How to Grow Professional Relationships

Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by tejaskumar_ on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @08:07AM (#42317053)

I love this very much and strongly agree: I hate receiving those sheepish catch ups, especially when I anticipate an ask coming. In fact, if I sense I want to make an ask but I haven't spoken with someone in a long time, I just won't ask them for the thing because we don't have that context/rapport yet: it's a way of honoring them.

Continuing to make it practical, one thing that has served me well was to maintain a list of friends (I still do this) and text them at least once every day just following up or checking in. Some like it, some don't. For those that don't, that's their choice. The topics around abandoning lost causes kind of apply there: not that these people are lost causes, but daily checkins are. That's okay, to each their own. :)

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by carlosjobim on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @09:12AM (#42317558)

> an ask

I only see people writing this here in HN. Is it some expression from old that has been revived or is it some activist thing?

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by aragonite on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @11:39AM (#42319198)

OED added this use of "ask" (as in a big/huge ask) in 2005 and said it's originally Australian.

https://english.stackexchange.com/a/111601

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by tejaskumar_ on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @09:37AM (#42317834)

It's just shorthand for when people want to ask for things, common among investors (so, YC/HN).

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by hollerith on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @09:41AM (#42317871)

So a request, then.

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by smcin on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @09:56AM (#42318033)

It's techspeak for 'a request'.

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by caseyohara on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @10:18AM (#42318277)

I find it interesting that techspeak has a way of turning verbs into nouns. Ask, invite, compute.

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by tayo42 on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @10:47AM (#42318603)

I thought it's corporate America jargon

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by caseyohara on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @02:35PM (#42321156)

Technologists seem to have a special proclivity for linguistic nominalization (functional transformation of a verb or adjective into a noun).

Examples: build, patch, commit, deploy, sync, mock, update, upgrade, deliverable, standup, kickoff, resolve, retry. There are probably many more.

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by smcin on Friday December 06, 2024 @08:12AM (#42339479)

'verbing a noun'

Also there's a stylistic difference between coining something new and necessary e.g. 'mock','patch', vs. creating something faddish and unnecessary e.g. 'an ask'.

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by LoganDark on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @10:40AM (#42318514)

Is "an invite" techspeak?

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by carlosjobim on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @08:07PM (#42323785)

The proper word is "invitation".

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by smcin on Friday December 06, 2024 @07:13AM (#42339077)

I thought so too until I checked, but the references I cite above say 'an invite' has also been used since the 17th century, at least for US English.

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by smcin on Friday December 06, 2024 @07:12AM (#42339070)

"an invite" is not specifically techspeak because it's widely used outside tech (esp. in US English), unlike "an ask".

Dictionaries say "an invite" has been used as a noun for centuries.

[0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/can-you-use-invite-a...

[1]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/68937/invite-vs-...

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Re:How to Grow Professional Relationships by tejaskumar_ on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @09:53AM (#42317987)

yes

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