The thing is, there are some 30 second conversations that are more prodictive but they are few and far between. They mostly involve people who have trouble communicating via text because they assume a bunch of intent and additional context that doesn’t exist. Those types of people love working in offices and gossiping and writing articles about how awesome office work is.
It is one of those ‘can be true, but not that often when people communicate’ situations. Plus it leaves the opportunity for people to remember their own version of the conversation…
If people would be able to actually formulate their question, a text based conversation would be quite more productive.
But as they usually don’t even really know what they want to know and only have a vague idea, they need to talk, so they can get down to the point of their original problem.
As a technician/sw dev this usually the problem, when managers call me.
They call, because they have a problem they don’t understand. If they would have a clue, I could give a short precise answer.
But because they lack the correct words or don’t even really know what the problem is, they want to talk, so they can hide their incompetence and guide the conversation to their actual problem.
Maybe I’m just really pissed after all those years of senseless calls.
To be fair, I sometimes also use calls, when I need fast answers. But then it either really is a fast call or I have a discussion about a problem, where I’m not exactly sure how to proceed and need a second opinion.
And that’s the point. I’m not sure on those cases on how to proceed and need a discussion. Just like the people calling me.
But their questions are usually none to be discussed, but only not well formulated, because they don’t know their shit.
I don’t have anything against colleagues calling me for help and I spent 30mins discussing possible approaches.
But being on the phone for something that would be much better handled per text, because my answer is maybe complex and then I need to send it out as mail anyway, because my counterpart doesn’t understand it… This is just a waste of time, because of incompetence
Yeah, and those same people are the reason most meetings suck. Good meetings exist when eveyone is on the same page or are able to get up to speed quickly instead of dancing around whatever the actual topic is. Or doing those stupid ‘teambuilding’ time wasters and try to make everyone else care about sports.
The thing is, there are some 30 second conversations that are more prodictive but they are few and far between. They mostly involve people who have trouble communicating via text because they assume a bunch of intent and additional context that doesn’t exist. Those types of people love working in offices and gossiping and writing articles about how awesome office work is.
It is one of those ‘can be true, but not that often when people communicate’ situations. Plus it leaves the opportunity for people to remember their own version of the conversation…
If people would be able to actually formulate their question, a text based conversation would be quite more productive.
But as they usually don’t even really know what they want to know and only have a vague idea, they need to talk, so they can get down to the point of their original problem.
As a technician/sw dev this usually the problem, when managers call me.
They call, because they have a problem they don’t understand. If they would have a clue, I could give a short precise answer.
But because they lack the correct words or don’t even really know what the problem is, they want to talk, so they can hide their incompetence and guide the conversation to their actual problem.
Maybe I’m just really pissed after all those years of senseless calls.
To be fair, I sometimes also use calls, when I need fast answers. But then it either really is a fast call or I have a discussion about a problem, where I’m not exactly sure how to proceed and need a second opinion.
And that’s the point. I’m not sure on those cases on how to proceed and need a discussion. Just like the people calling me.
But their questions are usually none to be discussed, but only not well formulated, because they don’t know their shit.
I don’t have anything against colleagues calling me for help and I spent 30mins discussing possible approaches.
But being on the phone for something that would be much better handled per text, because my answer is maybe complex and then I need to send it out as mail anyway, because my counterpart doesn’t understand it… This is just a waste of time, because of incompetence
Yeah, and those same people are the reason most meetings suck. Good meetings exist when eveyone is on the same page or are able to get up to speed quickly instead of dancing around whatever the actual topic is. Or doing those stupid ‘teambuilding’ time wasters and try to make everyone else care about sports.
Yeah… Start of the year is always an exercise in patience, when everyone spends 20mins to just wish everyone a new year and how their holidays were.
For fucking Christ, I’ve better things to do then this bullshit pseudo socializing, that’s absolutely worth nothing.
Will happily drink a beer with some of my colleagues, but that shit is just wasting time professionally
Weirdly enough, this is exactly the kind of people who will insist on being super empathetic and having super high emotional intelligence.