Please don't be spooky | Hacker News Reader

Please don't be spooky

tiramisu.bearblog.dev

203 pointsmemorable157 comments

I'd recommend trying to get to a room where family member/friend etc. is in their environment, throw casually "hey, can we talk" and move outside of the room waiting for them to come over.

They will expect something is/was wrong. Simply because people organically don't communicate like that. There is no N minutes pause between prompt and the message. Having separate communication prompt is signaling for bracing or softening, i.e. delivery of bad news.

Sure, a lot of people learned to cope with this, but that's definitely not normal communication. It's also wasting other people's time and showing lack of respect. Having someone wait on hook for 2 minutes while thoughts are being typed out is exact same type of power move as "yeah, I called you, but wait a sec till I finish my crossword". Is the other person online presence really indispensable to a degree that the thoughts cannot by typed out without it? As a counter move (if someone wants to be mean) you can respond "Hey, I'm here, but I'm starting my focus session right now, so I'll check my Slack/E-mail/IRC/Teams in 45 minutes, what's up?"

So yeah.. don't do this in professional communication.

Well, I can understand why some actually consider a message "hey, can we talk" more polite than simply calling without asking first, especially for developers. After all, they may currently be in the middle of doing something and would prefer not to be disturbed. OTOH, a message is already a disturbance, and most of the times checking your calendar should already give someone a hint about whether you are busy or not. Either way, providing a hint of what you want to talk about, e.g. "hey, can we talk about that spline reticulation issue?" is of course much better.

> After all, they may currently be in the middle of doing something and would prefer not to be disturbed. OTOH, a message is already a disturbance [...]

That is what has not sunken in yet in our new and fancy asynchronous world.

> Either way, providing a hint of what you want to talk about, e.g. "hey, can we talk about that spline reticulation issue?" is of course much better.

This is the big thing. "Don't be spooky" doesn't mean "interrupt me freely", it means "tell me cagey, coy, or avoidant and tell me what you want asynchronously before we start a conversation".

The problem is not interrupting someone with a request to talk. The problem is doing so without specifying what we need to talk about.

BAD: Hey, can we talk? (spooky, puts receiver "on hold", slow async communication)

GOOD: Hey, can we talk about scheduling the next deployment? (not spooky, gives receiver agency, gets to the point fast)

While some may not agree with how this is formulated, I think the point is a part of a bigger concept - don't be unpredictable. Don't make things unpredictable.

Work is a necessity. We're not all neurotypical, relaxed, outgoing persons - some of us may even suffer from mental issues - and we still have to work. Predictability - i.e. removing all the mystery from communication - helps a lot.

"Hey, can you talk for a second?" - is unpredictable. I have no way of knowing whether you want to talk to me about weather or shoot me with a gun. "Hey, can you talk for a second about X? [+additional info if needed]" - is predictable and gives me a clear idea about what you want to talk about.

Of course, communication takes effort, and it is unreasonable to demand everyone to follow these guidelines all the time. But that doesn't mean they're bad guidelines.

Also, whether I can talk depends on priority. No, if you want to chat casually. Yes if prod is on fire.

> don't be unpredictable. Don't make things unpredictable.

Yes, this. I've found that being (functionally) boring and predictable has gone over very well with my team and managers. I reserve my chaotic nature for when my work laptop is closed.

As for the inevitable "one line greeting awaiting acknowledgement before proceeding" messages, I just respond in kind, and wait for them to get to their actual question while I continue whatever I was doing. No skin off my back, and it plays nice with coworkers.

No. I won’t do that. It inhibits natural communication.

Learn to deal with ordinary adult life, please.

> natural communication

There is no such thing. Perhaps you meant "the kind of communication I'm used to"?

> Learn to deal with ordinary adult life, please.

Don't be condescending, please.

> No. I won’t do that. It inhibits natural communication.

Quite the opposite, it inhibits effective communication.

Giving someone a one sentence summary of why you need to talk enables them to be prepared for the discussion you want to have. This lets you get to the point faster, and reduces miscommunication.

I don't get why this is such a burden for you to be clear in your communication.

It's a sad state of affairs when people are so anxious that a simple inquiry can cause them distress.

I don't know if it's character, upbringing or just the modern work environment but it really ought not to cause anyone any concern if someone just wants to check if you're available.

But they do, so it is probably best to include a short note stating the purpose of the desired conversation.

This will also help prime many people, and thereby improve the conversation, so it is probably worth doing even if the person won’t be made anxious.

As a manager, I've sometimes used the technique of adding something like: "It's nothing serious" to the message. Best way of course is giving context but hey, everyone is human.

As a receiver of that message I'd say it doesn't help much. The stress comes from the information-less poke.

Ideally you go straight to the point: “hi jack, I need to check in on XXX so we can update the quarterly goals, can you send me Y / can we speak?”. Nothing is gained by checking immediate availability with a greeting message.

https://nohello.net/en/

The downside is that if every significant bit of communication is straight to the point and in public ... how should sensitive personal infomation be handled ?

It's either:

- out there in public, OR

- clearly sensitive as it's the only bit of communication the other party is masking.

Depending on your environment workers may or may not want open signals about sensitive events being telegraphed.

Merlin Mann on a few podcasts has a running bit when calling someone, answering the phone with "don't worry, you're not in trouble"

Seconded.

I'm rather curious as to whether those anxious about a simple inquiry register on the autism spectrum...... This is a tech news site after all.

EDIT: Down votes for asking a speculative question? This place is turning into another Reddit.

_Any_ message without context leaves me anxious. I can't tell you why, but getting a blind invite from the HoE with various C-suites on it always gets me spooked. I hate it, but after 17 years, I get on with it. Usually a quick message to someone to ask for some context as to what the meet is about is enough to calm me.

Your comment was correctly downvoted and flagged because it was both unsubstantive and (worse) flamebait. Could you please stop posting like that?

Also: Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

No, you get downvoted when you posit that anxious people are autistic under the guise of curiosity/speculative question. Also, not everyone reacts nicely when someone implies they might be on the spectrum. You live and learn.

Available for what though? Work? Chitchat? The point is that context is important.

The lack of info in the inquiry causes the distress, as there is often a reason that the info is being withheld. Otherwise there is usually more information in the request.

"Can we talk?" has only ever come from my managers when someone is leaving. With my family, it is usually because someone has died. Otherwise, there is usually another sentence about what is going to be discussed.

'Hi, are you available to discuss <x>'? is vastly better in every way because it:

- allows someone to gather their thoughts and prepare for the actual answer, without committing someone to answering what is non-critical (critical would be, 'Call. Now.')

- doesn't generate any fear among anxious employees that they're about to hear something discplinary or even worse, something more dramatic like a termination.

- just on a personal level isn't annoying. YMMV with that but I really dislike it when people waste time by asking to ask questions and so on.

It could be related to previous bad experiences. When I was a teenager, I received bad news via phone call a few times (friend got cancer, other friend was in car accident, etc). It conditioned me to become anxious every time my phone rang.

Of course, I didn't tell people to stop calling me. The problem was my anxiety, not people calling unexpectedly.

I'm confident enough in my work to not swear, "Hey, can we talk," type messages — but, in a previous role as a technical lead, I had a manager that would occasionally leave one of those large rectangular Post-It notes in the middle of my monitors with, "COME SEE ME ASAP - $BOSS," in sharpie for all to see. Trouble was, not once was it ever anything pressing, imminent, or even in-person worthy.

I'd be lying if it didn't get me unnecessarily anxious that a coworker died on the way in or literally anything worthy of speedwalking before logging in had occurred. His reasoning? He doesn't like the impersonality of leaving digital messages.

Messages in chat too impersonal… better go leave a serial killer ransom note. Manager brain right there.

The serial killer part is actually leaving post-it glue on a screen

Or it's quite simply about mental health - which doesn't have to come with feelings that it's down to poor character or failures in upbringing.

It's entirely reasonable that my brain is just different to yours.

> It's a sad state affairs when people are so anxious that a simple inquiry can cause them distress.

Yes. I would assume that the person posting this would much rather not get distressed about this kind of thing.

I wouldn't say it causes me distress per se, but a blank "Can you talk" can by default launch my brain down a tree of "why, what if it's X or Y, it's this time and they so...". Being able to do this kind of thing makes me good at my job and worse at some social things, and work I've done to focus on "THIS LINE OF ENQUIRY IS NOT IMPORTANT TO PURSUE, BRAIN" make me better at both. It's still a conscious thing that I think other people don't have to deal with.

I don't see it as a character flaw, a failure of upbringing or controlled by my work (since it's not tied to work). It's just who I am and maybe that is a sad thing to you, I'd rather not have the downsides but I'm not sure I'd trade away a full part of how I think just for a bit of peace.

I have a very similar type of mental burden to what you are describing. What I have discovered is that ultimately connecting it to a sense of identity, especially in a combative context vs. normies, is a losing battle that only increases anxiety. This is still the case even if it nominally seems like a logical choice to avoid unwarranted self-esteem issues in the face of culturally enforced social norms.

At the end of the day, when it's something as trivial as a Teams ping, the onus is on us to confront the anxiety and to work on our reactions. I sympathize with the author and see myself in him but it's not a part of me that would be good to enable.

Perhaps a clearer example would be someone who is afraid of swimming. It's a good idea for them to fight back against people who needlessly mock them for it. They shouldn't feel lesser for their struggles. But if they find themselves in a body of water, the Universe will not care one iota about the life history and mental world that prevented them from learning.

If I were working with you I would adjust my style. What I object to is the implication that everyone must dial down to the level of the most anxious among us.

You don’t seem to realize how productive it is for I and my colleagues to ping each other for short real-time communications. Most people can handle this. I respect that you don’t want to, but don’t make general rules that are only about the comfort of a tiny few.

It has nothing to do with anxiety for me, personally, and everything to do with simple courtesy. When my colleagues message me things like this, this is the conversation we have:

Colleague: "Hey, do you have a minute to get on a call?"

Me: "Maybe. What is it about?"

Colleague: "I was looking at X and had a question."

Me: "I can meet with ..."

Why not cut the chase here and start with "I was looking at X and had a question, do you have a minute?"

I almost never do have a minute without notice but I'm happy to find a few minutes to give people. I don't like having to play this 21-questions game with people to find out what they need, though. It really irks me.

It really depends on the person.

Some people you can say you have a question and it'll occupy their mind not knowing what it is.

Some people can happily just wait until the actual question comes through, but once it does that's the thing they're thinking of.

"Do you have a minute" and "Do you have a minute, I've an issue with X" have problems, but for different people.

I can expand on this more later but neither myself nor the OP have put it as some general rule. I don't see any implication that it should be done everywhere to everyone.

I benefit from quick realtime comms too, and understand people are different (that's the main thrust of my comment). I don't know if others realise just how unproductive it can be for some of these styles of messages though.

People usually link those out-of-the-blue messages with being fired or asked to work extra for free. The rest is your own projection and a "kids these days!" rant.

The thing is, this is easy to say without context. But often there is all kinds of surrounding context that may or may not give cause for anxiety. E.g. a "can we talk?" right after a major project you led failed is far more likely to cause anxiety than the very same "can we talk?" right after a major success. But a lot of the time you as a manager will not even be aware of the context. E.g. all kinds of rumours might be circulating that you've not heard of, and given a staff member cause to be worried, or said staff member might think you're unhappy about something you've not even thought about.

If you don't give context, chances are they'll fill in their own.

> If you don't give context, chances are they'll fill in their own.

100% this.

Not just in the workplace, but in all human interaction. If people don't know what's happening, they'll fill in the blanks on their own -- and usually they'll fill them in with a worst-case scenario.

It can end badly even if they fill in the best case scenario. E.g. consider that hypothetical "can we talk?" after a massively successful project, and someone walking into the office having spent however long fantasising about spending a bonus that only existed in their head because the communication left room for it.

>If you don't give context, chances are they'll fill in their own.

The lack of context is a general problem for communication. If you don't give sufficient context, you might cause anxiety, like in this case, but this is not the only problem. If you lack context your message will often not be understood.

E.g. I was asked if I remember Nick. I didn't know who Nick was, there are many Nicks in the world. I might be bad with names in any case. Then I inquired about some context, I was told it's Anna's friend. I don't know who Anna is either, also a very common name. After a bit of back and forth I find out it's a guy I talked to at a wedding last month. There were hundreds of new names for me. Names I would probably not remember. But if you start with "do you remember Nick, the guy at the wedding we talked to about X", I might stand a chance.

It's a sad state affairs when people are so anxious that a simple inquiry can cause them distress.

Everything we see around us teaches us that people want to be kind and break bad news in a gentle way. The consequence of that is that when someone seems to be hiding something from us we, quite rationally, think they have bad news - we screwed up, we're getting fired, we're getting a ton of work dumped on us, etc - because they're trying to break it to us without upsetting us. We don't assume it's something good because we're conditioned not to go around thinking we're amazing and do good work all the time. We learn thinking that way is egotistical and self-centred. Our brains think "If it's something innocuous why wouldn't they just say?! It must be something bad."

The anxiety we feel is a learned response to situations we encounter (or see, because we learn this from TV, movies, etc as much as real life.)

>The anxiety we feel is a learned response to situations we encounter (or see, because we learn this from TV, movies, etc as much as real life.)

That seems a bit subjective. I don't know about you, but > 99% of the time someone at work asks me "Got a sec?", "You busy?", it's because they need me for something that isn't urgent. I think I can count on one hand the number of times someone has asked "Can you talk?" and then chewed me out or given me bad news about my job.

The anxiety I don't feel is a learned response to the situations I've encountered.

It doesn’t matter: it’s very easy to change the communication to be more explicit, and even if 90% of the people would not be distressed, helping the other 10% comes at almost no cost.

What is your point of reference in history? When did people ever have to deal with a sole or multiple "hey can we talk" followed by an unspecified amount of time and supposedly handled it more gracefully? At the top of my head that is not how communication ever worked at a large scale and, certainly, hearing those words from a spouse or being asked into the bosses office without knowing why, has always been pretty anxiety inducing for a lot of people.

If you haven't been conditioned to, say, flinch on a ring of a landline phone, congrats, your life's been gentle on you so far. Other people have other experience.

It does not take so long to say “I am worried about this problem, cam we talk about it?”

Meh. A good part of what he describes is annoying online behaviour no matter who is doing it. Manager, coworker, friend, doesn't matter.

It's better framed as distress if you want to get the manager off your back though :)

It's not a 'simple inquiry' though, because the context matters: it's an ambigious message from someone above you in the employment chain, that often has to make calls on employment of the people under them. Same reason why people bring up HR setting up zero-detail 'sync' meetings out of the blue. Getting an ambigious "Hey, can we talk?" from a coworker provokes vastly different feelings than one from someone who would make calls on my employment status. I like my employment status. I use it to buy food to put in my mouth.

(See other replies also, but just to add:)

Given that this is an issue for some people (the reasons don't really matter) simply amending the message to 'Hey, are you available to talk *about X* ?' shouldn't be a big deal.

It's not so much anxiety-inducing for me, personally, to get an ambiguous "can you talk?" message, but it is infuriating to be distracted by a content-free message like that in a chat. It's essentially a waste of my attention because the other person is being inconsiderate and lazy to not even bother adding a few words. I always just automatically reply "About what?" at this point. If the other person can't even be bothered to articulate a few words to say what it's about then they deserve nothing more than an automatic reply.

If someone is concerned, isn't it better to understand why they are concerned, and not have the first prejudicial guess be that it's only their own poor character/upbringing.

It's a sad state of affairs when the response to things like this is attribution to bad character or upbringing, rather than basic human empathy.

> I don't know if it's character, upbringing or just the modern work environment

It's the last one. Every time I've been laid off, it started with can-we-talk/got-a-minute vagueness. Anyone who's been through that is going to think it's spooky af because its the sound of being 10 minutes from getting frog marched out the door.

I got a very spooky email from HR a few years back: "Hi, this is X from HR. We want to talk to you about an incident that occurred a few months ago. Can we meet on Thursday 3 PM?" "Okay what incident are you referring to" "I'll let you know on Thursday"

I then messaged my boss he told me the incident was something dodgey someone had said to me.

It is so simple to not do this. Either they could schedule a generic meeting among the lines of "I have some questions" or they could just tell you what incident this was going to be about.

Well a generic interview with HR is pretty spooky as well

They probably do this because they don't want anything committed to text. It still doesn't excuse it, but yeah, they're doing that intentionally.

At a minimum they should say "this is not something you've done wrong".

Reminds me of being called out of the classroom for a meeting with the head teacher when I was 12. I panicked immediately, because "go to the head teacher" was usually just to be told off.* Then my teacher specified "it's for GOOD news" and it changed completely.

* in itself very wrong, the idea that authority is there just to punish you and head teachers should be something you're afraid of.

Our director of cybersecurity did something similar. I asked my manager, what’s going on, he had no idea. Completely unintentional, she wanted to speak about a RFP response, but it was completely out of context and I didn’t know she was reviewing it.

Out of etiquette, everyone should think about context when sending a message. Probably more so in roles of authority and those that own “terminate-able offence” compliance.

Also, people should check their paranoia. I’ve been working jobs for 30 years and never has the bad news or underhanded crap started with a message like this. Not that I don’t sometimes think this is the first time.

"Hey, got a minute?" "Sure."

"I quit." "Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say."

If certain things are already in the air then just this choice of words is probably enough. I mean, in this (real) example there's no real paranoia, not the "hey.. you're fired", but still.

Amazing how many people (especially from HR) don't get this. The other day I got a calendar invite from a random HR person who I've talked to before that said nothing but "Sync". It made extremely distressed until I messaged that person asking for more information and it turned out to be something completely innocent. Just write it in the damn invite then instead of giving me a heart attack!

I once worked under a middle manager who had the policy that any meeting invite with no agenda should be automatically rejected. Sadly they were never able to extend this outside of their department.

After reading through this for the missing negation - I love them for this!

(I worked with managers who would never use agendas. Leaves them more room to filibuster when it becomes clear they don't understand what's going on.)

It may be innocent, but also don't forget that many people don't waste any occasion to make others feel the weight of whatever little ounce of power they have.

This is true for many things -- emails, forum/community posts -- always have a context, especially with the Subject. When one sends out something, it is for the recipient and not for the senders' convenience. I'm still learning but I love setting enough context for the recipient to either take action or form a decision, starting from the Subject which is the core of the whole content.

I once read about the idea of BLUF[1] - “Bottom Line Up Front”, popularized by the military - because lives may be dependent on how fast a message gets its context to the recipient. I love that idea and love practicing it. These are applicable, not just with emails, bit also with short text messages.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)

My kid's school is very sensible about this. If they have to phone you during the day for something minor they always start with "Hello, this is <school name>, there's nothing to worry about." It saves parents that 5 seconds of panic that something terrible has happened.

> don't just say hello in chat.

This drives me crazy. It's like they are trying to maximise the amount of other people's time they're wasting.

Our school does that. The staff must have had so many phone conversations where the first thing the parent said was "omg is something worng?" that they just learn to automatically preempt it.

We've had the "This is $teacher, $child is fine but $bad_thing happened, we did $x, could you $y", all in the first sentence. It's remarkably effective communication.

Regardless of my position I have always sent my full request in a message to anyone that I wouldn't consider a friend (as in someone more significant to a co-worker).

And generally speaking if it's among friends it's something super casual like "yo" or "sup" generally because I have no specific subject, I just want to chat generally.

This is not just because I don't like freaking people out but also because I respect their time. I don't want them to get the first interrupt and then wait for 60s while I type out the actual request I have of them.

This applies to everyone you interact with. I never leave just "call me" messages.... makes you think someone died.

Ha, one of the most relatable HN submissions in a long, long time.

Many people, me included, link those out-of-the-blue messages with "you are fired" or "can you please work weekends for one month", and both are not welcome news.

But there's also very often another thing: a creator/maker like the programmers are (or should be) assuming that the other party will not interrupt you if it wasn't for anything important -- because you know you wouldn't want that for yourself and are trying to be considerate towards other people's concentration.

Turns out however, people send these messages for all sorts of random unimportant things. With time I learned to respond immediately so I don't allow any anxiety to take a hold in me -- but then when I see that it's something trivial (and is not blocking the other party) I also immediately reply with "sure but I'll do it later since I got plenty on my plate right now". A few people took offense but I got over it. They too.

---

But then there's also the other extreme. My last long-ish contract I was in a company where the CTO and his second in command were literally impossible to reach outside of biweekly scheduled meetings -- and even then nothing they deem off-topic is allowed. I get that you have to preserve your focus and concentration but they took it to the other extreme and it was very, VERY not okay because super important decisions only the CTO can make were being dragged out for months, leading to improvisation by the rest of the team that was then criticized by the said CTO.

> A piece of advice I wish I could give my manager is don't be spooky.

Why not politely talk to your manager and let them know that this behaviour is not appropriate / productive?

Most won't, but would instead talk at the managers' back. Many people forget that "I cannot read your mind!"

While I whole heartedly agree with that you should tell people how to get better, I think if there is one skill a manager should have it is to emphatically communicate.

If a manager doesn't understand the communicative basic that there is always multiple messages:

- the message they intended to send

- the message they actually sent

- the message as it was read by the receiving person

Any decent communicator will always think about how the message/language will be read by the receiver(s). That means if they are a decent communicator this should not happen unless they have a very bad day or something.

The manager's behaviour is absolutely appropriate, and not impolite.

Also, someone with antisocial anxieties like this probably would have difficulty with that kind of confrontation.

Because they don't care and will not change anything. Tried it -- no less than 15 times in my long career. Same result every time.

Management by default attracts people who think they cracked it all (lol). It's an ego trip for many and they are usually impossible to truly reason with.

The post is missing that the effect of the described behaviour is very context dependant. For example, I am not afraid of my main client at all. If I get a message from him like "Can we talk" it is just that. He wants to talk about something that is not so important or too complicated to describe it in the message. And if I get repeated phone calls it means that he is either on his mobile travelling and is trying to reach me when he has a signal or that he has a limited time-frame to reach me for whatever reason. In other words: Our communication is not scary by default, and if something scary was imminent, he would surely announce it.

I get this. We never know when the company is going to forecast that it needs a round of redundancies. When they do so, they would send a meeting request saying something like "important company status update" with no other information, because they don't want to divulge anything before the meeting. After going through the redundancy selection and surviving it, any future emails that say things like "important company status update" are quite worrying. And they send things like that all the time, because they don't think it's important to tell us why they're calling a meeting.

If someone says "Have you got a minute?" the natural people-pleasing human response is to say yes because you assume that someone won't interrupt you unless it's important. You need to let go of that notion and assume that their inquiry is of the lowest possible priority, and literally anything else you're working on is more important. Unless you've got nothing else on at the time this means you can happily say "No, I don't have a minute."

People will quickly learn that they need to say why they need to interrupt you in order to actually break your flow.

I relate heavily to this, but I know that I'm an anxious person. So I absolutely appreciate when the people around me provide context for why they're messaging me and I've also gotten my close friends and family to text me before they call me.

However I also know that it is not on them to deal with my anxiety. That's on me and I need to actively work on managing my anxiety instead of relying on the people around me to do that for me.

It's always difficult to infer someones character from a few lines of text, but it seems fairly obvious that the author has not yet understood that they are (contrary to their own belief) prone to anxious thoughts.

Some comments here make this out to be an extreme character flaw, or think this is somehow an indicator that society is going downhill, but having anxious thoughts is not inherently a bad thing. Being unaware of your own tendency to produce anxious thoughts however is a bad thing. Anxious thoughts that aren't actively managed will influence your behavior and your decision making processes.

The usual advice is of course meditation, but just knowing being aware of your own anxious thoughts is often times enough to combat them.

They'd hate where I work. Rather than message to ask to call, we just call.

The whole point of calling is to reduce the pain of having to type out a load of stuff that's easier to say and comes with the extra nuances of verbal communication. I can't imagine they'd prefer the repeated flashings of your manager is typing... over minutes.

Just sending "hello" is annoying though, I'll give them that.

I'd just decline a random call. First I have to pull out my airpods and wait a bit for them to sync

That depends on frequency and can be both good and bad thing. Text don't convey emotion well, emojis don't really help with that, direct calls are much better.

But then focus wind-up and wind-down matters too, so receiving random calls throughout the day might be a recipe for no work done whatsoever. In the end if there are serious agreements made it should be done in writing though.

That's why people like email. Unless it's on fire, please just email. Not every email has to be a treatise, short and sweet, maybe a few bullets to keep your mind focused rather than rambletypeing. I hate getting random calls and IMs it breaks my flow and focus. I actually turn off IM or put away at most places and silence it. I have unplugged the phone before as well if it gets aggregious

IMO, direct call (especially if those are common in your workplace) is much better than a vague "can we talk?" before a call. Doesn't give the mind a chance to wander and fill in the context.

I'm not sure if "spooky" is the right word (why would you assume you're in trouble?), but it sure helps to have context, and if it's just to prepare by opening the right documents to quickly look up stuff. That's why if find the last paragraph the most useful advice here. Please don't break my concentration by writing just "Hello" and having my actively wait for you to type your concern. And please don't wait for me to write "Hello" too before you even start.

Yes, 100% agree with last paragraph. And the waiting for me to type Hello back pattern is so annoying.

This really should be basic work etiquette. Type your whole question in one go. If you want to you can include pleasantries at the beginning but never if there is going to be a more than 2 second interval between them and your actual question.

Should probably be part of first day orientation for new hires.

> Repeated pings fall under the same category. If I'm available, I would have replied to you already.

Managers that do this are micro-managers and won't listen to the advice.

My written conversations with my manager are asynchronous, even when via Slack. I know he will answer when he can and I will answer when I can.

So if it's urgent it goes in the team chat, where we can take a collective decision without having a less technical manager be the bottleneck.

The more we become overly sensitive, the harsher it will feel if we accidentally miss being overly sensitive. Now you tell me I shouldn't use "you have a sec?" ? if this goes on where are we going to be in 10 years? No personal communication at all anymore because it might make somebody feel anxious and I can only have a personal discussion with them if I send a week before a full agenda and rundown?

If it goes on, who knows? We might belong to a profession where people are known for their tact and sensitivity and keen ability to intuit someone else’s emotional state. People might say, “Those software engineers, they sure do know how to talk to people!”

"A sec" is very ambiguous. Asking someone if they have 15 minutes to talk about the new deployment is much more useful and allows people to prepare for it, shortening required time to converse and providing you with more useful answers. Everyone benefits

For obvious reasons I avoid this as well. However, sometimes it's just simpler to take somebody aside without specifying context (or very vague), because somebody else in the group might feel VERY STRONGLY about that new deployment, overhear that it's about that and try to inject themselves

> The more we become overly sensitive, the harsher it will feel if we accidentally miss being overly sensitive.

Who is "we" here?

> if this goes on where are we going to be in 10 years? No personal communication at all anymore because it might make somebody feel anxious and I can only have a personal discussion with them if I send a week before a full agenda and rundown?

I don't think it's about sending an agenda before or even planning, it's about avoiding creating unnecessary tension. Instead of "you have a sec?", you can say "you have a sec to talk about <subject>?". This will take you a few seconds more. And this will make a lot of people answer you quicker, with a clearer response. I understand that it's not easy to change your habits, but this seems like a win-win situation.

>Who is "we" here? Everyone?

Regarding your other points, of course I try to be specific, already because it makes context switching easier and is generally more productive. However, in some situations you want to be vague. If you want to get the opinion from someone and don't want to discuss this with everyone else around for example, or if you want to hear their immediate idea right now without overthinking it, etc. Not very common, but also nothing bad about it in my opinion.

The problem is that the actual scary conversations are always masked as an innocent one for exactly the reason to not induce panic, nobody will say "you have a moment to discuss your performance wrt/ the layoffs that will be coming?". This sucks but that's how things are. If we change our language and interactions to make it impossible to take somebody aside without being explicit about that it's not scary - how do you take somebody aside for an actual scary conversation? These should be anyways rare and typically not coming out of the blue and if somebody is constantly anxious that they might have done something terribly wrong there are deeper problems in your employment relationship

There's a middle you're excluding here. The choice isn't between "you have a sec" and sending a full agenda a week ahead.

Just saying "I need to talk about x. Have a sec?" is plenty good.

My point was that we can just establish that "have a sec?" is (typically) never spooky, this is a different way to combat anxiety and ultimately makes working together more straightforward and simple.

The scary stuff is always meant to exactly resemble an innocuous request in the attempt to exactly not panic the employee even though they have all right to be panicking

> we can just establish that "have a sec?" is (typically) never spooky

I don't think that's true, though. Most times someone higher up the org chart than me has said "have a sec?" or some variation, it's been bad news for me.

If it's good news, they almost always give a quick summary of the news first.

Yes, that's what I mean with establishing it to be normal and not only when there a bad news. That way you don't automatically assume it's bad when someone just wants to pull you by the side for a quick conversation about something complex but harmless.

I'm curious, how would you suggest people higher up in the org chart start the conversation with you otherwise? Would you prefer them outright telling you the bad news directly with a quick summary, maybe even in public? Don't get me wrong, a lot of the typical HR procedures for bad news are pretty messed up, but then again I don't have any better idea which is why I'm asking

> Would you prefer them outright telling you the bad news directly with a quick summary, maybe even in public?

The right way, in my opinion, is the same whether the news is good, bad, or neutral: say what the subject to be discussed is. It can and should be very brief and broad ("Re: X project progress" or "Re: your birthday" or whatever).

Certainly it shouldn't be in public. But the meeting request itself shouldn't be done publicly anyway, in my opinion, whether the meeting is good, bad, or indifferent. It should be in email, chat, or a meeting request in Outlook or similar.

The problem is that this becomes more difficult the more unpleasant the topic is. If you have to talk with somebody because there was a complaint about them, and you send the invite "Re: X project issues" because that's where the original complaint originated from you end up in the same situation - that was what I was trying to say in my OP, because then people will say again that it is too broad and anxiety inducing. If you are upright "Re: Complaints about your behavior in project X" you get the employee all riled up and panicking, potentially overreacting and not getting any rest until the meeting actually happens

EDIT, NB: E-mails are typically archived and have to be produced in case of a litigation, or could be requested by HR. You might be fully on the side of your employee and don't want keep an explicit record of this as it might be misconstructed ("Well there were records that XXX misbehaved before" etc)

> If you have to talk with somebody because there was a complaint about them, and you send the invite "Re: X project issues"

I see your point. But in that case, wouldn't it be "Re: HR issue" or somesuch?

> E-mails are typically archived and have to be produced in case of a litigation, or could be requested by HR.

True. I may be weird, but I count this as a plus. I want a paper trail for everything -- so if I have an important verbal exchange, I will always send an email to the person restating what I took away from it.

It's saved my ass countless times.

As a manager I always state in my message what I want to talk about. Or what a meeting is about.

There is a big difference between "Can we talk?" and "Can we talk? Want us to look over the roadmap real quick". The first one could be anything and the other person will always imagine all kinds of stuff. Likely even lose productivity over it. The second one is a no brainer.

Original by Adam Keys https://therealadam.com/2021/11/01/dont-be-spooky/

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29130590

I'm reminded of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/DunderMifflin/comments/29v0e2/the_d...

I understand people are wired differently and react differently to this situation.

It is helpful for one's own mental health to Assume Positive Intent when context is missing from messages. If it is really bad news that the other party wants to discuss, there is nothing you can do about it. You might as well deal with it during/after the discussion. If it is a benign discussion, all your anxiety would have been pointless anyway.

The corollary is that if you are sending a message, it just takes a few additional words to provide context (don't be cryptic; don't write a Tolstoy novel). That saves time on both sides. It preps the recipient to come prepared with information for the discussion and hopefully makes the discussion short and productive.

"Just don't be depressed!"

I had a manager — who I basically loved — that loved to say “assume positive intent”, perhaps from teammate $T

And I tried!

But my priors were that teammate $T has rejected ideas from most of my design documents for (imho) inconsequential reasons — Eg there were framework scalability concerns of using a framework that handles 1x-1000x the projected growth of the current project.

Telling me to “assume positive intent” from feedback saying it wouldn’t work “because scale” (when we were comfortably 4-5 orders of magnitude away from those problems) felt pretty empty.

More honest pushback would essentially be “this solution didn’t need this scale yet”, or “we can afford to re-architect this right now” — “finding deals” becomes a rent payment from someone figured

Ok, so there was a disagreement on how to move forward. How did you resolve it with your teammate?

> It is helpful for one's own mental health to Assume Positive Intent when context is missing from messages. If it is really bad news that the other party wants to discuss, there is nothing you can do about it. You might as well deal with it during/after the discussion. If it is a benign discussion, all your anxiety would have been pointless anyway.

I understand that on an intellectual level, but this doesn't do anything for my anxiety.

If someone can't say "got a minute to chat?" or even "hello" to you without causing anxiety, you need a long break, a new job, or professional help.

Surprised at all the comments agreeing with this article.

Your manager, or HR, is not just "someone". They are well above you in the power hierarchy. That's where the fear comes from.

People, when dealing with someone from a power position, need to be extra careful with their words and attitude - well, only if they want to be fair and don't want to toy with the other's emotions. I don't know if it's relatable to you, but it's similar to how much force you can use, when playing with animals. You need to be more careful with a smaller dog, than a larger dog. Cats are even more delicate, yet, not as delicate as a hamster. And you have to be extra careful, with the tip of your finger, to properly pet a mouse.

Similarly, saying "That's not good. I needed that for yesterday" is not the same for every person. If it's coming from your coworker, then it's maybe an oh shit moment, or something that you say sorry for, and amend it, and that's that. Much less so when it comes from your immediate superior. Even worse if it's an important client. And maybe even worse if you're a junior on trial period.

Would you accept the answer "no" with no additional context or replies without feeling put off? Chat is asynchronous. Just ask your question. This isn't a phone call or a desk-side visit. The act of initiating a chat already contains the idea that you are asking the other person for an interaction. If they have time to chat, they will chat. If you need a response right away, then chat isn't the place to do it.

It's even worse with the people who brag that they absolutely will not respond to people that say "Hi"

Please don’t lobby for standards of social behavior that substantially disadvantage the majority to save a little awkwardness for a minority.

I want people to ping me. I don’t mind “hello” in chat. It makes sense. It is a stand-in for dropping by my desk.

If I were working with you I would be very willing to accommodate your anxiety. But what you’re doing here is implying that we all want to shut down casual real-time chatting (wherein I don’t want to say anything of substance unless I know my correspondent is present).

Even if it's not about anxiety, why waste people's time and attention with needless messages? At the very least it's as rude as constantly being late for meetings - a sign that the late-comer doesn't value the other people involved.

I rather appreciate a nice hello and a little chat before someone drops a big request on me. It makes my coworkers seem human and gives me a nice break. If I'm too busy for that, I politely let the other person know that I'm too busy for smalltalk.

As a manager, it's trivial to just add "you're not in trouble" to the end of a message like this, even if you can't imply what it's about.

Now that would make me curious!

And of course it has a glaring implied "... yet" obviously. ;)

You could also just assume that you're not in trouble every time the message doesn't end with "you're in trouble"

> do things around the house

This sounds like advice specific for WFH, but it also applies to people working at the office.

The other person may be talking to someone else, in an unscheduled meeting, having a coffee, or simply have notifications off to be able to focus. I used to have them off for most of the day, and just check for messages at a half hour interval, otherwise it’s a total productivity killer. In a real emergency people will reach for a phone call.

As someone that has worked both remote and onsite customer service and tech it's kind of a wild difference. If I didn't flag myself unavailable or "sign off" even to take a short WC break it would start notifying supervisors of "not working", probably even worse these days with eye tracking and webcam monitoring of availability for the "not tech" crowd.

I guess it's a bit similar to https://www.nohello.com The initial message triggers you to worry about an uncertain topic, it's much better to know from the initial message what the conversation will be about

I think the missing "why" is an issue. Like a commit message needs a "why".

Also known as: guy on the internet has certain preferences regarding IM netiquette.

> A corollary to this piece of advice I wish I could give to some other coworkers is don't just say hello in chat.

https://nohello.net/en/

You could also just not care instead of trying to change everyone.

It gets bad when people with odd anxieties project them onto everyone around them.

There's an entire social (edit:changed that word from 'political' which I didn't mean to say) orientation around this.

See the hilarious 2019 Socialist Convention where they talk about people clapping as 'harm' or wearing perfume as 'aggressive' or taking a particular tone as 'oppressive', etc.

"Hey, can we chat!" is now "Triggering" etc.. ?

We're really going to be dragged aside by HR now because "Hey, can we chat?"

Yeah ... no.

I think it's up to the author to seek help.

I don't deny they have an issue, but I'm wary that it's mostly theirs to contend with.

I think this is reasonable, honestly. It's disrespectful of my time to do this on an async medium preventing me from preparing materials, finding source, or whatever else I need before a meeting instead of having to do it there.

Talk about projecting… this has nothing to do with politics, especially USA politics.

I’ve have had this exact conversation with colleagues from extremely varied backgrounds. Some people mind it less, some more, but most are annoyed by it at some level. It’s like calling and saying “can I ask you a question?”, followed by thirty seconds of silence.

This is a bad pattern of communication introduced by modern chat with presence features (and amplified by remote work), not something that is part of natural conversation.

I'm not projecting, and not making it political.

Maybe it's you that are possibly projecting here, by assuming that because I referenced a political convention, that I'm making it political.

(EDIT: Yes, I did write 'political'. It's totally my fault. I didn't mean to write that word. I meant to use a different term, 'political' came out and I didn't edit it. My bad. I meant to infer a 'social posture')

That ultra empathetic posture, to the point of literally debilitating the conference itself - is just something that happened at that conference, which happened to be a Socialist Convention. It doesn't have anything to do with socialism. Even if it does, by the way, seem to be a part of elements of communication of 'that side' - it likely just has more to do with personality types, because it's obviously not political.

If you want to see the video yourself it's here [1].

And by the way - this video is just a snapshot, there's much more hilarity floating out there.

And finally I don't really think "Can we chat?" has much to do with 'remote culture' or 'remote work' ... I know my manager would often walk by my cube and say the same thing. Perhaps more frequent, but not really an element of culture.

It's also perfectly reasonable.

I wish I knew how to describe the variation of anxiety that this might arise, or what to do about it (meditation? CBT?) , but I don't suggest it's anyone's problem but the person who is made anxious.

I know for myself, after hearing it the 1st time, I wouldn't be anxious the second time or later. It's just an opportunity to talk.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHRxu3XrsHg

I really don't think the author's point is even remotely related to what you're pointing at. The words 'scary' and 'anxiety' are, in my opinion, to be taken very lightly in this blog post. These are normal human emotions, not necessarily diseases. It is about effective communication at work, and if you ask around this is not even a particularly contentious issue, everybody seems to agree to a certain extent.

> I don't really think "Can we chat?" has much to do... with remote working

Yes, it also applies to the office, but you do realize this is specifically about instant messaging, not drive-by conversations?

> I know for myself, after hearing it the 1st time, I wouldn't be anxious the second time or later. It's just an opportunity to talk.

The scenario in question might play out dozens of times a day at a larger company, you don't need those "opportunities to talk" if you have work to be done. Not doing this is a matter of courtesy. You might just have been lucky to not have it inflicted to you at that level.

See https://nohello.net

It doesn't matter whether it's in person, or in messaging.

It's perfectly acceptable for a manager, and not remotely 'lacking in manner or courtesy' for a manager to say 'Can we chat later at 1?'.

I've been working for 25 years in 4 countries, I don't know a person who would think otherwise.

The individual here is perfectly within their rights to 'feel anxiety' in any given situation, bu they lack the emotional maturity to recognize their special condition.

It is not a normal human emotion to have anxiety because your manager asks to chat, which should be frankly a very common occurrence.

I completely and fundamentally disagree with your 'if you ask around people will agree with this'.

If you ask the question as 'do you find it problematic or anxiety inducing or lacking in courtesy when your manager asks to chat later without context' - then you've 'led' the answer and might likely create some kind of intellectualized rhetorical response.

But - if you actually observe people in any workplace, collect myriads of messages, and then ask them after the fact to identify when their managers were 'not courteous' without highlighting this specific issue, it will not pop up unsolicited.

It's total bullshit rhetorical nonsense.

If your manager says 'Hey can we chat after lunch?' - you say 'sure' (unless you can't) and then that's that. It's utterly normal.

The examples you give of “Can you chat at 1”, “can we chat after lunch” are entirely different from the “spooky” messages the post is about. It’s clear that we are coming from entirely different perspectives, not worth going any further.

As a new manager this is something I try to do (I already got this advice from some place, I believe it was another HN thread).

Any other tips?

Also do the opposite of the opposite.

If you need to fire someone, it's appropriate to use a somber tone to prepare the other party.

I was recently let go as basically agenda point 3 out of 4 during my normal weekly one-on-one with my manager and was completely blindsided (the position was made redundant entirely, so there was no preceding performance review or the like).

Be direct and effective in your first message. And if you and an engineer have communication issues (you don't understand their tickets comments, their mails are too abstract and/or not factual enough), do not hesitate to do a bi weekly 1 on 1 until those communication issues are less glaring.

It helped my working conditions tremendously. I'm still really anxious when my manager contact me, but him being direct made me feel way more comfortable than the previous one.

Yeah, no. Doing this would remove the human part from any interaction.

Well, you can just add a simple message to be more specific about what you are talking about and it would not cause someone fear that they screwed up something.

I think it actually adds some of the human part back in. "Hey, got a sec?" in person comes with quite a bit more context--body language, tone of voice--and a pretty quick transition into the content.

To me, the rhythm of an informative first message feels more natural than responding to someone's ping and waiting 2 minutes for the follow-up.

I'm of two minds on this issue.

I recognize myself in what the author is describing. In fact, I always describe what I want to talk about in my initial message, and ask before calling because I hate when it happens to me.

On the other hand, if Soviet soldiers can hold off the Germans at Stalingrad, I don't have to replicate their mental fortitude but I can at least replicate <1% of it. And that includes not freaking out with minor white collar bullshit in a developed country.

Never confronting anxiety just increases it in the long run.

Excuse me? This is just normal communication.

Of course it is. The fact that they would write an article about it and don't have the self awareness to recognize they have a problem - but worse - the number of people on HN that seem to think there is a material problem in behaviour of the manager is a bit shocking.

It's ridiculous. It's not even a 1 out of 10 in terms of inappropriateness, it's fully a 0. It's 100% within the preoperative of anyone frankly to say "hey, can we chat for 10 at lunch?"

Anyone who has difficulty with this should seek a bit of help, and those implying there is something wrong ... they have a different problem entirely, I don't know how to describe it.

My grandparents were born on farms without electricity or plumbing (common for the area), no public healthcare, retirement, social assistance, unemployment, radio, refrigeration, TV, barely any cars. etc.. They were kind and generous people but also resilient and self assured. They literally wouldn't understand the author's concern. It would have to be spelled out to them. They would be empathetic (it's in their character) but wouldn't think anything other than the author has some kind of issue.

Complaining about "Can we chat?" as some kind of 'unreasonable thing' is getting absurd.

People above are commenting 'what kind of stressful world we must live in' - I think the complete opposite: we have reached a threshold of material abundance and prosperity such that the most vague, imperceptible form of nuance in communication is now worthy of demarcation. Only extremely privileged and wealthy people could afford to go on about someone asking them 'if they have time to chat'.

>> Anyone who has difficulty with this should seek a bit of help, and those implying there is something wrong ... they have a different problem entirely, I don't know how to describe it.

This line of thinking seems really...bad. I mean, essentially what you're saying is:

"I disagree on this matter which is unambiguously a personal opinion, and anyone with a differing opinion is wrong, and anyone who is sympathetic to their opinion has something wrong with them, too."

I'm genuinely curious, what makes you take this position?

The line of thinking that you assume anyone's grievances are immediately legitimate is ... 'bad'.

People whine and cry about any number of things, we have to be conscientious about what constitutes a reasonable grievance.

There is such a thing as objectivity.

I've worked in 4 countries over 25 years and never would have I have seen someone make a legitimate concern over 'being asked to chat later'.

Can I empathize with someone who feels that way? Sure, it's not outrageous, but that person would have to have the self awareness to recognize that it's their issue, and that they likely ought not to bother other people about their problems. I'm sure any decent manager would 'not do it' if asked, at the same time, it's definitely 'an ask'.

This is not an issue of undue pressure or harassment on the part of a manger, not even close.

Adults in the workplace have a minimum responsibility regarding their disposition include emotional maturity, among other things.

This one is not even nuanced. There's no 'workplace problem' here whatsoever.

You come off as being defensive about this in several of your comments here. There is nothing wrong with admitting that a random “can we chat” can lead to a spike of anxiety in people.

Many of us work in environments where 15-20% of employees are let go every year. Even for those who do not, the modern world, despite all our material abundance, can be cruel in subtle but destructive ways.

Society recognizing that humans have emotion and learning about mental health is.. well really healthy!

If you are so weak you cannot pretend to influence and change the behavior of others.

So, this debate is absolutely ridiculous and stupid.

And this shit represents the pinnacle of a generation so fragile and incompetent that it will lead to "worse times".

The “can we talk” phrase has caused anxiety for time immemorial.

People are responsable of their anxiety. Not the others.

Fuck this bullshit.

This person needs to consider mindfulness meditation.

It almost seems like they are assuming some catastrophe is around every corner.

If your boss says "hey got a moment to chat" you have a choice in how you react to the information. Assume they want to just chat and engage, or freak out and think the world is ending. Both options are possible, one has a nicer outcome. It's important to remember and remind yourself that you have control about how you feel about things.

I know I do work. I can justify my time, If my boss pulls me aside and redirects my work. That's totally fine, I work for them.

But generally, meetings invites and messages should contain lots of info and context. Chatting with your boss shouldn't be scary, if it is, maybe consider a new boss.

I must admit freaking out one morning, having stumbled into work hungover and tired, when my team lead grabbed me on my way in and said "Can we have a word?" and pulled me into a meeting room where the product owner and two levels of management were sitting.

Thankfully they were wanting to ask if I'd like to spend a month training in California!

Or a little bit of reading about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, there is a good book called "CBT for dummies" or something like that. Mindfulness as a tool will train you to observe what happens inside your head and then apply CBT techniques.

maybe the boss can meditate on sending more productive messages instead.

why does everything have to be a fault within me?

They should, but you're the only one you can control your responses.

Because it's easier to fix yourself than fixing everyone else.

It would be nice if everyone added context to messages. Unfortunately, a lot of people just don't do that, and it's going to be very hard to convince them to change their behavior.

It's probably easier to work on your anxiety instead.

I'm speaking as someone who also suffers from this type of anxiety occasionally. I find that it helps to tell myself that I'm just being unnecessarily anxious, and that makes it easier to deal with.

The fact that it's possible to personally work around generic problem is nice but it doesn't mean that it's the optimal point to solve the problem. That's why it's also important to ask other to avoid to uselessly make other people life more stressful than it should be.

Every body can wear an armoured suit but it's more efficient to not give guns to everybody.

The boss doesn't have the problem with their behavior. It's easier to change how you react to something than to change others.

I'm not excusing the behavior, it's just one solution is a lot easier to achieve.

Why do I have to wear a seatbelt when I drive safely?

over communicating is a sign of weakness

you work for them, you adapt to them

While I think meditation is interesting and important for a number of reasons, I wouldn't try to solve every problem with "try meditating". It's unfair.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com