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Comment by prmoustache | Hacker News Reader

> In business communications, I believe it's common courtesy to respond to emails within 24 hours.

Sounds funny because I only read mails when someone tell me about them on MSTeams.

Between IM, supports tickets and jira stories I don't really see the point of emails anymore. If it is something that has an SLA tickets seem to be the way to go, if not Teams. If it is an urgent matter, mentioning my name or calling me will be a quicker way to go. Email seem to be in that weird place where some people still seem to want to insert invisible business matters in an ocean of junk and automatized mails/notifications you generally never subscribe yourself but ends up subscribed by default when given access to resources/applications.

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(1) I don't have Jira, (2) I don't want to fill out a SLA ticket, (3) I don't use Teams, (4) I don't know your phone number and/or prefer to deal with things in writing.

Email works because: (a) it is ubiquitous, (b) you don't have to pay for some proprietary software to use it, (c) you remain in control of your data (no IM messages suddenly disappearing), (d) you have a permanent, local, copy of what was said in writing, (e) it's often the standard court-recognised form of communication, other than post, for things that matter legally (e.g. sending notices).

That's not to say that email isn't without many defects. But it's still the best we have for many work-related use cases.

> (1) I don't have Jira, (2) I don't want to fill out a SLA ticket, (3) I don't use Teams, (4) I don't know your phone number and/or prefer to deal with things in writing.

You don't know my email address either so that's ok!

I wasn't referring to you specifically. It's a general thing. Often the only thing I have for someone is their email address.

Teams may work for your internal messages but if you deal with anyone outside of your own employer email is still the standard for communication. Not every piece of business that gets done fits into a ticket system.

> if you deal with anyone outside of your own employer email is still the standard for communication

I get what you're saying and agree email is almost always the least common denominator between two different organizations.

On the flip side, this can really vary based on the relationship between two orgs and how closely they might work with each other. I've definitely had Teams instances with outside users and Slack channels shared between multiple orgs when there's a lot of close daily collaboration happening.

https://slack.com/blog/collaboration/slack-shared-channels

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/communicate...

Very loose relationship, don't repeatedly contact the same groups of external people over time. We manufacture and sell physical products, and customers ask us questions about them. Sometimes directly, sometimes via their contact at one of fifty-ish local rep agencies depending on where they're located.

Frequently email threads have an assortment of people from 3-4 different companies on them, the specific set of which I will never talk to again outside of that inquiry.

On the rep agency side, they might each represent 50-100 different manufacturers and I'm sure are not eager to have a different ticketing system or chat app channel for contacting each one of them.

> Teams may work for your internal messages but if you deal with anyone outside of your own employer email is still the standard for communication. Not every piece of business that gets done fits into a ticket system.

Nobody ever expect a reply within 24hour from someone outside of your organization, unless these terms have been set already that you are working on a common project with strict deadlines.

Just because one doesn’t see the point doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.

Each communication tool has its strengths, namely managing interruptions.

People using one’s attention as their inbox directly with DM vs a when you can get to it email can be easily mismanaged.

It’s different for each job.

I also find my SMS/iMessage increasingly polluted by companies that have probably discovered that their emails are filtered automatically or otherwise and no one responds to them any longer.

Primarily, email gets used for customer-facing comms (they aren't in Jira). It also gets used for lots of system notifications that could probably be moved to Slack, but inertia is a bitch and they remain in email.

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