[ninkendo]

People have to prioritize their time. If they get messages from someone, they have to weigh responding to it against all of the other things they may be doing with their time (other messages, that ticket you’re working on, etc etc.)

By just saying “Hey”, you’re leaving a message of unknown priority. You’re giving the other party zero information as to what you might want. If you say that to me, you’re saying “I need your attention, but I’m not going to tell you what for.” If I respond, are you going to ask me a brief question? Are you going to drag me into a meeting that may take tons of my time? Who knows?

Also, I may not get your “hey” until an hour later. Now what happens? I reply “hi”. Then I have to sit and wait around for you to get my response, so that you can reply with what you were going to ask me. But what if you’re away? Now we’re playing message tag. Contrast that with what would have happened if you would have just put your question in the original message: Now, I can read your question, do my best to find an answer, and give you a reply, and I can do so at my leisure. When I respond and you’re not available, the answer is waiting for you when you get back.

I make it a personal policy to just not respond when somebody just says “hey”. If it’s important, you’ll follow up. I once had a status meeting where someone said “I’m blocked on X because I reached out to ninkendo for support, and he didn’t respond”, to which my response was “You didn’t reach out to me for support at all, you just said ‘hi’. How was I supposed to know you had something important to ask? For all I know you just wanted to ask about my weekend…”

[Melatonic]

I dont think it is a problem with saying "hey" but when you say "hey" by itself. All the time I will say something like "hey" and then a followup message with a short question or asking how they are doing, etc etc.

But for sure it is annoying when someone sends me a message that says "Hi" and then says nothing else until I respond

[ninkendo]

I’d say it would even better if you just put a couple of newlines after “hey” and put your question in the same message. One less notification would be appreciated by your coworkers.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Yeah, I don't have to look over, give a sigh, and then sit there waiting for the message to come through for the next two minutes.

[Moru]

That's the whole point of this. You can say "Hi". Just don't only say "Hi".

"Hi! Do you know about the ..." - perfectly fine. User can directly answer instead of doing message tag.

Edit: Ok, I'm a bit late to the conversation I noticed... :-)

[TheCoelacanth]

The person you're sending a message to doesn't need to sit there and watch you type out your actual message.

Just put "Hey" at the beginning your message. Don't split your message up into a separate message for "Hey" and a separate message for your real message.

[geoffjentry]

Right. The complaint isn't people including a greeting ("hey", "hi", "hello"). It's only giving the greeting.

"Hi - remind me what time we're meeting" is fine. "Hi" is not :)