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I've tried googling an answer for my situation, but I still couldn't tell what I'm supposed to do (not good at English), so sorry if the answer is obvious.

I landed an internship this month and today's my fourth day at work. Today I received an email that said, there will be a group meeting next week where new employees will be introduced to everyone, so "all new employees please send me a picture of yourself, with a short introduction."

In the To: section, there are four people including myself, presumably other new employees.

And in the CC: section, there are four more people, whom I'm not sure who they are but one of them is the manager of a different department, so I'm guessing they're managers of the other new employees. Strangely, my manager is not CC'd, or anyone else in my department, so that is a bit confusing to me.

I am guessing I only have to reply to the person who sent me the email? But I am not sure, so I decided to ask here. Thank you.

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    You should contact the person for more verbose instructions
    – Donald
    Commented Aug 22 at 5:21
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    It's not clear who sent the email to you. Do you know this person, their position, and their interest in your being where you are? Advice to novices: Before seeking "advice" from strangers on the internet, ASK the person who supervises your work! Although this situation seems inoccuous, there are (too often) inter-departmental wars being fought that you are unaware of. This is "business related", so the person to provide clarity is the one who will assess your performance in the future. ("Office politics". Sad, but can be a real hazard for the unwary.)
    – user145885
    Commented Aug 22 at 6:30
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    We had a rule. Anyone using reply to all was summarily dismissed and escorted from the premises. Then we did have 30,000 employees and the rule was to stop replying to all of them and clogging the servers.
    – Chenmunka
    Commented Aug 22 at 17:49
  • I just tell people, every time you click Reply All, a kitten dies.
    – nuggethead
    Commented Aug 22 at 19:33
  • As Chenmunka said: “Reply to 30,000” is very, very, very bad. “Reply to all 5 is harmless. The British national health service has an email list of about 500,000 and their mail system once went down for days on end.
    – gnasher729
    Commented Aug 23 at 15:40

4 Answers 4

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I think it's quite obvious:

[...] please send me a picture of yourself, [...]

(my emphasis)

You should respond to the sender alone, with the required information.

My guess is, that he will make some official board with all (new) employees or something, that will be sent/shown to everybody.

And even though it's not much of a nuisance, it is still annoying to receive answers to emails that is sent to a lot of people, and some respond to 'all' instead of just the sender.

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  • Thank you, the sender didn't exactly say "send me" (the email was not in English), but I understand what they meant.
    – gentoo
    Commented Aug 22 at 5:33
  • "I think it's quite obvious" - the quoted wording is not at all obvious. Yes, it might mean only the sender needs to receive the information (reply). Or it may mean the sender needs to receive the information and others (possibly the other recipients) need to know you sent it (reply to all). This highly depends on company culture and the concrete situation.
    – O. R. Mapper
    Commented Aug 22 at 9:50
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The general rule is:

  • if the information is needed by everybody: reply to all;
  • if the information is not needed by everyone, but only by the person that sent you the e-mail: reply to one;
  • if you are not sure, ask the sender of the e-mail, or your manager. Or both.

Sometimes, adding your manager in CC even when he was not originally included might be a good thing to do. As your manager, he needs to know things. You should have a short meeting with your manager and discuss this topic and reach some agreement.

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  • I think I will ask my manager, thank you.
    – gentoo
    Commented Aug 22 at 5:33
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    And sometimes adding your manager in bcc is the right option -- keeping them informed but not dragging them into further replies or appearing to invoke their authority. Judgement call.
    – keshlam
    Commented Aug 22 at 15:17
  • @keshlam: and that is why I suggested the f2f with the manager, to clarify the needs and decide a strategy.
    – virolino
    Commented Aug 23 at 6:23
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Personally, I would Reply but include my manager in the CC.

If your manager is on the ball, they will probably want to ensure you replied, and this lets them easy see that you're responding to stuff that clearly the other person wants them to be aware of.

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  • Since my manager was not originally in the CC, I am not sure if including him in the reply is correct, I will ask him anyways. Thank you.
    – gentoo
    Commented Aug 22 at 5:35
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In general, if someone CCs a manager, I hit Reply All

You're an intern, so you're still learning your workplace's culture and professionalism, but here's the rule of thumb I follow:

If someone has sent me an email asking me to do something and CCed in managers, then once I've done the thing I will hit Reply All in my response saying that the thing has been done so that the managers will be notified that the work has been completed. If there's an issue that prevents the thing from being done, I will also hit Reply All in my response stating so so that they will be aware of the blockers.

Obviously, you don't want to hit Reply All on an all-staff email, but typically these sorts of emails won't have more than 2 or 3 people that have been CCed. If they've been included in the initial email, they should also probably be included in the follow-up emails.

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  • Thank you, in this case though, managers of other departments were in the CC, but my manager was not in the CC, so I decided to not use Reply All.
    – gentoo
    Commented Aug 23 at 8:05
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    @gentoo Often, it's not just your manager that needs to have visibility of your work. Internal customers are also stakeholders in what you do.
    – nick012000
    Commented Aug 23 at 13:15
  • So how many people receive your “reply to all” messagr
    – gnasher729
    Commented Aug 28 at 16:38
  • @gnasher729 Usually 2 or 3
    – nick012000
    Commented Aug 29 at 5:52

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