Tips for Communicating

when they do not put paragraphs into something where they just keep typing and typing. You see it on Facebook as well. People are people are just

And I was just like, oh, like, big, big, like, especially like here, the customer trying to give you money and, like, Today, we're sponsored by 3 awesome companies. Sentry does error exception and performance tracking. Sanity I don't know. I just wish that we could, like, somehow quantify that rid the right amount of friendliness.

write something it's the same people on Slack. Rid. You you write something and then hit enter and then keep thinking and write some more stuff and hit enter. And, like, don't make me sit here and watch you formulate your ideas.

But, yeah, just having a good tone of

of this thing that of

rude

Just parse or or get through or know where you're at. And, you know, like, I personally, I lose track of where I am when I'm reading stuff like that. So if you're if you're writing a lot

And like maybe not a smiley, but,

It will come off as very terse, especially if the facts

write something I think that's really important. Someone said underline.

you you people can be very business, and they can be very you can be straightforward and still be friendly. And and funny because My wife is an exquisite writer. I mean, she writes for her career, but she's a very technical writer. So she'll send me her emails and be like, Hey. Can you make this sound a little bit more friendly? Can you make this sound a little bit nicer? Like, it's not that like, it it's just like that. That is a thing where if you can make it sound like you're smiling and you're having a conversation or whatever while you're doing this thing, you're really good at this actually, Wes. That's one of your your really your best skills is, like, you when you email people, it feels like a friend is emailing you, you know, or when I'm reading some of the stuff you write. And so,

Yeah. Don't be don't be afraid to be friendly in your emails. Yeah, it's just. And you don't have to go overly friendly. Yeah. Like 1 exclamation mark, not 3.

type it up, and then send it to me. I don't need to wait through that entire thing. And those people listening to podcast meeting, like, oh, I do that.

next one, I I would say, would be to on the side of friendly. You know, too oftentimes,

I think it's just a red flag right from the get go. People not using paragraphs. And I don't know if that's but a little bit friendly, because sometimes if you're just spit and straight facts.

So yeah. The dot dot dot thing is weird because I I personally used to do that, and then I started reading things that people rid. With the and just thinking about, like, how it sounded when I read it. Like, oh, I'm just thinking and he was, like, confirmed that it was the screen that was broken. And we have this other Linux one then It was also fancy, and he was like, honestly,

I went in. They told me a price. I emailed them. They told me a different price.

Really hoping that I can buy it. Can you please confirm the price?

Rid. Like, go back to this example. I was trying to buy a desk.

Exactly.

And she did. I said, Hey, like, that's a different price than I got in person. Like, is there any different? And she says, and default Rid. And the girl says, I emailed her, hey, like, what's up? I was in on on the thing. I love love the desk.

Get it together, we have

that. Like, it's just like, oh, it just makes it really difficult and annoying to read, to be honest. So,

It just makes it impossible to

and you just like you

just tome, And then don't use anything to break it up, and it makes it impossible to read.

is gonna be a giant pain to install, this fancier Linux one.

this multistage board, and it had a proprietary

electronics. I was doing smoking weed. Impressed. Yeah. It was a very rid. Very West Bossy kind of day. The wire stuff is always a little bit scary because you let you let the smoke out if you put the wrong wires in the wrong spot. I So did you I I have a question about that. So Scott replaced, or or when we're selling, but then I wrote out our And they shuffled around some plans. And somewhere in that, the syntax website

rid. HomeKit support baked in. The sensors the new, like, room sensors are pretty nice and stuff. So because we had to leave our last ecobee at the old house because we left it up for the we left it up when they bought the house. It was kind of like, oh, shoot. We can't take this thing down. Yeah. You kinda have to. I wrote it into I wrote our ecobee into the offer Yeah.

rid I don't even know the name the numbers of them anymore, but we have one here, and we love it. And that that gets goes with the house. So now we're trying to And the new house comes with those old school ones. So now we're trying to get new ones for for the new house. Yeah. Interesting stuff. HVAC hour with Scott and West. HVAC hour. Alright. So let's actually take this into away from HVAC hour into tips for communicating here. So we have this broken up into a few different sections, whether that's email or code reviews or in person or Zoom or meetings, these types of things. Then we have some Twitter tips as well. Email.

And there this thing will be a much harder thing to install than it would because we'd have to replace the whole board at that point. Yeah. This would be way harder to install than It would be to just swap these wires to your other board and just use the ecobee.

and just go directly to it, or how did that work? So the board is like, the board itself, there was, like, a proprietary

6 month old ecobee.

So he was using this, like, fancier totally get the board board off of the the furnace and and swap out some wires and stuff because We had some proprietary thing, and I wanted to use an ecobee.

And she had 3 of those room sensors, which are there. It's $100 for 2 extra sensors.

rid. I just bought a ecobee off marketplace, and the lady is like a professional And

rid That like, I actually had to, you know,

So I'm a little worried about that. But then we had the eco. Well, I don't

rid. Was like a multistage thing, but our our our AC unit our whole system did not even support multistage anyways.

like, the wiring was 4 wires,

this thing

we had at the old house that was like a fancy one. And what happened actually is the thermostat itself, the touch Screen on it just went. And it could've gone from, you know, a power outage that we had or who knows why this thing went. But I I kinda troubleshooted it down to the fact that the furnace, There's no air lights on the furnace. Everything was getting powered correctly. But the screen would just turn on, and then it would scramble and then shut off. And I was like, alright. It definitely feels like this is the rid. Green specifically.

controller for

I was doing So we went out and got the latest ecobee which has,

I really like the ecobee. So, yeah, we went we went and got the new one, and it is really awesome. So, yeah, it was a it It was a fun, fun little project. Cool. The new ecobee looks sick. I like Or even if you're writing any any amount, you know, it doesn't have to be that much. If you're you're having separate ideas or or rid. Separate parts that need to be broken up. Man, paragraphs are free. You can use them. Yeah. It's it's amazing how rid. You can tell that somebody is unhinged that's a that's an interesting one. I I would never have thought about using bolding at all or underline for that matter, but bolding it on. Yeah. Yeah. I've done that for my sister as well. My sister's a wedding photographer

Linux. That's who it is. And That's okay. Yeah. So is there, like, proprietary 4 cable thing where it's like a plus minus and a p or who knows what the the numbers were on these things? So, basically, I had to since I already had the wiring for a 4 cable system, I just moved those 4 wires over to

And they told me we can't use

to to get our our thermostat working. Like, I

So we had an AC guy come over

are you did you have to take a board out of the furnace the very first one or ecobee 2 at the cottage. And The screen on that is starting to get very faded.

What are your what is what is your number one tip I I think that that helps me not only, like you said, parse the email, but it does ensure that I'm not going to miss anything. I I, as an email responder, always appreciate a good numbered list.

we have to use the proprietary one, and I'm kinda mad about that. And I was like, rid. That's probably exactly what Scott had. But Exactly. Yeah. Scott is smarter, and he was able to rewire it. Well, it's so funny because so we had, like, this weird Linux rid box that we had been, And then and then like that's a ask because can I have something for free? You know, like, that's very that's a big ask to somebody. So you always have to, like, give them an out, like, if not totally understand. Happy to pay for it as well.

stupid.

whatever the The four wire setup would be, and then you use Yeah. Ecobee's transformer to to give you the correct wiring for that. That's interesting because, Another one would be used paragraphs.

I was I was telling you a couple days ago, I was feeling like West Boss because I was Smoking some meats. I was smoking some some wings. Yeah. And then I rewired my furnace

the furnace. And the proprietary controller,

And when I do that, it's very it's kind of it's kind of hard.

And we're not talking about credit cards. We're talking about CCs and BCCs and those types of things where, man, you could could not like, that was the one thing I don't miss about working in a Office where people would just cc everybody on everything

where they may or not be able to do it.

or not to. Not to is fine, you know? But

So part of my job often is reaching out to people and asking for something

for the syntax website, just as a thing to do for the web development community in general.

I'll give you an example here. The Syntax website, And rid. We lost our, like, sponsored plan. Not not malicious or anything like that, just because that was in the in the shuffle.

rid. A way to to back out from it so it's not awkward on them because you're you're asking them to stick their neck out likely in their job for something. So I I think that's you're asking for a favor. Right? Exactly. Yeah.

Another one here is mind the cc's.

I know this is a bit of a big ask. Do you think we could get back on that? necessarily an age thing or whatever. Like, do Gen z's use paragraphs? But, please, people, when you have a new thought, put a paragraph. And Scott has down here. Don't use

Or emailing, code review,

if it's in a professional context, you have to give them some sort of like when you are writing things

So I reached out to Lee, who works at Vercel. And I was like, hey, like,

nervous out. Sometimes you get rid. You get asked from people. They're like, or whatever. LOL. You know, you always And I bought paid $100 for everything. And I was like, wait. Like, what are you getting rid of this for? That's rid She said we love it, but we just got a new Lenox furnace.

it was on a sponsored plan from Vercel for, I don't know, 2 years. Vercel pays the bill.

You know what? I actually don't do this. So I'm I'm interested in hearing you you bold, And you say underlining seems sketchy. So can you, can you give it to that a little bit? Yeah. So, And the 4 wires were going into their proprietary

changing dates on her.

And I don't know. It's 3 or 4, 5, 6 sentences.

I feel like those are because, like, I often get a lot of junk mail. And if there's an underline in it, I feel like you just copy and paste that from Microsoft Word. I don't know why I feel that way, but anytime I see an underline in email, I'm just like, this is probably

bolding the most important part again makes it very easy to ask. I can think of Many times people say, can you come on the podcast? this is the biggest ask of my life are bad.

And just by putting that 1 bull ask in bold, some people say they don't necessarily like that. Maybe it seems aggressive,

deposit And she's like, how do I tell this person guarantee she was not trying to be

Next one you have here is bold, the important part.

and she had a bride that kept

This kind of goes along with the the first one. And I used to this all the time on on online poster, like, Reddit or any of those places. People, like, write this big, long, well, I forget the company who makes this thing, but it's

rid. Communicate effectively. That's interesting.

And I like so I whipped up something really quickly for her and it worked right. So, smart switches because I was like, I want those. Yeah. Right? And if I just blur my eyes,

You know, it's funny because I I always, like, often default to you for emails, Especially for writing, like, a joint email or we're sending an email that is coming from both of us. I'm always like, if I'm writing it, I'm gonna send it to you first for edits because,

And then they have to give a little bit of context for what the podcast is, a little bit of context for who they are, a little bit of context for How much they love the stuff that I do.

spam email that I get a 1000 times over, and I'm not gonna continue going. But I don't know if that The underlying thing is just personal, but the bold thing, I think, is is actually legitimate.

if you if there is is an ask or whatever,

I have a bit of an adversion to underlines

rid. Communications and, like, managerial classes in university. And, like, that's, like, probably the one thing that I really got out of university is being able to going off and it's like, clearly you something's wrong here where you don't know how to use a paragraph. Right? things that you want to ask people,

And at a certain point, she couldn't change it anymore. She was fully booked up. So she keeps the nonrefundable especially when you're doing, like, a cold email to somebody. Maybe not necessary when you're going back and forth with A client or people that are on your team. But if it's a cold email, rid. But I very much appreciate that type of thing is, How How do I how do I tell them that I'm keeping your money? Yeah.

you have such a a skill at emailing. So,

I can see. Okay, Bold. Rid. Will you be willing to come on the podcast?

you backed out of the deal? You changed the date. I can no longer do that.

It can be a little bit tricky, but getting good. I attribute a lot to I took a lot of

Yeah. Yeah. We we had a whole episode on how to email busy people because I get tons of email. And there's certain people that when they email me, I'm just like, come on. Like you're not doing yourself any favors and trying to get a response from me. Yeah. And then I also feel like I email a lot of people and I'm like, they're busy and they they They don't have a lot of time. So I always say number your asks. So if you have, the price I told you is the correct price, period.

And they only answered one of them. Why? Because it's hard to parse out a list of questions. So then I emailed back and I said I put them as bullet points 1, 2, 3. Rid. And then the email that came back, they copy paste it. They reply right underneath each of them. So if you have in more than 1 ask, ideally, you don't ask as much rid because you're overwhelming the person. But if you have to ask more than one thing, put numbers on them. That's very clear what it is that you're asking the person.

rid. Like, I was emailing somebody with the real estate the other day, and I had a couple questions.

And I was like like, how much is this? Oh, yeah. So I was buying a new desktop and I was like, how much is it? Is it still in stock? And when can I can it be delivered? Those are 3 questions I had, And

Yeah. Me, personally, as somebody who has a hard time reading in general,

for email communication?

I sillily just type them all in

a paragraph. And I was like, I didn't use my own my own tips there.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Syntax. This is the podcast with the tastiest tips for communication.

You're listening to Syntax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Strap yourself in and get ready. Ready. Here is Scott Talinski and Wes Boss.

Today, we've got an episode on communication. How do you communicate good And you just have to give them an out and not a nervous Next one we have here is recognize a big ask on people.

Hey. I'm doing good, man.

rid. Is the structured content CMS

and Auth0 easy way for developers to add authentication to secure their applications? Talk about all of them partway through the episode. How you doing today, mister Scott Cholinski? colors in emails,

with the people that are on your team, rid. People that you're emailing with clients, you name it. We're gonna go through a bunch of tips on or terse or anything like that, but totally missed the mark in terms of rid. Delivering the bad news to me that something got mixed up along the way. And even if it is bad news for me, at least try to Padded a little bit more friendly. Unfortunately, that is the price. Not sure what happened. I'll look into it. You know? Yeah. It is. It's because right. You can't get tone From an email. And you decide, oh, that is the price. You know, that's different than that is the price. You know, the the tone is very different, and You can't get that from the straight up email.

if you want to get better at communicating.

rid. In person meetings, Zoom calls, and then we, of course, we reached out to the old Twitter machine and asked for people much smarter than us. We got a whole bunch of tips At the end that we're gonna run through as well. So some good nuggets. You definitely want to listen to this one, rid. Some sort of prewritten yes.