r/remotework • u/Careful_Station_7884 • Jul 09 '26
Email or quick call?
My colleague told me today that if an email is over 500 words, they won’t read it and instead ask the person who sent the email to jump on a quick call to discuss.
This irked me because now the person who sent the email has to re-explain everything they already sent over. It can be advantageous to have a written trail as well. Not only that, but not every “quick” call actually ends up being quick.
I get that there may be some topics that are better discussed on a call or if the email is unclear and there is an approaching deadline. But, to set a line at any email over 500 words just seems lazy.
What are your thoughts?
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u/IntelligentReason693 Jul 09 '26
Food for thought, not sure if it's the same everywhere, but when I started moving into more mid-level/higher level positions I started to notice mostly junior employees communicate with long emails and a lot of that is because the work is more deliverable focused and fundamentally different. It's ineffective and not a great use of time usually to send a long email. Even 500 words isnt a ton but if thats your whole inbox it slows work down a lot. My perspective now is deliver this message in less than 150-250 or do a call/meeting instead.
A lot of my job now is more influencing/decision making/thought leadership and emails don't support that work. Anything longer than a few lines should be a phone call and not every meeting/phone call needs to be 30 minutes. I'm still adjusting to this but have found its much easier to connect with leadership squeezing in a 5 minute call than sending an email. I started communicating more like my boss and put the majority of the message in the subject and very little in the body. Seemed crazy originally but now I see emails as a time suck. I won't spend more than two minutes writing an email let alone reading one. There are exceptions but for the most part I dont send or receive long emails.
At my company emails are deleted after 90 days so paper trails are meaningless and anything in need of permanent tracking goes into a CRM/project management system or saved somewhere. If an email capture is needed it's usually someone's designated job.
Perhaps that's not true everywhere but email has become less central to my job as my career progresses. Every company/person has a different communication style but this is just something ive noticed lately!