[humanistbot]

> more often than not I would need to write follow-up emails after an email communication would go unresponded to for over a week

I know this is a "kids these days" anecdote, but I'm seeing a big generational gap in this kind of activity. I was in a frustrating conversation with an undergrad intern who hadn't responded to an e-mail. I was trying to make it a learning experience: at least in this workplace, if I send an e-mail with a question or task, I expect a reply in a reasonable time. He said that I should have sent him a reminder or ping, in a tone implying that it wasn't really his fault. I said that if you have trouble remembering to do your job, that is your problem and something you need to work on.

He did not respond well to that.

[rjbwork]

I blame the email spam. It's made email nearly useless for me in my career except for when I worked at a global investment bank as an intern many years ago. I'm mid 30's principal and I basically ignore email. I check it once a week I'd say. The absolute bulk of communication in my career has been via hipchat/slack/teams, fogbugz/jira/azure devops/monday and our source control systems.

[lostgame]

This, this, this. Commenter above definitely needs to keep this in mind.

I have explicitly told my coworkers - all of them - to reach me exclusively on Microsoft Teams; because my Outlook ‘inbox’ is so consistently full of garbage that I’d say about 1/40 messages are actually relevant to me.

Email is a problem that needs to be solved. I could never - do never - blame anyone for not answering an email.

[r_hoods_ghost]

And I (and half of my company at this point) am the opposite. Except for the one day a week I'm in the office I'm permanently on do not disturb on teams chat except for my boss and the CEO, and teams calls are forwarded to voicemail with an "if you need to ask me a question, send me an email or request a meetingand send me an agenda. In an emergency call me on my real phone." Asynchronous communication for the win! Also set email rules. My favourite is any email I am just cc'd in to is automatically moved into my ignore folder (unless it's from boss or CEO). I have a job that requires being able to concentrate on a task for long periods and instant messaging and calls are absolute productivity killers.

[lostgame]

Sounds like you and I wouldn’t get along. :P

The joy of synchronous communication is that it is also asynchronous. If you didn’t get my Teams message at the time - you will after!

Email offers no benefits I can see compared to instant messaging. Plus, you can always turn off notifications. I also don’t need to make filters to drown out the massive amount of sheer noise and unrelated garbage.

When someone sends me a direct message on Teams, I know that’s a real person, asking for me directly.

I have never had a Teams notification, at my current workplace of 3+ years - sent to me by a robot. Imagine that!

In contrast - least 90% of the email sent to ‘me’ from within my company is not from a real person. I’d say 98% of email - not exaggerating whatsoever - is completely unrelated to me, or effectively ‘corporate spam’.

What benefit does email provide above a service like Teams, and how does it curtail all of the above issues?

By requesting people use email exclusively to reach you; you’re choosing to inconvenience me, and many others - because you’ve refused to move on to the next logical step in communicating with your coworkers. You’re forcing me to use a service to communicate with others that is ineffective at best - frustrating at hell at worst.

It appears entitled, and; frankly, you’re the type of person I’d hate working with because of it.

An email sent to me is a fish in a bucket of mostly fake fish.

An IM sent to me is a direct message, sent by a human; specially to me - and if I don’t see it when it’s sent to me - I can still see it later.

[joe-collins]

Agree. 33 years old, gmail, with a handful of other accounts used to corral expected spam from low quality websites. My inbox is 100% automated messages, and the only one going back through July that I explicitly solicited is from a concert ticket purchase.

Email, like the telephone, is polluted into uselessness.

[SyneRyder]

Assuming you're a developer, by 33 you should have programmed email filters to handle this. The whole point of email is to have it automatically prioritized and sorted before you even start reading it. If your inbox is 100% automated messages, something has gone seriously wrong.

I wonder if Gmail is part of the problem. All the spam I receive at a Fastmail-hosted account is coming from hacked Gmail accounts. Google is doing nothing to stop it, even though a very simple filter at my end can automatically flag it. Gmail's outgoing mail servers are getting reported into blocklist reputation oblivion in recent weeks - could be worth switching to a paid provider.

[feet]

I'm sorry but not everyone is a programmer. What about the other 95% of the population who deals with the same spam fatigue?

[tomcam]

How do you know Gmail is doing nothing to stop it?

[SyneRyder]

I've reported it to admins via various methods (eg Spamcop), and Google was declining to accept spam reports. (ie Google's email contact address was listed as "[e-mail]") I'll double check that is still the case and try again with Google when the next one comes through.

The spam I'm talking about almost always has "new autobot" or "new cryptobot" in the subject, and usually has an infected PDF attached. A simple outbound check for that would be enough to flag likely compromised accounts. That's the simple filter rule I'm using to kick it automatically into my spam folder for later review.

One of the more egregious servers is mail-lf1-f48.google.com:

https://www.abuseipdb.com/check/209.85.167.48

But it's also coming from mail-yw1-f180.google.com, mail-yw1-f181.google.com and mail-yw1-f182.google.com, and those are just the servers I've seen in the last 24 hours.

https://www.abuseipdb.com/check/209.85.128.180

https://www.abuseipdb.com/check/209.85.128.181

https://www.abuseipdb.com/check/209.85.128.182

I am assuming it is the Google accounts that are compromised, and not Google's own mail servers. But I suppose it's possible that Google itself is pwned.

[tomcam]

Well that’s disheartening. What a series of events. Thanks for giving it a try.

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

One of my first big dressing down at work, as a young engineer, was a result of this.

A manager had been emailing me monthly requests to update some time-tracking excel sheet, but his emails looked like the kind of automated spam you get from every other service reminding you to do something or other so I ignored them. And I was tracking my time following a different process (you had to do both unbeknownst to me) so I assumed it was just an automatic reminder and I was good.

Anyway 6 months into the job he called me on the phone and gave me the dressing down of a lifetime about responsibility and answering your emails and so forth. Very unpleasant experience all around.

[origin_path]

In fairness to the manager it's a bit odd to assume that if an email reminder is auto-generated, you don't have to do it.

[juve1996]

Is it really surprising to you why he didn't respond well to that? I would not be happy if someone said to me what you said to him.

[slt2021]

people are overloaded these days. You can only expect something if (1) the person is your Direct report and (2) if there is tracking item in JIRA or something.

in all other cases - it is not business critical and it is person's courtesy to reply you on time

[thankful69]

Send him a slack/{insert app here} message instead, you are in no position to demand a response "in time" from anyone really. Many people prefer using real-time collab tools for a reason, and only check their email once or twice a day.