Ask HN: What does “I'll let you two take it from here” really mean? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What does “I'll let you two take it from here” really mean?

8 pointsgnicholas7 comments

In many email introductions, the introducer says "I'll let you two take it from here." Obviously this means they want to be taken off the thread. But it seems kind of rude to not thank the introducer, either separately or in the same thread. Often this manifests as one person (typically the person who requested the introduction) moving the introducer to BCC in the next email and including a thank you.

Is this appropriate? Do people really want to be pulled off the thread immediately and not acknowledged/thanked further? I certainly don't want to pester introducers by clogging their inboxes, but I also don't want to be seen as insufficiently grateful for introductions. It seems kind of odd to send a separate thank-you email, since it's equally inbox-clogging as one sent in-thread. What are best practices here?

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> Do people really want to be pulled off the thread immediately and not acknowledged/thanked further?

I have no idea how many people share my preference, but yes, I want to be taken off the thread and I don't care about being thanked separately. My inbox is taxing enough to manage already.

I figured this would be the case for some folks. Do you mind sharing a bit of additional info so people can better understand what traits lead people to feel this way? Do you think this is due to your job role (entrepreneur/VC/angel/other), the number of emails, the total number of emails you get, or something else?

I share exolymph's preference, though more weakly than I used to. I'm just a software engineer, but I've long found the number of emails I get frustrating. Each email is an additional task, and I have often felt like I'm drowning in a firehose of life-administrivia, even before I get to the challenge of communicating with people I care* about and responding to them well.

This preference has weakened because for the past 3 months I've been practising an improved the way I manage email. I now have a separate explicit triage step and a bookmark to the specific Gmail page which lists untriaged email.

* yes, I do genuinely care about these people. If you're thinking, "If you really cared about them, you would have responded already", then your experience of the world and of tasks is vastly different from mine.

I'm a journalist so I get about a zillion PR pitches every day. My email experience is by far not the worst out there, but it's enough to annoy me. I get ~60-100 emails per day.

Don't take my word for it, but I think it depends on circumstance.

If you have regular other channels to thank the introducer, you can do it there (say you see them at lunch, or on the weekend at some serendipitous place, you have a call to them later for something unrelated)

If you don't communicate frequently, then yeah, go ahead and thank them in a separate email.

If you comm with them frequently then just piggyback the mention in that other message.

Also depends on the importance to them and to you. Does it mean anything to them? Does it mean a lot to you?

But definitely they do want be taken of that thread going forward --their "job" is done.

I'm sure you'll get lots of better advice from other more personable people.

"Moving myself to BCC" is another favourite trick I like to get out of an email chain quickly that I start.

How is that possible?

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