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Comment by mojo74 | Hacker News Reader

The comms thing is a bit of a bug bear for me too. I like to respond quickly to messages/emails because I believe the person at the other end appreciates having their questions answered quickly so they can get one with their day. When I have to wait an hour (or whatever timeframe feels disproportionate) for a reply to my message it grates. Still, I can live with it if I don't have work in a noisy shared space.

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About the remote work comms there is a widespread attitude that irks me: People texting "can we talk?" or simply "hello". No! tell me straight away what you need so I can judge how and when to respond. When people state what they need, most of the time the response is immediate and it's the thing they need or some ok followup. "can-we-talkers" I'm starting to let stew for a few minutes, because I suspect they do that on purpose to "skip my queue".

I agree. Having worked on the shop floor I don't like my time being wasted and I'm careful to add detail for my colleagues so that they are engaged from the outset with my query. All I ask is 'give me half an hour' or some similar response so I can manage other people's expectations.

This is why so many orgs find remote working hard. Everyone has to be willing to compromise on how they communicate to find a middle ground, or the company has to hire for people who work the same way as everyone else. When you have a team made up of people who communicate with different expectations, and they're not willing to accept that other people will think differently about what's reasonable, remote working starts to break down.

Maybe that's why so many companies push for people to return to the office. In-person working where someone can just walk up and interrupt someone else is equally awful for everyone.

I'm all about the compromise. I don't mind waiting for an answer but I'm often hassled for a response in my role and then I need an update from another member of the team. If that response is not forthcoming guess who gets the follow up? Now I'm badgering people who are probably busy but have neglected to tell me and I'm now the block in the pipe to those above me. I don't mind a pat response that they're busy but someone somewhere always needs a status update.

Urgent ad-hoc status update requested by someone above is in most cases a communication anti-pattern. Why would someone need it outside of regular reporting structure (DSM, weeklies etc)? Even in case of disaster recovery, when updates need to be more frequent than daily, it’s better to agree in advance on how communication proceeds and plan the work correspondingly.

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