The topic of email vs. face-to-face came up after seeing a humorous entry on another blog (which I, of course, now can't find), and this has long been a topic of interest so I thought I'd post an entry.

Scenario: You're working for a small firm, working in a pungent, medium-sized room that you share with a coworker, developing software for the remote-controlled toothbrush industry.

You need to ask your coworker a question.

Do you:

1. Turn around and say "Hey Bob, is the ...?"
2. Send an instant message
3. Send an email
4. 3 and then 1
5. 3, and then a 2 informing of 3, and then 1 to make sure that 2 and 3 were received

Change the scenario a bit so instead you're providing a bit of information to your coworker: Maybe you're telling them about a source code change that you made, or you're answering a question they asked you earlier, but you've only now found the answer. Would these situations change your answer?

Many would immediately answer 1. Regardless of the context, where physical proximity is available it is the first choice.

In fact, not only would this be their personal preference, they would perceive it as a significant fault to choose otherwise. "What sort of maladjusted person would email the person sitting right beside them?" they might rhetorically ask.

I've come across this quite a few times in my career. Several times I've heard it said about others, and other times I've had it pointed out as a fault in my own behaviour (I'm a fan of email, and I type quickly so I often resort to it).

To those people I would say - You don't understand email.

Email is not simply a second-rate substitute when a face-to-face isn't possible. Email has several significant advantages, including, but not limited to:

• Email is asynchronous. Face-to-face is synchronous. If someone can hear their coworker plugging away at something, deeply involved in a problem, but they themselves want to get a piece of info out there so they can move onto other things, an email allows them to both continue working asynchronously.
• Email is searchable. One can easily reference an email for hard-to-recall details, whereas it's not as easy to do the same for a verbal communciations. "Hrmm...did Bob say to set it to 192.168.11.77, or 192.168.77.11? Hrmm...he's gone home. Let's try .77...[BZZZZZZT!]"  (just imagine that colliding IP addresses can cause electrical shorts)
• Email gives accountability. This isn't one of those everyone-for-themselves-CYA type of comments, but it is a simple truth that people tend to be a bit more careful when they can't back out under the premise that they were misheard/misunderstood. Specifics in email have a much higher probability of being correct and carried through than the same verbally.

Imagine if your utility company didn't mail you a bill, but instead they gave you a phone call every month telling you your total. You're eating dinner and the phone call comes in.

"Hi Mr. Jones! Boy you really went wild with the hottub last month! The details of your bill are XYZ and YZX and your meter was read XZY and your grand total is $YYY and you need to pay by YYYY-MM-DD"

Of course this is ridiculous, as contrived analogies usually are. And of course you probably want a better relationship with your coworkers than you do with your utility company, so it really shouldn't be considered too analagous. But the basic premise remains the same - a bill in the mail can be dealt with at the recipient's own pace, at a time appropriate for them, and clearly and concisely contains the necessary details. Your utility can't say "Uh uh! I said that your total was $2Y. You must not have been listening carefully. Here's your penalty."

I'm not completely polarized - there are many scenarios where a good face-to-face is preferrable, and it is necessary to have them frequently to maintain good friendships and a robust casual communication network in the office. Nonetheless, the misplaced moral righteousness of the anti-email crusaders is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of the place and purpose of email.

The other common criticism of email is the oft recounted "emails don't convey emotions well enough - 90% of communications is non-verbal you know! - so people get their hairs up". There is some proven truth to this, and it is entirely true that some sensitive discussions can get out of hand in email. Yet there is another, mysterious side to email that's often ignored: Many of those sensitive-in-email discussions would never have happened verbally. Maybe it seems like an acrimonious waste of time when a couple of alpha-developers have a long, drawn out debate about some technical errata, but the reality is that often there are things learned from them (as polarized as people may seem, they do often incorporate new knowledge).

Many of these sorts of debates would never have happened outside of the venue of email, so it isn't that email made the conversation more polarized or impersonal, but rather email gave an outlet for communications that otherwise would have simmered unspoken. Poor practices would be continued, options ignored, and so on, all uncontested.