Pick Up the Damn Phone
Entrepreneur magazine|November 2016

We see you hiding behind text and emails. Yeah, you. Stop it. Here’s why.

Ross McCammon
Pick Up the Damn Phone

HEY, WANNA FEEL old? Great. Let me a get a startup exec on the phone. [Ring, ring] Hi there. I’m trying to reach Elena Gorman, product marketing lead at HipChat, the group-chat and file-sharing company. [Waiting] Elena, hello! Question for you: What do you think of when I say the word telephone?

“Working in Silicon Valley, I haven’t had a desk with a phone on it since 2010.” You don’t say? “I can imagine a scenario where getting someone on the phone would be the quickest way to resolve a complex issue. But even with that, we have video chat and group video chat in HipChat. The only reason to ever bring up my phone is if wi-fi is spotty. I think most young people probably associate telephone communications at work with interviews or more high-pressure situations. In Silicon Valley, we all work at computers, right? And most of our jobs are based around using the internet in some way. To use a phone takes me physically out of my workflow. Just the manual process of dialing with my fingers, looking up a number…”

Excellent. I’d like to spend the rest of this column unpacking pretty much everything she just said. Thanks, Elena. Elena?

(I think she hung up.) 

This story is from the November 2016 edition of Entrepreneur magazine.

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This story is from the November 2016 edition of Entrepreneur magazine.

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