I love email (2023)

I once was let go from a job because of something related to email. It's almost comical, although I didn't feel that way when it actually happened.

I was basically working independently on a teaching task. But there was one coworker who had been there for a long time and was working more in outreach. She told me to install four(!) different instant messaging apps -- which I didn't do because while her job involved a lot of communicating with third parties, mine didn't. Besides, she was not my boss (formally - although I think she thought she kinda was. In any event, she did have a lot of influence on my actual supervisor.)

She insisted that that's mandatory for me to which I countered that the whole professional world works on email just fine, as far as non-internal communication is concerned. She started screaming at me in my own office how I had betrayed her by agreeing to install the apps but then didn't do it. I didn't think I agreed because I found the idea ridiculous from the get go. Anyway - I stayed calm and said we should talk again when she was calmer, too.

I later found out that she then schemed behind my back to have me laid off. Which obviously worked.

I must have really rubbed her the wrong way. But in retrospect, I'm really happy to have moved on to better places since.

I like that email respects the time of both parties. Either can reply when convenient. When a reply requires careful consideration or phrasing you have the time to do so. When you are otherwise engaged you don’t have to stop and handle each one now. When you need to reference it later it is often much easier than finding a chat. It’s almost the only relaxing comms method left apart from mailing a letter.

We have Slack Connect channels with all of our customers (we're a small company), and I've since grown to hate it. At first, it seems like a quick way to have comms with customers, but then you realize it's a quick way to have comms with customers...

Because Slack is so frictionless, there was no barrier asking anything, including questions that were answered the day prior in the main channel or questions that are right in our searchable API docs. It also allows anyone to message, which also seems nice on the surface, but again, it ends up being awful.

Another example is that one of our customer's CS folks Slacks us their questions about their internal system, which we obviously have nothing to do with. This has been consistently like once a month for 2.5 years...

Email adds friction. Even though it's not much, I've found that customers of ours that used to be very bad signal to noise ratio who we've transitioned to email support have since reached out less with more valid support requests.

Customers that always preferred email over Slack were always like that. I assume that's actually because they're bigger companies that are waiting on five internal meetings before doing anything.

I really like Slack of internal communication, but email for external all the way.

> But I’ve found there’s something magical about email as a medium of communication, and as a technology.

Reminds me of [0]

I love email and postcards. It's a bummer that the signal to noise ratio is so high with junk mail, but that makes genuine correspondence even more special. Long replies make you sit with someone else's perspective without interrupting longer than you would in normal conversation and I think that changes things dramatically.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

I've done that the past couple of years two handfuls of times. Mostly to people I discovered on HN, with a nice hardware or software project. Only once did I get a nasty reply (probably because I was too much in my enthusiasm), so I'll remember you, you Italian prick. ;)

Most replies are very nice. People really feel seen and appreciated when I compliment them on their cool project and nice write up.

Even if no one replies, I would still send the occasional email, because I want independent websites/blogs to thrive and stay.

The enthusiasm described by the author feels familiar! Every once in a while I send emails to 'random' people without expecting too much. During covid I emailed a C64 developer why a certain enemy type from one of his games in 1986 had a certain name. He responded a few days later with a lengthy and in-depth explanation.

Last week I saw and photographed a sticker with street art near my office. I tried tracking down the artist (he was from a neighboring country), found him and tried to find some contact info. I emailed him if he knew how his art reached my city. He answered that the art piece on the sticker was something he created 30 years ago for a festival and that - apparently - an unknown person made stickers using his art.

Sending a short email does not take a lot of time, but it's very rewarding when the other party answers.

I love the idea of emailing people with appreciation for things they've created.

I've considered doing this a few times, but have to admit I've never actually got round to sending people appreciative emails, maybe this blog post is the prompt I need.

There's a lot of makers on HN, has anyone here ever received emails about things they made?

I used to be fairly active on r/generative, someone once DM'd me to show me a pen-plot they'd made based off of something I'd made, and it made my whole week.

I used to feel apprehensive about emailing people until one day I just decided to power through and do it. I agree with the post, it's like you unlock an additional layer of communications. Everyone is suddenly contactable! I would also say that most poeple are really nice 1-1, I cannot remember a nasty reply (worst that happened to me was just my email being left ignored).

I would add that I love emails when they are written as emails (i.e. at least one coherent paragraph).

Email, as a medium, prompts us to think (at least for a few seconds), not "generate human tokens". Sure, we may feel being "communicative" or "productive" while chatting or Slack, but (in my experience) it is not always the case.

currently working on a blog for my friends that they can update by sending it an email

i've been administering a couple personal servers by email as well; they each run a small LLM and read emails sent to them, with a strict allowlist they can handle quite a lot of basic tasks: i've locked myself out of ssh from this ip please unban it, please email me when security logs are strange, what is the current status of the services on your server, etc.

I'm glad I'm not the only one! I, too, have been emailing creators, randomly, to thank them for their work. Especially when I feature their work in my newsletter.

I emailed Ken Thompson and Noam Chomsky in the past, and they replied! It probably wouldn’t work any other way.

Email as a technology is insanely crufty.

It feels somewhat hacked together (because, largely, it is); and there are significantly more bots than people using it (which is somewhat self-fulfilling).

But when I read the leaked/disclosed emails from founders during tech's boom in the late 00-s and early 10-s, I'm left feeling like: this is kinda nice.

You don't need to write long prose, email chains are reasonably self-contained, can include practically anyone and since nobody seems to have a total dominance on mail clients; they pretty much stick to the lowest common denominator. (though, HTML seems to be very much accepted behaviour for email clients, even though it was NOT when I grew up).

So, in the end, it's the safest medium to reach the most people, and incidentally it's also the most "comfy" in that I can optimise my own experience of email if I want to. Nobody cares if you use outlook/gmail/thunderbird/mutt or whatever. It's just email.

This is a pretty strong contrast to the modern web which pretty much requires Chrome or modern messengers which require/enforce their own first-party clients. Even if they happen to support federation (like Teams) which isn't a given.

I had this realization a year or so ago after emailing a professor from a university I'll never go to and a local academic responsible for an interesting piece of software, it's magical

The best thing to come out of the internet!

Agreed! Email is the Donald Trump of technologies! I've emailed, and gotten answers from, CEOs, investors, celebrities, open source geniuses and all kinds of people who in real life are surrounded by body guards and administrative staff do block contact.

It's amazing how big a reach a well crafted and intelligent email has.