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The Tyranny of Email
Circuit Breaker writes "Are you or your co-workers using email instead of phone, face to face conversations, or instant messaging? Read this article, and hand out copies to your mates."
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I have to agree with you - I'd guess that it takes a pretty inexperienced user to have their mail program interrupt them every time a message arrives.
I leave mine running, and just check it when I feel like it.
This is the most annoying aspect of email in the workplace. CC'ing somebody's f***** boss as if the recipient is going to think "Ah, he's CC'd my boss, i'd better get a move on with this."
All it does is PISS THEIR BOSS OFF.
And that's only the start of the problem. I have just been involved in a project where a minor issue that could have been resolved between two developers was blown up out of all proportion and resulted in a "crisis meeting" - all because of a reckless CC.
Where I work, the guy in the office next to me (about 10 feet away) would be the 'primary support' contact. Every once in awhile he'd get a bug report or something that would need to go to me. He'd email it to me. I dont check my email every 30 seconds, so it would basically go unnoticed for hours, maybe even a day or so. If he'd even speak in a normal voice and say "hey, check your email", then I'd know.
He's been since shit-canned, but it was still endlessly annoying to find out about a problem later than it was reported.
However, with our clients, email is the only way I want to handle everything. It provides a written audit trail of everything that happens, and it's come in handy many times.
One client in particular is becoming infamous around here for talking to techies like me on the phone, saying "oh there's nothing wrong, everything is going fine, just a couple really minor issues", and as soon as the phone is hung up, she's talking to the tech director pulling a chicken little act and telling him that the sky is falling and us lazy computer nerds arent saving the day. Luckily he's not enough of a pointy-haired boss to realize she's full of shit.
So, when she calls, I say "put every issue you have in an email". She has no room to lie and tell the boss she reported problem X or Y.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
And when you're working in IT, where your manager is probably on the verge of a nervous breakdown half the day, email is a lifesaver. I know that my boss preferred getting emails to having people walk into his office for everything. Sure, urgent matters are a different issue. But at least he could reply to important emails quickly and the rest of the email after the working day was done and not be interrupted in the middle of whatever he was doing earlier.
But, there's also laziness. I can't think of how many times my college roommates and I used to IM each other when we were all within shouting distance of each other.
The article fails to address one important question IMO.
The fact is that for some people, being contactable is absolutely essensial throughout the working day. Personally, I find myself constantly being asked technical questions about a very wide range of subjects as well as having my own work to do. I have to have give answers at some point or others get no work done. If people want to know how to contact me, I have to tell them something!
By default the majority just pick up the phone and call me. This is an absolute disaster when I am in the middle of debugging some complex problem.
Most of the time now when someone phones with a technical question I ask them if they can send me an email about it. After hearing this several times they usually get the message and stop calling at all in favour of sending emails. This has improved my ability to work no end. I now check and answer emails in batches whenever I have a convenient breaking point.
Email has substantially reduced breaks in my concentration. Exactly the opposite of what the author finds.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
IMHO, e-mail is a great way to communicate information
- when no immediate response (if any) is required
- when you need to give multiple people the same information
- to keep a record/reminder of the information (such as when warning about an impending event, like scheduled downtime, etc.)
Unfortunately, in my experience, people rarely consider which is the best way to communicate. As a result, the wrong medium often is used.Case in point: people where I work have not developed good communication patterns. A lot of information is passed face-to-face, one person at a time. As a result,
- I frequently am interrupted while trying to program to be told something that is not urgent and requires no response or action on my part
- different people get told different things, so rarely do people have the same information, and no one knows what the other people know
- often, some people never get the information at all
- a lot more time is wasted dealing with the consequences when a 1-minute e-mail could have saved a lot of bother
- when I do send e-mail to my colleagues, it often is filtered into a folder and ignored/forgotten; often this results in me having to have a F2F conversation with someone to repeat the information anyway
Similarly, in other places I've worked, meetings were wasted passing on information that could have been better served with e-mail, while critical information that should have been discussed in meetings wasn't.Anyway, I think it just boils down to that old adage: the right tool for the job.
Our office uses Lotus, and has a policy where it autodeletes e-mails after 60 days. So history didn't start until 60 days ago!
Towards the Singularity.