Quick Answers (communication guidelines)

I decided to make a polite guide about asynchronous communication.

More information

It's important to respect others' time, especially when working remotely. Especially in our line of work, where context switching will slow us down and decrease our productivity, where frequent interruptions will often prevent us from getting things done as quickly as we otherwise would.

What I did

There are a few guides out there about asynchronous communication, like no hello, however the tone in those is often not as kind and encouraging as it should be. That's why I developed my own sites with the goal of educating others on more efficient communication that's both respectful and will get them answers more quickly!

What I learnt

I'd say that it was a success. The site got on the front page of Hacker News for a bit, there was some nice discussion around it. Some of my colleagues also took it to heart and it was delightful to be able to read through their messages and to be able to give them a detailed answer, instead of having to ask more and more questions without having a complete picture.

Of course, there were also other colleagues, who still persisted with their own approach towards communication: "Hey, do you have 10 minutes? Let's have a call." I guess we just have different preferred modes of communication, but that doesn't mean that I can't be respectful of theirs either.