[HN Gopher] Warm Handoffs
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Warm Handoffs
Author : mooreds
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-10-07 11:59 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (luckymike.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (luckymike.dev)
| mushufasa wrote:
| things like these may individually be Very Good Ideas. That said,
| no organization goes through all of these little practices for
| onboarding every single new person. And when a firm has a Policy
| it just sits somewhere and people don't read it.
|
| Oral tradition would work for these things, but even then it is
| fragile to team turnover.
|
| Part of the appeal of hiring people with work experience at
| similar companies the expectation that they have all these bits
| of culture. That's a real value.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Nah, sorry but it's literally not my job to redirect someone's
| question that went to the wrong spot. "Hey, not familiar with
| that, I'd ask X" is fine. This sounds like extra messaging on my
| part that the person with the question or request is perfectly
| capable of handling themselves. It's unneeded chatter or noise.
|
| However, if I do think it falls under my responsibilities but
| then I find out for some reason it's not after learning new
| information or hitting a wall, then yes, I'll absolutely fill in
| whomever it's supposed to go to.
| backbeginning wrote:
| Concur. Leaning into learned helplessness is not the solution
| to these problems. At some point, we need people to take
| accountability and responsibility for themselves. I'm done
| being developer IT.
| seqizz wrote:
| Honestly I am not convinced. If someone comes to sysadmins
| channel to ask "hey I randomly get a bluescreen, what should I
| do?" the solution is to answer "well you can ask #officeit
| channel". Holding their hand and asking to office IT myself +
| explaining this to the person who asked the question does not add
| any extra value, not to mention the extra time it needs.
| williamdclt wrote:
| You're right that there's regularly cases where the problem
| really objectively is "not my job" and a cold redirect is more
| efficient.
|
| However, personally I found that it is incredibly useful to use
| these sort of things as opportunities. The main opportunity is
| learning: I'll learn something about BSOD, and about our
| specific IT setup, maybe some troubleshooting or windows stuff,
| and all this knowledge builds into strong mental models and
| often comes in useful even if it's years from now.
|
| It's also an opportunity to build relationship (with the asker,
| with the IT person). It's a tiny interaction but it makes a
| difference, you are now seen as "helpful" (and if you didn't
| know the person at all, you got from 0 to 1 which is huge).
|
| It's also an opportunity to help (sometimes): as a SWE I have a
| breadth of knowledge, maybe I can help the IT person to have a
| better config to avoid BSODs, maybe I can help the asker with
| their specific setup that the IT person is confused about...
|
| There's no question that a warm handoff can be a waste,
| absolutely. But do it a hundred times and you get so much back
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| For me its a numbers problem. You help one person and they
| will tell everyone that you are 'the guy who does stuff'. 2
| weeks later people are showing up at my desk acting offended
| that I did not answer the phone (i was already on the phone
| with a different process dodger and my line is not integrated
| with any queue system because I am not a CSR) demanding to
| talk to my supervisor about how terrible I am.
|
| That company had a really strict 'just help anyone' policy
| and I'm really glad I do not work there anymore.
| kqr wrote:
| When governments and related agencies implement this it is called
| _no wrong door_.
|
| I like it. It doesn't have to take any effort. When you hit reply
| on an email sent to the wrong person, add the correct email to
| the field with recipients. That's it!
|
| In something like Slack, you write the answer in the correct
| location for the question. That's it.
|
| These are tiny changes that don't cost anything but can decrease
| friction a lot, because the nobody has to repeat themselves any
| time someone has gone through the wrong door.
| fudged71 wrote:
| I'd love to see a list of all these services-related best
| practices. Another one I saw recently was "computational
| kindness"
| __float wrote:
| It's also been called that in a software engineering
| context[0], though it looks the post didn't get much traction
| on HN when it was submitted[1].
|
| [0] https://lethain.com/no-wrong-doors/
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40450485
| jcoder wrote:
| That blog is simply saying the same thing as GP--that it's a
| term from gov agencies, and musing about applying the same
| ideas in their work.
| neilv wrote:
| I often try to practice something like this, but context affects
| how actively helpful/meta I am.
|
| Someone who's new, or seems overwhelmed, or has shown some
| effort... might get more hand-holding help... than someone who
| seems to be, say, ignoring the single-source-of-truth-for-most-
| all-things wiki that was impressed upon them, and just trying to
| knock off a task as easily as possible, with no consideration for
| others' time.
|
| A suspected former is more likely to get my best customer
| service, team player help. "Have you met Jane? I think she's
| started a new product feature for that, but there's also a
| related tailoring that Sales has been doing. Let me introduce you
| to Jane, and we can see which thing you should be you should be
| working with today. I'm curious myself." (Goals are to unblock
| this person, have everyone on the right tracks, and set the
| culture for team-orientedness.)
|
| A suspected latter, I'll play it by ear, for exactly how to see
| whether they checked the wiki (or did whatever is the thing
| everyone should know from onboarding they're supposed to do
| first), and try to nudge them into the right meta thinking if
| they need it, while also _not_ sending the cultural message to
| _not_ be very helpful.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| And then on the other end of the spectrum you have Ice-cold
| Handoffs as practiced by Microsoft.
|
| Good luck to any poor soul caught in the spider-web of microsofts
| online support as they play hot-potato with you while denying
| culpability, and forcing you to do all the legwork. Sending you
| through multiple github repos / discord / support forums where it
| becomes increasingly obvious these teams do not get along and
| want little to do with each other, let alone you.
| satisfice wrote:
| This feels nannyish to me. And what's with this "enforcement"
| crap?
|
| If your social policy needs to be enforced, then it didn't
| succeed in the marketplace of ideas.
|
| If you like this, then do it. It will catch on if it catches on.
| Meanwhile, there is work to do.
| immibis wrote:
| Corporations aren't marketplaces of ideas - they're
| dictatorships.
| ascendantlogic wrote:
| The responses here are definitely indicative of who has good
| relationships with their coworkers and who doesn't. I feel like
| the point of this exercise is to foster better relationships
| overall.
| yuliyp wrote:
| Sometimes a cold handoff is appropriate. If the team initially
| asked has nothing relevant to offer besides a guess at who owns
| it, having the extra person around in the discussion is just
| wasted effort and attention. If it's a related team, then sure do
| the warm handoff to get to a solution more effectively.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > "If someone asks you a question you can't answer, take them to
| someone who can answer it. If you don't know who that is, help
| find someone who can."
|
| Isn't this just ordinary politeness?
|
| I can believe that it's not as common as it should be but it's
| what I usually try to do when asked a question I can't answer. Of
| course the amount of effort I put in depends on how important I
| think the question and answer might be.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Definitely one would think. Some people are busy, and don't
| take that extra time, or just aren't that polite like you and
| I.
| chrsig wrote:
| Some people have taken the extra time and not gotten it in
| return, or otherwise been met with negative consequences for
| helping people.
|
| Bad experiences when trying to be benevolent really take a
| tole on some people.
| allknowingfrog wrote:
| When I have this problem, it's usually via a private Slack
| message. I'm happy to direct people to the appropriate channel,
| but there's really no good way to link to the original question,
| even if I wanted to be "warmer". Asking someone to copy-and-paste
| into an appropriate channel has always worked for me, and I'm not
| so sure that that isn't the best approach in general.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| This is the biggest issue I have with Slack. Often I'll have
| like 5 different conversations involving different people all
| around the same thing, and the only way to bring them all
| together is to start a channel which then either sits around
| forever or eventually gets archived and disappears. There's no
| way to move messages from one channel to the other to collect a
| history of comments, so it's not terribly useful for advancing
| a concern from one group to another as it collects receipts.
| Instead, the old thread with the old receipt dies completely
| and the context has to be rebuilt for every new group of people
| you are talking to.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I do this when it's appropriate. Where I'm not sure it applies is
| in the very common scenario of someone asking a question that
| doesn't really make a ton of sense. If I do a warm handoff, I'm
| implicitly endorsing their question, even if it's needlessly
| hostile or poorly formed or based on a misunderstanding. (I could
| take on the responsibility of fixing every bad question that
| comes to me, whether or not I'm the right person to ultimately
| answer it, but then I wouldn't have time to do my job.)
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(page generated 2024-10-09 23:00 UTC)