> Save a vibe today and send an IM instead of an email thread.
I would rather the email honestly. IMs usually have the expectation that I'm going to respond to you "soon", which is an interruption/distraction. And they don't contain enough information so I have to start going back and forth with the other person.
At least with email, most people recognize that you will respond in your own timing in the next 24-48 hours. With IM I've found that expectation out the window.
Unless it's a close collaborator (we're working on the same project daily and interacts often, as in decisions are taken together), email is a much better medium for conversation.
Some people absolutely do not expect a 24 hour response and will reply all in 30 minutes if you do not acknowledge it. Some of us work support development work that demands you cut all focus on your problem and start to write an email response and break away from what you were already working on.
That sucks... for me, I tend to check email about twice a day... usually at the start of the day, and towards the end of the day. During the day, slack/teams is the way to go.
Aside: I REALLY hate the direction teams has taken more and more... like separating the various chat channels and activity notifications for calendar invites that are months away.
Want with one hand, shit in the other. See which fills first -- expectations, heh. IM can and will wait. Especially "hi".
Down with ever-expanding threads. I try not to engage with them at all, preferring a briefing that explains why I'm being involved and the change in priority. If dragged in with a simple "see below"; looks messy, best of luck.
Thanks for being unprepared and showing your interest in staying that way. Helps me keep a safe distance.
I prefer email as well. Good luck to search in IM for old conversations where you decided something.
Also I have a rule to never answer right away. Have at least 15 minutes cool down, asking person may figured out the answer by themselves. Unless it's my direct manager...
Personally I prefer to be sent a full email thread over a message in chat, because
a) I can ignore it until I have time to look at it
b) You can see who else has already been involved in the conversation - seeing a fellow team member being involved can help avoid falling for situations where someone is trying to work around one of your colleagues who's already told them they can't have what they're asking for.
c) The chat message is from an individual, so you only get their interpretation of what's happening - if there's an email thread then there's going to be multiple people involved, each with their own perspective.
What's funny is that the points you raised are the exact things that work for me on Slack, and I've never found it to be an issue. And yes, Slack supports looping people into conversations they didn't previously have access to.
I imagine this is more of a company culture issue than an e-mail vs IM issue.
Is this intentional ragebait? Calling IMs "actual communication" is .... odd. Email all but guarantees more thoughtful replies than IM.
I'll agree that the example of simply tagging someone in a long quoted thread is not the way to go. The sender should have included a summary and an explanation of why the new recipient is suddenly added.
Agreed, the original thesis makes sense, but then it sort of goes off on a tangent of don't send any email threads.
If I get tagged on an email like this, I respond with something along the lines of: "what is the intention here? is it an ask or do i need to do something? do I need to be aware of something? please advise". This generally gets me a summary so I know what I am doing.
I think maybe it is ragebait, (maybe unintentional). In particular, it is phrased as an argument against email threads in general, but then we have:
> Innocently, you click into the top email. The only text is "[Your Name] see below."
IMO this is bad behavior and it is right to push back. The person forwarding the email should provide context: what’s going on and why am I being included, what’s expected of me here?
If I’m just told to “See Below,” ok, I’ll see it. I’ll interpret that at an FYI for me, no deliverables requested (of course, an FYI might include the information about the needs of somebody who’s ass I need to kiss).
—
The ragebaity thing is to have a general rant against something pretty normal, but to only have an example based on obviously bad behavior. Is that Motte-and-bailey? Not sure, but it doesn’t pass my sniff test.
It reads as straight up intentional ragebait to me.
Especially when they say in the middle they already don't read email threads and use AI to summarize. But they still place a call to action at the end to not send email threads. Why would they want less context to feed their AI?
If mods on high granted the power I would certainly downvote this submission.
I'm sure this is a problem in large corporations, but on some days I'd give an arm and leg to receive an actual email instead of the random slack messages with zero context and a builtin social pressure for low latency responses.
This situation is annoying because it means you are being dragged into, and probably have to action, a conversation that has been happening without you for days or weeks (or even months). The solution is to involve the right people in the conversation at the right time. The solution is most certainly not to just send an IM, which will lack all of the context that the email thread contains.
People who think they are too important to read the work emails their colleagues send them are generally awful to work with.
I feel like the problem here is the "see below" part, rather than the email thread part -- that is where the sender has done zero effort to contextualise or summarise the situation or explain why suddenly you are the person to pull into this, and is instead putting the burden on you to do all that work from scratch.
I wish people would make shared white papers for discussions. People basically collaborate on the collected notes and decisions; with modern tools you can have history and attribution easily.
If you’re including someone new into an already running conversation, take the time to write a summary for them and why you’re now involving them in the conversation, and what you expect from them. No, don’t use AI to do it, that’s more offensive than “see below”.
No, I want to hear from the person pulling me in what’s actually important, not what the AI decided was important and they thought was close enough. The AI can’t read your mind, why involve another level of abstraction?
Readit News
I would rather the email honestly. IMs usually have the expectation that I'm going to respond to you "soon", which is an interruption/distraction. And they don't contain enough information so I have to start going back and forth with the other person.
At least with email, most people recognize that you will respond in your own timing in the next 24-48 hours. With IM I've found that expectation out the window.
Save the distraction. Send an email.
Aside: I REALLY hate the direction teams has taken more and more... like separating the various chat channels and activity notifications for calendar invites that are months away.
Down with ever-expanding threads. I try not to engage with them at all, preferring a briefing that explains why I'm being involved and the change in priority. If dragged in with a simple "see below"; looks messy, best of luck.
Thanks for being unprepared and showing your interest in staying that way. Helps me keep a safe distance.
Also I have a rule to never answer right away. Have at least 15 minutes cool down, asking person may figured out the answer by themselves. Unless it's my direct manager...
a) I can ignore it until I have time to look at it
b) You can see who else has already been involved in the conversation - seeing a fellow team member being involved can help avoid falling for situations where someone is trying to work around one of your colleagues who's already told them they can't have what they're asking for.
c) The chat message is from an individual, so you only get their interpretation of what's happening - if there's an email thread then there's going to be multiple people involved, each with their own perspective.
d) Someone spent some time forming and writing down their thoughts, which seems to be an increasingly rare skill these days.
This is increasingly ironic :)
I imagine this is more of a company culture issue than an e-mail vs IM issue.
I'll agree that the example of simply tagging someone in a long quoted thread is not the way to go. The sender should have included a summary and an explanation of why the new recipient is suddenly added.
If I get tagged on an email like this, I respond with something along the lines of: "what is the intention here? is it an ask or do i need to do something? do I need to be aware of something? please advise". This generally gets me a summary so I know what I am doing.
> Innocently, you click into the top email. The only text is "[Your Name] see below."
IMO this is bad behavior and it is right to push back. The person forwarding the email should provide context: what’s going on and why am I being included, what’s expected of me here?
If I’m just told to “See Below,” ok, I’ll see it. I’ll interpret that at an FYI for me, no deliverables requested (of course, an FYI might include the information about the needs of somebody who’s ass I need to kiss).
—
The ragebaity thing is to have a general rant against something pretty normal, but to only have an example based on obviously bad behavior. Is that Motte-and-bailey? Not sure, but it doesn’t pass my sniff test.
Especially when they say in the middle they already don't read email threads and use AI to summarize. But they still place a call to action at the end to not send email threads. Why would they want less context to feed their AI?
If mods on high granted the power I would certainly downvote this submission.
People who think they are too important to read the work emails their colleagues send them are generally awful to work with.
Some threads become difficult to unravel.
If you’re including someone new into an already running conversation, take the time to write a summary for them and why you’re now involving them in the conversation, and what you expect from them. No, don’t use AI to do it, that’s more offensive than “see below”.
But assuming you take the time to make sure it's actually good, this seems like a fine use for an LLM.