Setting: 1:1 with my manager. Standing meeting. He tells me he got "some informal feedback" that I "come across cold in async."
The feedback was from one specific person. I knew it was him because the person who passed it along almost said his name and stopped halfway. I have a 100% guess rate on this stuff at this point.
The guy who said this writes Slack messages like:
"hey 👋 can you look at the thing 🙏 ty 💜"
That is the message I got from him last Tuesday. There is no thing. He did not link to a thing. There is just a vibe.
Mine to him said "Sure, can you link the doc you want me to look at? Happy to take a pass after standup."
He found this cold.
My manager's face when I read both messages out loud and asked him whether the average human reader would call mine cold. I have been working on poker face for years and that man's poker face is not what mine is.
Nothing has been resolved. I do not think anything will be. I am going to keep writing Slack messages like a person with object permanence and he is going to keep telling people they are cold. We will see who is still here in two years.