Voicemail universally sucks. However, when you're having a synchronous conversation with actual people, do you prefer to do everything via IM, or would you prefer a phone call?
Email. Async comms make sense 99% of the time at my job. Unless there's deep work to be done, or pie-in-the-sky idea fabricating. Or rubber-ducky sessions. But I won't do those with AI.
Email is Calm Technology[0] for collaborative knowledge work, where you expected to spend hours on a single task. If something needs brainstorming, or quick back and forth, you jump on a more synchronous type of conversation (IM, call, in person meeting).
I almost never prefer a phone call, I'd rather go all the way to video/in-person or stick with text. I also prefer to push anything important that isn't extremely small out of instant messaging and to email.
Brainstorming/whiteboarding, 1:1s or performance feedback, team socialization, working through something very difficult (e.g. pair debugging): in-person or video
Incidents, asking for quick help/pointers, small quick questions, social groups, intra-team updates: IM
Bigger design documents and their feedback, trickier questions or debugging that isn't urgent, sharing cool/interesting things, inter-team updates: Email
> do you prefer to do everything via IM, or would you prefer a phone call?
It's hard for me to believe that there are psychopaths among us who prefer call on the phone, slack huddle or even organize meetings instead of just calmly writing messages on IM over coffee.
