It’s a handshake. If you’re out of the office or otherwise can’t respond, it saves them from typing the whole message, they can do it only if they know you’re responding.
It’s still offloading the inconvenience to you a bit, but at least it’s rational for them
If I’m out of office they can still type the message and I’ll see it later. If they can’t wait and would send it to someone else if I don’t immediately respond to the “hi”, then they could either copy-paste it, or - even better - send it to some relevant channel that contains multiple people capable of assisting them instead of PMing it to me.
It’s a handshake. If you’re out of the office or otherwise can’t respond, it saves them from typing the whole message, they can do it only if they know you’re responding.
It’s still offloading the inconvenience to you a bit, but at least it’s rational for them
If I’m out of office they can still type the message and I’ll see it later. If they can’t wait and would send it to someone else if I don’t immediately respond to the “hi”, then they could either copy-paste it, or - even better - send it to some relevant channel that contains multiple people capable of assisting them instead of PMing it to me.
Hi
There is literally a feature to see if someone is out of office or not.
And even if that is set wrong, they can copy and paste the same question to someone else if you don’t respond. Doesn’t take any extra work.