bizarre principle against doing.
You must be a pain in the dick to work with, judging by this exchange
I'm not on the clock, and demanding someone do a literal second of work off the clock is equally demanding jackass behavior.
You've wasted more of my time with this than a month of work emails would. But congratulations on somehow thinking I was asking you to... Work without getting paid or something? That took imagination.
Why would I give a shit? You're choosing to use a social media app. The time you waste is entirely on you, and I'm entitled to call out disgusting opinions. Unless someone tells you they use an email address, getting pissy when they don't respond to it when they gave you a legitimate way to get in contact with them makes you, exclusively, the bad guy.
"You should be doing work" with no knowledge that someone's on the clock is inherently toxic bullshit.
Hahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha
Are you 13?
I am not sure how this point was lost on you other than pure thickheadedness. I was clearly saying you don't mind wasting a ton of time trying to piss me off, but somehow if a colleague emails you, you're enraged at how they don't value your time. You're really bending over backwards to not understand other people, in multiple ways.
Who said it was a business email?