Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Most people do expect timely replies to emails. If you act like taking days to respond to an email is normal, people will get very upset with you.
 help



I won't. Days is ok. For non-urgent emails, I would only be slightly annoyed if it's been more than a week, and I'll then send a reminder.

It's ok. I know you're busy, take your time and respond at your convenience.


In most contexts days is perfectly normal, and expecting a faster reply, especially without explaining why it's urgent, is considered impolite. This includes all the cases where the job of the recipient is not literally "reply to e-mails ASAP".

Then be upset. Nowhere did I agree to reply to emails quickly, if at all. Your expectations, your feelings, your problem.

Maybe your context is different, but all I can say is that I used to consider email to be something that you respond to when you get to it. Yet after enough complaints were raised against me I had to change that behavior and reply immediately even if it was just to say "I will look into this".

I am not personally upset if people don't get to my emails right away, because if I have anything actually urgent I'll get a Teams message out to the person who I know can handle it. (That does change a bit if the communication to to an external vendor in which case it's going to their support team who I do expect to respond promptly).


That was also me, but it became unsustainable. I got a lot of reader mail and had to update my contact page to redirect some of it to other experts.

I stopped treating my inbox as an obligation and I reply at my own pace. I still give each email as much consideration as I can, but I no longer feel that it’s required. Some emails go unanswered.

I am slowly working on setting boundaries, especially in response to expectations that I did not opt into. It’s indeed a very contextual reply.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: