Recently, I’ve noticed a trend in wasted time while communicating electronically with non-programmers. Namely, I’ve realized that non-programmers tend to:
- Engage in meaningless banter when they could otherwise be explaining the bug they need me to fix.
- Go away for extended periods in the middle of the conversation w/o warning.
Today, I had two back-to-back conversations that hit both of these criteria. Names have been censored to protect the guilty.
Example 1
(3:32:00 PM) Coworker A: hi ammon!
(3:32:29 PM) Ammon: howdy
(3:32:36 PM) Coworker A: how are ya?
(3:32:59 PM) Ammon: pretty good, just writing up docs on stuff i spent the last
few hours figuring out how to do 
(3:33:11 PM) Coworker A: great! sounds like fun!
(3:33:24 PM) Coworker A: did you have a good weekend?
(3:33:32 PM) Ammon: grin, more or less
(3:33:45 PM) Ammon: there was much sitting and television
(3:34:17 PM) Coworker A: ah... very nice!
(3:34:48 PM) Ammon: yep, nothing very exciting
(3:35:03 PM) Coworker A: well.... i question for ya
(3:35:07 PM) Ammon: shoot
(3:40:15 PM) Coworker A: have you had a chance to look at the *perpetully buggy
system*?
So, 3 minutes were wasted getting around to the point where she decided to ask me the original question. Then, she got interrupted by a phonecall… and left me hanging for 5 minutes thinking her net had gone down or something.
What could have gone better? Well, the conversation SHOULD have looked more like this:
(3:32:00 PM) Coworker A: have you had a chance to look at the *perpetully buggy system*? (3:32:29 PM) Ammon: not today, what seems to be the problem?
It’s to the point and it saves me 8 minutes of sitting around. It’s not uncouth. It’s not impolite language. It gets the job done.
Example 2
(3:49:52 PM) Coworker B: hello Ammon (3:49:54 PM) Ammon: howdy (3:49:59 PM) Coworker B: how are you doing? (3:50:19 PM) Ammon: fine (3:50:24 PM) Ammon: so what seems to be the problem with *project*? ... snip discussion of what's going wrong ... (3:59:13 PM) Ammon: can you screenshot that? (4:00:10 PM) Coworker B: ya let me see here (4:00:30 PM) Ammon: k (4:00:42 PM) Coworker B: and then send it in an email? (4:02:23 PM) Ammon: nod ... snip me poking her a few times to see where she'd gone ... (4:22:01 PM) Coworker B: sorry about that (4:22:30 PM) Ammon: so, did you send that image yet? (4:41:03 PM) Ammon: ok, finally got the shot (4:41:10 PM) Ammon: what's happening is *problem with thingy*
Same deal here. She tried to derail me with meaningless banter.
This time, because I was thinking about the time wasted by smalltalk, I cut to the chase and things seemed to work well enough. I guess it would have taken a few minutes before she got around to asking her question too.
The 40 minute unannounced absence? Yeah. Unacceptable.
PEOPLE. If you’re talking to somebody on the phone, you don’t just set it down for half an hour w/o telling them.
Also note, the 7 second delay between my finally getting the information I needed to solve the problem and offering a suitable diagnosis. This is how it works. When the programmer has details on the problem, they’re able to fix it. Yes, it’s nice to talk about how the Cubs almost won another game last night, but much nicer during work hours is actually getting work-related things accomplished.
If you want to make smalltalk, go ahead. Just don’t do it when I know you’ve got a problem that needs solving. Don’t try to soften bug reports up for me. I’m a programmer, not a marketoid. If my code isn’t working, I want to know. I can handle the truth, eh? 
Survey Says…
(3:37:28 PM) Allaryin: survey: if a coworker has a question to ask you over im,
would you a) prefer they just spit it out or b) engage in meaningless
smalltalk for 5 minutes first?
(3:37:49 PM) Allaryin: i'm up to 7 minutes and she's still not around to asking the
question...
(3:37:55 PM) Harkins: I would prefer the conversation begin with the question rather
than "hello".
(3:38:01 PM) Allaryin: yeah
(3:38:16 PM) BSDCat: ditto
(3:38:22 PM) Harkins: You should say you have to run for a few minutes and set
yourself away. Discourage silliness.
(3:39:33 PM) Harkins: At *company that he was pleased to have left* it was
common to start out with a "hey" and "how are you". I explicitly told
all coworkers I preferred them to start with the topic of conversation
and most of them eventually complied.
So, unite, my brethren, and stuff. Rise up. Let your non-technical coworkers know that it’s not only permissible to start a conversation with the topic of conversation, it’s preferrable and gets their bugs fixed sooner.