> P.S. I intuit, and Pangram agrees, that this last email was AI-generated (and apparently so was the first one, now that I checked). As general career advice, I wish to observe that learning to write emails unaided is an extremely valuable skill in the dual senses that 1) writing is thinking [0] and 2) many people who receive an email they believe to be AI-generated will not be interested in corresponding, even if you're asking good questions, which you are. It would be a shame for that to get in the way of your research goals.

A polite, generic response like this is reasonably low-effort -- you must draft it once -- and might really help someone. Who knows though.

[0] hyperlinked to https://www.nature.com/articles/s44222-025-00323-4

ultimately it’s better to not inform and start ignoring these people.

let natural selection work.

I think the internet is pretty great, but it's a major factor in that rise in at least 3 ways:

* Previously, an important check on fools was social consequences. Now they have an endless supply of people to bother. Spammers were the first to exploit that, but now it's endemic.

* Algorithmic weighting toward the reaction-generating (versus, say thoughtful, measured, responsible, accurate, helpful, kind) has rewarded idiocy and awfulness with attention and money. We're all now living in a reality TV show.

* As those behaviors become a major percentage of what people, especially young people, see, they become normalized. Otherwise people think being a thoughtless jackass is just how to get by in the world.

We are strongly in need of firm politeness, of militant decency. Without it, things will get "naturally" worse.

that’s direct and aggressive.

framing it as advice is the passive part.

any kind of softness in language like “i’ll-considered” sounds so sterile that i sense hatred underneath. too much time in big companies.

more sharing a crazy person take on how different words can be interpreted counter to the intent.

i hate being civil!

You’re in the prison of your own devise, the negative bias.

And yes, this comment is passive aggressive.

See the difference?

i either ignore. or if i trust them i just say “don’t use ai slop”.

anything softer is passive and morally judgy too.

i’m not here to tell them what’s globally right, only how i want them to interact with me.

I’ve heard this “conclusion” from many people over my career. I disagree as a general rule as much of my work is scientific and technical and long replies are more useful than talking as having things written down makes things reproducible and shareable.

I think long emails are bad ways to deliberate or debate or to collaboratively create. But they are great for communicating complex ideas to variable size audiences (ie, one person forwards to their team or files things off for later reference). Even better when accompanied to a link to a web version that can be revised with additional info later.

This really helps due to the async nature. Getting on the phone with someone and talking through an idea with them assumes both parties have time to do that. And is a silly suggestion when 5 people need to read something.

I find it more efficient to get a thoughtfully crafted email than a phone call that still will need to be followed up with an email to confirm all parties understand.

My, probably wrong, take is that the “talk, don’t write” people is based on their inability to logically think through, structure, and communicate their ideas and, instead, would rather connect directly and hope the solution emerges from a conversation.

That is a remarkably direct way to dismiss the value of brainstorming. :)

Also consider that when content is easy to produce and distribute at scale people stop reading with any kind of attention - there’s too much to read and most of it is not targeted (relevant to me), far too generic and shallow in effort to address excessively large audience, and with little back pressure against verbosity. When we talk in person the other person knows that I am targeting the conversation and invest my time to the same extent they do, they will engage much more.

Also consider that often times a discussion will reframe the question rather than provide answer.

Also consider that people are dramatically more candid in person.

I’m wondering what is that nature of your work that none of this surfaced for you?

But I’ve never encountered someone trying to brainstorm over email. If I did, I would certainly want to talk, instead.

I was referring to someone saying that said it’s almost always better to talk than write.

Good “content” is very hard to produce. It’s not a commodity. Again, I work in science and tech where truth is difficult and complex and precise. And it’s important to be systematic and correct. It’s not important that we produce content, but that we execute effectively.

I’m usually not tailoring to a single recipient, but trying to write something that’s understood and used by dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands of people.

I agree that there’s a lot of blargh written that’s a waste of time. I’m not proposing to write more crap. My point is that thoughtful prose is frequently the best way to convey an important concept. So I want more well written man pages than people who want to talk to me to explain how to do something.

RTFM is a luxury that we need to invest in, not throw away.

As a possible reader of your email I’m facing dozens of emails every day, my default reaction is to skip past and “read it later”. Maybe you did put a lot thought into it, how would I ever know? If you show up in person I will know you are invested into it.

I’m kind of lucky to be in the position where if you don’t read my email you will regret it because something bad happens. Or at best you miss out on something cool that would help you.

I expect everyone I send my email to to read it and pay attention to it, or I don’t send it to them.

Also, I’d love to have only dozens of email. I expect me and most of my coworkers go through 50-200 emails per day. And this isn’t a problem. I probably spend about 20 minutes a day, twice a day. And it’s way quicker than talking with everyone I want to talk with.

Maybe you’re working with a scale where it’s even possible to show up in person instead of emailing. But even when I worked in small teams and small companies we emailed a lot. For building software, I want to get stuff written down and iterated on (email, issue trackers, spreadsheets). I don’t want to have errors that come out of primarily verbal conversations.

>What's the equivalent of "Google it yourself" these days? When you ask something of somebody, the expectation of the other side to drop everything and do work for you isn't always appropriate/balanced/appreciated.

One of the hardest things about taking on any sort of leadership role (even unofficially) is that you need to allow others to do things. It feels incredibly stupid when you have to ask someone to do something you are more than capable of doing better/faster than the other person, but if you did that all the time you wouldn't have time to do your other work. Sometimes that includes questions that seem lazy, but part of asking the question is for the other person to acknowledge that they have thought about it and/or to ensure you aren't stealing ownership from someone.

Then I guess you didn't deal with much of the empty-headed-managment type much.

I learned a different lesson: Write a long email that took time to reason and write, precise and complete text.

You get a short reply that is a reply on a 1 sentence you wrote, twisted upside down ignoring completly the point that you had.

-- > never reply instantly to low priority requests

This is true 100% I would even say: "Never reply on anything instantly that is not an absolute emergency, ever"

I prefer to reply to an e-mail immediately. Or never. If so than archive it or delete it.

If you don’t answer immediately, you carry it as opened mind window and probability to have your mind being unable to concentrate increases over time.

you can shorten this to "never reply instantly", because an "absolute emergency" will never be communicated by email.

Based on my experience, it mostly translates to whatever task the person thinks it's important for them. Sometimes people will mark the task as "urgent" just to dump it on someone else.

The other thing is, in critical emergencies, you should work slower than usual. This means muting all notifications and taking your time. Rushing to get things done can exacerbate the issue.

Best engineering managers shield the team in those situation and simply reply with: "thanks, we've been notified and investigating".

If you’ve already read the email it’s less efficient to come back to it later

mainly i just wanted to stress that nothing in an email inbox is an "absolute emergency".

it trains people to expect things.

boundaries.

1) someone having an emergency needs to contact me specifically.

2) that someone only has my email, and no other possible way of contacting me (or someone else that can contact me).

I worked in a big multinational at the time ;-). So, yes. Mostly my direct managers were alright. Some were excellent even. But organizational politics and learning to read between the lines is part of working inside of big organizations.

> You get a short reply that is a reply on a 1 sentence you wrote, twisted upside down ignoring completly the point that you had.

Usually a clear sign that you are not communicating effectively. If it's important to you, you might want to figure out how to fix it. Talking is usually a good way.

Agreed. I learned that in emails, a multi-paragraph, multi-item text means the recipient will randomly reply to only one of the points (often the least important one). So an effective email will make a single point, in as brief a manner as possible.

Indeed, I don't think email can be reliably used to convey complex topics.

> The problem remains that people refuse to do the reading required for their job.

Communicating effectively means accepting common flaws of people who are unlikely to change, and delivering your message in the most effective way. Whether people are right or wrong or should be fired (as another comment says) is not truly relevant.

I often fail, by the way. I'm not saying I have this all figured out.

Adjusting communication to the audience is a good guiding principle, but not an absolute. There comes a point where no attempt at communication works for a given audience. If the communication must happen nevertheless, then the audience must change, whether through training or replacement.

1. Exceptions do exist (eg if the message is intended solely for and addressed to a single recipient, and includes a disclaimer / request / reminder about general email hygiene), but they're vanishingly rare.

"Emergency" is not the same as "emergency services".

which is the point the parent commenter was making, if im not mistaken.

Respectful hard disagree. Emails should be limited to five sentences. "I didn't have time to make a shorter reply" as an apology / disclaimer for rare exceptions. In virtually every case, anything longer belongs somewhere better than email (Slack, wiki / knowledgebase, docs site) or merits a realtime conversation. My PoV is shaped by over 20 years in the industry working at startups, SMBs and huge enterprises.

My experience is that people search subject lines, conversations, dates, and generally traverse historical conversations much better in email than in chat or a fully external application. They won’t search Slack, or try but can’t find the conversation. They won’t remember it’s on a wiki, you’ll constantly be redirecting them to the url. If the file is attached to an email, sometimes they’ll resurface it from a year+ ago. I find that’s way more common than someone referring to a chat from even a month ago. Chats are semi ephemeral. I’ve used both Teams and Slack and feel neither has really changed the game in terms of how the entire user base of an org use the system, enabling the historical reference points and moving it out of a ephemeral state, so email remains a stalwart for archival purposes and helps provide maximum context after the fact (people tend to elaborate on their choices more when writing an email).

Detail in the email, expect people to read it or fail. And include a reference to a wiki or some more detailed version that can be collaborated on and extended.

So the email isn’t the primary source, the wiki is (really some markdown in git). But the email is the thing that people organize and find over time.

I wouldn’t want to work in an org where people can’t read email and want to talk to everyone instead.

wiki/kb or docs site, sure, depending what the topic is. but... slack? for your long-form communications?

please email me your long stuff, don't slack it to me. email is perfectly fine for longer text when longer text is required. (opinion also shaped over a long time in various roles at companies of various size)

Anyone putting long form stuff into an IM system is taking the way of pain.

I wasn't suggesting an IM system should be the source of truth for long-form documentation. But searching Slack works better than searching email you weren't cc'd on. Virtually anything is better than email for many essential aspects of collaboration.

Want to add someone to the mailing list and loop them in? How many prior emails will you forward to them?

Someone replies to one of several points in an email, someone else wants to address a different point, and there are a mix of habits and patterns for whether / how much / where to quote or include the previous messages in a response....

vs adding someone to a channel where they can review the conversation history, and some combination of threads and links to additional channels or external resources can adequately support whatever direction(s) the conversation takes.

In any case, it's the wrong tool for the job in so many ways, so much of the time. Hence my recommendation to keep emails to 5 sentences, and to prefer communication tools that properly support multiuser collaboration.

may i ask what age bracket or generation you are? only if you're comfortable sharing, of course.

im in my 60s. and im curious if our difference of opinion here is a product of what technologies were/are available during the start & prime of our careers. i very well might be in stubborn old man mode subconciously.

Otherwise, I can search email quite effectively. And oddly, its one of the few things Office Copilot is goos at.

I don’t email is a collaboration tool. It’s an information sharing tool and maybe workflow. Just today I had to email out to like 20 people a data call with a couple paragraphs of instruction. It’s much better than Slack for this. And I can search and find my email and their responses for all of eternity (I’ve got every email going back 20+ years instantly searchable in outlook, good luck finding a slack message from a month ago much less a decade).

That's almost the entirety of my point. Sure, email works well for simple, unidirectional / broadcast comms. But for async collaboration involving multiple recipients and any kind of back and forth, it's inherently problematic.

IME, the majority of long emails should not be persisted in such places, because they contain a fair amount of errors. One could say that any long email thread should be eventually synthesized in the KB/wiki after the conversation has wound down.

And Slack/Teams? No way. If I need to write something long in response to a Slack IM, and email is verboten, then I'll insist on setting up a meeting.

It used to be when I got something boring a person wrote I felt obligated to read it. Now I am not sure what to do.

not mine, no license, only chinese language on the eventual page, but has the beginnings of something beautiful

https://github.com/chenxuan520/lmlfy

indeed! but i would add (in corporate environments):

4) follow up your phone call/face-to-face chat with a brief email summary, so you have something in writing.

it has saved me countless times over my career.

Do you actually say that to people?

Edit: i’ve hit the comment limit per given time, but all I have to say is “what have you found so far?” And “Google it yourself” are radically different responses man. The former is far more reasonable, it shows you are willing to be helpful and is a productive question. The other is just rude and implies your time is too valuable as well as assumes they’ve done nothing to tackle the problem. If you actually say “Google it yourself” when people ask you a question that would be absolutely bizarre behavior.

[0] https://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

For the company it would probably pay off better (over time) to let the people who regularly get stuck after trying nothing spend some energy figuring out than what they get in return for shipping them to conferences.

Additionally, when it’s not your domain knowledge, research is more difficult and time consuming. It can be difficult to even know where to begin. Someone new to media production, for instance, wouldn’t know the major forums to check off hand. Someone had to tell me about dvxuser, reduser, cinema5d, etc.

We learn through a combination of our own effort efforts and the help of others. Otherwise why would we even have school?

Love it, thank you!

Thanks for reminding me of lmgtfy. We used to say that all the time 20 years ago, and it was way politer than how the people older than us spoke. It took some getting used to, but I really miss the hilariously mean bluntness of the IT/tech world.

In retrospect, I think it was just a bunch of people who grew up breathing in leaded gas fumes, with undiagnosed mental disorders. But I miss it just the same.

That was never an acceptable thing to do outside of light hearted joking. You’d do that to a colleague or someone asking for help in earnest?

It’s a deliberate, rude act that is aggressively proclaiming “how dare you waste my time.“ God help you if you ever ask a question you could’ve looked up yourself, because of course you never do that right? You always make sure to engage in rigorous scholarly research before daring to bother somebody.

I almost just said it was like working with The Sopranos or Dr House, but now that I think about it maybe that's because I was in Jersey?

How on earth are you using an absurd work of fiction as a good thing and then justifying treating people like shit at work? People don’t want to be cursed and yelled at and personally insulted at work and they shouldn’t have to deal with that.

As I think about it, I guess I really just miss people being more authentic. There was a lot more understanding and forgiveness around unmedicated emotional outbursts. Modern work culture is more polite on the surface, but it feels like everyone is a cut throat politician manipulating their way to the top with a dumb fake smile. I would much rather work with someone who is upfront about their plans and how they're feeling, than someone who is friendly to my face while talking shit behind my back.

I do kinda feel bad for the kids that are entering the workforce, expected to act like emotionless robots, while spending most of their time talking to AI. There is an underlying sense of fear that they have to mask themselves to not be fired.

But yes, it is an overall improvement. I did have one truly abusive boss that was able to hide unchecked within that culture, and I would not wish that experience on anyone. The rest were just normal people that were emotional and funny.

I understand what you’re saying, it is fun to kind of have a little bit more of an honest, “in the trenches” culture. I miss that from time to time from my work on film sets. But I can also say that the lows professionally were far lower as a result, as those blurry boundaries can cause much more friction and even harm people. So I just have a kind of a strong opinion on that

A frequent first question when a subordinate asks me for help:

“What have you found so far, searching for answers?”

If your question shows that you haven't done basic research, because your question would be answered by the most basic of research (like reading that entry in the manual), then you're wasting my time with your laziness. That might be regarded as deserving a bit of rudeness in the answer. (The exception is with someone who is so new that they don't even realize that there is a manual, but that should be very rare.)

I mean, hopefully I've grown up a bit, and grown more patient a bit, but I still understand why people reply that way.

You added this to the conversation. That was not the original discussion.

Also you and I both have absolutely asked people questions we could have looked up but we knew they likely knew offhand. I don’t understand why some of you think your time is so precious that’s every single question ever asked of you must meet some minimum, arbitrary bar you’ve set internally before you deign to come down from the mountain and bestow knowledge upon your friends and family.

But I think the point of the original author still stands, even in that context.

Coaching someone on why the perspective of the receiver of their behavior works counter-purpose to their intent due to <undesired-behavior-of-theirs> has so far always gotten me more durable and thoughtful behavior modifications than telling them off. I generally reserve telling off someone for proven malicious behavior from malicious intent.

There is still value in google first (even today with all the slop), but there is plenty of room for conversation after you have the background needed to understand the deep discussions that result after you have done some early research.

A company isn't just a bunch of people isolating themselves and doing their best to not talk to each other.

That is I make the conversation not about them reading the manual, but about making it worth reading. There is a large amount of really bad documentation out there.

Take this valuable signal as a gift, letting you know there is an opportunity to improve the documentation. You could become known as a helpful person, rather than a maybe-efficient, antisocial loner.

If your documentation is generated (by script, tool, or AI), rather than written by a person, this goes double.

Of course it does. And it’s not “my documentation” it’s ours. And everyone is responsible for improving it. It’s not about pointing out that documentation sucks, it’s about working to improve it.

I don’t have a documentarian on my team. No one’s main job is to write docs. So we all get to help each other by gradually improving the docs. And if I help someone with something not in the docs then the recipient gets to include that missing info into the docs to help the next person.

We also added a hat for a rotating role called “Benevolent Documentation Czar for the Quarter” where that person gets to explicitly improve team docs. Maybe like 5% of their time.

if management feels this person is unqualified to be in their job, they can take care of the issue

"rtfm" or the AI equivalent is being snarky while dodging the issue that you should just talk about, which is that you think this person is asking you too many questions

Yes they are. "RTFM" may be an angsty insult thrown around in some toxic open source projects, but it's rude and inappropriate for an actual working environment where you're supposed to (and being paid to) help others. Most time spent at a company at a normal job is collaborating with others.

Your time is not so valuable that you cannot use it to make other people and the company successful, and when you're on the clock, that time belongs to the company anyways, who would likely prefer you do what's best for the company, rather than yourself.

That said, "what have you tried so far" is a good question to ask, too, to coach your colleagues on how to find info, and to get context on what would be retreading their steps.

The question is whether one employee's time is more valuable than another employee's time. One employee answering another employee's question expends two people's time. If the answer is in the book or on the first page of google, it is wasting one of those employee's time, and that is the boss's money. If the employee asking the question makes ten times as much as the employee answering the question, and it saves him 10% of his time over flipping through the manual, it's a wash. If both employees make the same amount, or the other person even makes less, it is obviously a waste.

This is simple.

RTFM isn't an angsty insult. It is a suggestion because I am not going to answer your question if it is in the manual.

Yes you are: specifically, your job as a manager is to make the company and your people successful. The way that is achieved is through collaboration.

If somebody is asking questions to a disruptive extent, then you reach out to them or their manager to have an honest conversation about it, and to level expectations about what requests for help are unreasonable.

> The question is whether one employee's time is more valuable than another employee's time

That is looking at the world as a zero-sum game. If you devote 10 minutes to help somebody, and they're 10 minutes more efficient at that task every time afterwards, then the company wins. It's not your time, it's company time, and most companies prefer that their time be spent on the most value-added thing, which is almost always force multiplication