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Comment by tharkun__ | Hacker News Reader

    imagine times where you replied to emails partially

It will be hard for someone that always replies to the first thing only to empathize with this but: This has literally never happened to me. As in, I have never replied partially to something in an email. You will get an answer to each of your items. Granted, you may not get the answer you were looking for but I will answer each and every one, even if it's just a "I will have to look into this one and get back to you" so that the other 6 items can get answered right away.

Why do the thorough people always have to empathize and not the other way around?

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I don't think this is practically much different then answering one thing. If you give one answer and 3 "I'll get back to you on that"'s-- this creates a promise of a future asynchronous answer, which is only as good as your word. People often have too many tasks, so to get those remaining items on your queue, they'll have to ask you again.

As the recipient, it's more challenging to receive the future promise of an answer with no SLA.

I would be to differ. To me, there is a large difference between just ignoring 6 out of 7 questions I asked you or you telling me that you do not know the answer right now but will get back to me.

I agree that if there's no explicitly stated SLA and no implicit SLA given the relationship history between the two of us (e.g. I might know you're usually going to get back to me within 24 hours on such items), then this is practically the same.

I do not operate under such circumstances though. If I tell you that I will get back to you, then I will get back to you within a reasonable time frame and you will know from our previous interactions that I'm good for it in most cases and that it's totally OK for you to ask again after a day because I might have forgotten. I'm not perfect.

Since this was an example answer only, it is also possible that for one of your 7 questions the answer will simply be that I cannot get that answer to you within any reasonable amount of time at this point because of other priorities I have and that you should find someone else or I might point you towards someone else. In any case, you will have all of your 7 points answered. I won't just ignore them.

The difference is as a sender I would know that you parsed each of my questions, understood them and decided to either not answer them now or just never answer them. Replying to one is ambiguous, if it was actually important it just leads to having to follow up again, restating everything that wasn't acknowledged.

I applaud you. This is the standard I try to live up to and want my teammates to aspire to.

What’s the opportunity cost of your thoroughness?

That will depend on circumstances obviously ;)

I also never said that I will answer your questions right away. Just that I will answer all 7 of them once I do reply. The opportunity cost of looking at my email inbox might be way too high at a particular moment and so I might not even see your message for a full day to begin with. Same w/ a slack message. I might not see your particular message for some time or I might see it and decide that it's not a message I can deal with on the side while in a meeting and mark it for later consumption e.g. for when the meeting ends early etc.

FWIW I've so far never seen anyone try to 'use' my thoroughness to create a denial of service attack against me. If that ever did happen, I would definitely change my stance. But it won't be to answer the first question each time. It would be to stop talking to them. Like I ignore any "Hi, can I ask you a question?" messages. Even some directors have tried that and just gotten ignored (first time someone does it, I will let them know they can just ask away. Second time they get ignored until they learn).

Have you ever faced a volume of questions that you could not reasonably answer to the degree of thoroughness you prefer? How did you deal with it? I mean, you mention at least one tactic in the sibling thread, but what I don’t understand is your apparent unwillingness to attenuate your thoroughness based on circumstances. Probably I am taking you too literally, but am curious, is your position absolute?

(I too appreciate thoroughness, but also believe that for some things in business “worse is better”. IE 90% thoroughness might cost 1/10th as much as 99% thoroughness, it’s certainly possible to over-index on the quality of the answers one provides)

You asked

> Why do the thorough people always have to empathize and not the other way around?

“Answers questions thoroughly” is a behavior, not part of a person’s identity. If someone gives you a partial answer, that may be optimal behavior for the circumstances, you don’t know, that’s where the empathy comes in. Of course empathy should be mutual, but you can’t be blocked on that to obtain a favorable business outcome. Empathy is a tool in your toolbox.

Yes I have had that problem and still have it from time to time. Like you said, I mentioned one way to deal with it in the sibling thread. What has also happened in some cases is that I had to de-prioritize other things that I had on my plate because the questions were more important at that time.

Maybe it's not entirely clear what I mean with thoroughness here. I am talking about not just ignoring someone's questions. It doesn't mean that if you "ask" me to answer 7 questions that will each take a day of work to answer that I will be "thorough and do those 7 things immediately to get you your answer". I will simply ensure that I read all your 7 questions and tell you that each will take me about a day to answer as it would require certain checks and that I do not have the time for that at the moment. However, if your questions are so urgent vs. the other things I have on my plate, you are welcome to talk to my boss/my product owner/etc on getting your items prioritized higher. I have a finite amount of time per day that I do work and while the exact amount can vary from time to time I will not start working 80 hour weeks or start ignoring your questions.

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