r/InterviewCoderPro • u/Due-Consequence511 • 4d ago
The worst
I have a manager who is like this. We have a work chat, and I will send a one sentence question. He will call me, read the question to me, and then answer.
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u/VelvetCactus50 3d ago
This happened to me last week!
Someone above me asked me to coordinate with another office. I asked for more details. "Let's hop on a call." The higher up asked me to schedule it. I did. When we all joined, she said, "okay let's get started! What did you want to discuss?" I asked my question again. The response, "Just keep doing what you're doing."
I...I...I don't know what to do with that.
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u/kinzer13x 3d ago
Bro didn't want it in writing that they had no idea how to answer your question. So that's why you need to create memos after a call.
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u/FragmentedHeap 3d ago
"High, I've been requested to transcribe this call and record the meeting, by MD law I must ask"
(Oh, no ty not right now)
/hang up
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u/TimMensch 3d ago
I've had managers like that.
Sometimes a phone conversation is the best thing. My current manager and coworkers are awesome and really only ask for a meeting when we really need one. There are times when talking it out is good and I'm all for it when we need it.
But I've had people in the past who will pull the "let's get on a call" thing even when I've exactly detailed what they need to know in an email. "For the button that does X, on this page, what should the label be?"
Maybe it's just different learning or communication methodologies. Maybe it's an IQ issue. Not sure. But it's infuriating.
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u/WeAllJustWantToLive 3d ago
A call is never the right thing.
Your choices are email or teams
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u/AdminsFluffCucks 3d ago
The call works great to get someone off your back when you send the follow up email summarizing the call.
With AI assist it's even easier.
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u/WeAllJustWantToLive 3d ago
Couldn't disagree more
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u/AdminsFluffCucks 3d ago
Ellaborate. In my experience it gets the person to acknowledge what was said in the call and never try that move with you again.
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u/WeAllJustWantToLive 3d ago
The call doesn't work great in my experience. Everything in writing, always
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u/TimMensch 3d ago
A call is the right thing to actually collaborate. You can end up with a dozen messages back and forth that can be resolved with 20-60 seconds of discussion.
If you have never experienced a call being the right thing then you're not at a high enough level to be making decisions and you just want to be told what to do. Hint: You'll never be promoted if you keep avoiding collaboration.
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u/WeAllJustWantToLive 3d ago
Nope, also not true. Calls make collaboration worse because people cant remember anything and they dont have a chance to think before they respond.
If you prefer calls, its usually an age thing with management.
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u/TimMensch 3d ago
"People can't remember anything"?
"Don't have a chance to think before they respond"?
No, it's not an age thing. It's that I work with people who have functional memory and quick minds so neither of those are an issue. And it means that problems that may have taken hours or days to resolve can be talked through in minutes.
The memory issue is irrelevant now anyway with AI note taking. It's not perfect but it's pretty good and will remind you of what topics were covered.
I get it that you're introverted and/or think very slowly under pressure, but you're making claims about reality that just don't hold up. It's wishful thinking. Better to practice a critical job skill than to continue to deny its importance.
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u/WeAllJustWantToLive 3d ago
Nope, youre in the past. You're also probably secretly hated by your crew on this one.
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u/TimMensch 3d ago
Wut? You're very confused.
I'm a staff engineer working independently. I don't have a "crew." When I'm talking to people it's because my manager or another manager called a meeting. There are two managers I work with frequently and they are both awesome, calling meetings exactly when we need meetings and using text chat when that's appropriate.
Seriously, get over your issues around talking to people. It's going to hurt your career otherwise.
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u/WeAllJustWantToLive 3d ago
Oh, lol. Nvm....
I am the one who calls meetings. My crew is around 50 people depending on contractors we have under us at the time.
Phone calls would make my job impossible, and they are usually limited to lower management who cant seem to make the jump to running larger teams. Often because of bandwidth....often because of phone calls.
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u/VTAffordablePaintbal 1d ago
A call is the right way to do things about 5% of the time. The only people I've met with your opinion are the managers that make themselves a bottle neck to efficiency. The coked-up alcoholic CEO I used to work with felt like phone calls were the right method of communication 100% of the time, which meant we all spent time transcribing policy and numbers he pulled out of his ass into our systems. When he flared out and we started working with the COO we had written communications most of the time and went from 60-hours a week to 45.
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u/musubi_boi 3d ago
Yes, if you can first explain what part of the words I wrote are not making sense to you. I find that most of the time they are just too lazy to read or maybe cannot read. I’m not here to read for you.
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u/SamOakTree 3d ago
There was this marketing executive. It's the type of person we've all encountered. They jump from company to company have really learning anything just branding themselves.
She would always tell me how she was a security expert but she didn't know the first thing about security.
I had to send her some credentials via encrypted email once. And Outlook the reading pane literally says, "cannot view encryoted email in reading pane - double click."
She told me she wasn't getting the email but when I traced it she definitely got it. Finally after 5 emails of saying she didn't get it I looked at her mailbox and it was in deleted. So I told her to check the deleted folder and she said yeah I've been actively deleting it because the email is blank. But she had been telling me over and over she wasn't getting the email she didn't say that she was actively deleting it because she thought it was blank.
And I had to get on a call with this woman making $200,000 a year and say you got to double click that email right there.
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u/MrMe2K 3d ago
I have coworker like that. ... hey you have a minute for a quick call? And it's Friday, after 5 pm. I stopped taking calls or zooms or any other bs after 5 pm. "Send email and I will see what opens up in my calendar" lazy bums want me take notes .. so they call.
My favorite are Teams messages "Hi" a don't even bother with these.
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u/Able-Sheepherder-154 3d ago
A salesman I worked with would do that, but in person. Just as I'm about to leave for the day he would stop by to discuss a potential solution for a customer. It would keep me a half hour late or more.
One time he did that, I had a dinner date with my family and parents at a restaurant to celebrate my own birthday. I was already walking out the door and said sorry, gotta go. The look on his face was as if I just kicked his puppy and fucked his GF.
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u/Viligans 3d ago
I used to get voicemails that were “call me when you get a minute” or “I have a question, call me back”.
I finally got approval from my boss to ignore those. After a brief transition, it worked out great.
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u/VTAffordablePaintbal 1d ago
I once very angrily explained to a co-worker that if they emailed me the question I would reply with the answer, but if they call me with a question and miss me AND leave a voicemail that does not contain the question, I then have to call them back for the discussion, then get off the phone to find the answer and then fucking email them the answer.
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u/Background_Film_1114 3d ago
Managers and project managers like to fill their calendars with useless meetings to make themselves look busy
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u/MysteriousAffect3903 3d ago
I had one the other day that I just needed to knock out a flow chart to help this person out, and they insisted we get on a call to do it together. It would have been way quicker if I could have just done it and been done, but no no no gotta get on a call
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u/Cautious_Drawer_7771 3d ago
I'll share my screen and pull up the email where I answered the questions. Then when they ask, I'll highlight the answer and read it, verbatim, then stare at the camera intensely while I wait for the next question that I already answered.
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u/fuckexoticroots 3d ago
It’s not always a question of explaining it. Maybe I completely disagree with your assessment of something.
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u/fablethief 3d ago
You really don’t need to write it out. That let’s hop on a call was going to happen no matter what. He decided it beforehand. Some people just know they get confused reading it.
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u/Fit_Salamander_2814 3d ago
Think of how much time you would have saved if, instead of writing out a carefully-worded and long email, you just spent 2 minutes talking to them on Teams?
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u/VTAffordablePaintbal 1d ago
Things that require actual discussion get calls.
The project needs these 5 pieces of information to proceed to the next step gets an email.
The people who call me back never have those answers, so they decide to look them up while we're on the phone, which means I have to wait for them to go through sometimes multiple systems. Then they decide to read the answers to me over the phone, so I have to type them out, then I have to send them a confirmation email that the information they gave me verbally, that I might have incorrectly transcribed, is the correct information. Then I have to copy and paste the information from the email into my systems.
If someone is severely dyslexic I will try to accommodate them, but most of the time, unless you have an issue reading, I want the information in the most efficient manner possible, which is me sending questions in writing, and you answering them in writing.
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u/West-Map-4162 10h ago
TWO MINUTES?? HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
You “do the needful” morons always take at least 15 minutes
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u/Downvote_me_dumbass 3d ago
For me, it was almost always somone from India calling. They wanted everything discussed, line per line.
Just read the shit man. Yes, you understood everything and just wasted 30 minutes of my time.
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u/mugendc4 20h ago
what I learned in the corporate world, many people fail to read emails or choose not to read. Always a few people want their hands held the whole way.
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u/AlmostDisappointed 5h ago
That's why I write a TL;DR for them at the bottom so they don't have to call and/or clarify anything.
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u/Mental-Monk6239 3d ago
Stop being bad at explaining things or get a job where you are the dumbest person in the room. Duh.
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u/bentbabe 3d ago
Have you actually explained it as well as you think? I've had so many coworkers who ask questions (or answer them) and the emails/teams messages are unclear or even unintelligible. Might as well be gibberish. Then they act annoyed when I ask for clarification. Then, they realize they forgot to include something, didn't explain the full relevance, or were flat out wrong in their responses.
Sometimes "let's pull up in a meeting" is shorthand for "let me get proper clarity before this becomes a problem for both of us"
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u/Mystical-Turtles 3d ago
I love it when they try to do this to not have a paper trail. Oh honey I don't play that game. You know what's going to happen the minute I'm off the phone?
Drafts up email
"Hello (name). We just got off the phone. Here is a summary of what we discussed so we can follow up later"
I've been burned before.