To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills • Hacker News Board

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#271

Post by tayo42 » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

hibbelig wrote: post #160

tayo42 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make sense as being cultural because there plenty of real examples of effective writing that starts with what you are writing about. The only exception might be in story telling, but that only works because there is some kind of context assumed or it works as a tool. It makes no sense for this "culture" to think less of research or any writing that intends to persuade because it starts with a introduction…

> It doesn't make sense as being cultural because there plenty of real examples of effective writing that starts with what you are writing about. This is a non-argument. In the US, writing is considered effective if you put the bottom line up front. GP wrote that BLUFfing is considered offensive in their culture. Now you respond that lots of people like BLUFfing. Now you say it's not culture-dependent but a universal…

Bluf seems to be a specific thing, no one mentioned that in the thread I'm commenting on.

The post that I responded to suggested having an intro with a summary of what's to follow is offensive

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#272

Post by Ansil849 » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #270

Ansil849 wrote: post #268

Conversely, I think employers should actively promote writing and communications training programs to send staff to. One of the people I previously had the pleasure of working next to was absolutely brilliant in his field (malware reversing, broadly), but watching his presentations was an awkward experience. He just could not communicate his work effectively, either in a written or spoken medium and was someone who w…

Given how many of my fellow students in college studying math/science were convinced that the required english lit/composition course was a waste of time, and disdained the liberal arts generally, this is a problem that arises early in education somehow. How did we end up here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxjT7veKi9c

Honestly, I feel like the maths and science lecturers are the source for reinforcing the paradigm that their job is simply to teach maths and science, not effective communications of the topics. Many of them likely feel the same way as their students.

At the bare minimum, they should explicitly and repeatedly mention in their courses the importance of taking writing classes, if not have an entire part of their own curricula devoted to these topics.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#273

Post by tayo42 » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

ako wrote: post #146

tayo42 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that cultural? Even through elementary school we were taught to have an intro with what your point is, follow up with supporting arguments, then conclude by reiterating the point the you made. How could you read anything without knowing the point in the beginning. Even research papers start off with an abstract.

This approach depends very much on culture. For example, US culture is very much, get to the point, start with the conclusion. German culture requires you to outline how you got to the conclusion. Interesting book on this topic: The culture map, by Erin Meyer. ( https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Map-INTL-ED-Decoding/dp/16103... ) It has a whole chapter on this topic: 3 - Why versus How, the art of persuasion in the mult…

German culture requires no introduction in any writing? Am I talking about the same thing as everyone else commenting?

Anything you write will always have a first sentence or paragraph. Your saying it's offensive to use that to give an overview of what's to come and to set the tone of the writing?

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#274

Post by tayo42 » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #133

tayo42 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make sense as being cultural because there plenty of real examples of effective writing that starts with what you are writing about. The only exception might be in story telling, but that only works because there is some kind of context assumed or it works as a tool. It makes no sense for this "culture" to think less of research or any writing that intends to persuade because it starts with a introduction…

> It doesn't make sense as being cultural because there plenty of real examples of effective writing that starts with what you are writing about. That argument does not make sense. > It makes no sense for this "culture" to think less of research or any writing that intends to persuade because it starts with a introduction or summary. And it does not make sense for you to look down at writing that puts conclusion to t…

Can you show me something written that doesn't have an introduction that includes a summary of what's to come

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#275

Post by medium_burrito » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

_greim_ wrote: post #258

crispyambulance wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The key to success is overcommunicating. No, "overcommunicating", by definition, means giving more information than what is needed. There are times and places where overcommunicating works, but email is almost never one of them. You simply can't get away with more than a few sentences in an email unless the recipients are specifically expecting that from you. When "an essay" lands in someone's inbox unexpectedly, a…

As a corollary, if your org is dependent on email for communication, you likely have some inefficiency and room for improvement.

In all seriousness, please enlighten me. Email isn't the best, but the other options are equally or more shit:

Slack, which has nonfunctional search and is miserable to navigate?

Github readmes?

Atlassian's wiki, which has even more broken search, and follows management's whims?

Google docs, which vary widely in format, is not easily searchable, and has no index?

Team documentation, which follows managements whims, gets moved around, deprecated and eventually stowed in unused lavatories?

Internal stackoverflow, which is piloted and then slowly abandoned after an intial big push my managers, who get promoted and then leave the company?

Facebook workplace, which suffers a similar fate to stackoverflow?

The problem is there is no global index or search- think Sourcegraph, and management keeps changing products/documentation/comms strategy every 6 months.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#276

Post by rojobuffalo » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

Nevaeh wrote: post #81

How do you feel about acronyms? Do they improve or hurt communication? From time to time, Musk will send out an e-mail to the entire company to enforce a new policy or let them know about something that's bothering him. One of the more famous e-mails arrived in May 2010 with the subject line: Acronyms Seriously Suck: There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is…

i completely agree with that sentiment. even if the audience is familiar, acronyms and abbreviations put a cost on the listener/reader to "unzip" them. in code, in meetings, in communication generally, the priority should be on comprehensibility to the reader/listener, not the convenience of the writer/speaker. we read code at least 10x more than we write it. in a meeting, one person speaks and many people listen.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#277

Post by EGreg » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #63

hodgesrm wrote: post #11

I've been working on remote teams for almost 20 years. The key to success is overcommunicating. In other words--don't assume people have full context or share assumptions. Write emails that lay out assumptions explicitly and detail problems completely. As a manager I sometimes feel like a Habsburg bureaucrat buried in the Chancery offices sending painstaking messages to a far flung empire. Come to think of it, remote…

As a manager, you can probably get away with this. As an IC, people rarely read my emails if it doesn't fit in their screen (so 3 paragraphs is the max). The only thing I've found that works is to send details, and then probe the recipient on each important item in there to make sure they understood what I wrote. If I'm too detailed, they will get lost. If I'm very concise (but still complete ), they'll misinterpret.…

Have you considered refactoring info into wiki webpages and hyperlinking between them? Then your email can link to that.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#278

Post by rkangel » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

cik wrote: post #95

shalmanese wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an IC, people rarely read my emails if it doesn't fit in their screen (so 3 paragraphs is the max). You need to learn how to restructure your writing. Most logical people naturally write in a way where it’s premise, premise, premise, conclusion. Instead, you need to write conclusion, premise, premise, premise. One way I’ve found to help my team learn to write this way is to institute a rule that any writing long…

This echoes OPs point about culture. One absolutely should not do what you've mentioned in my location. Here we lay out the arguments, and the conclusion at the end. The reverse is seen as jumping the gun, and not being well reasoned. It is looked down upon, and frequently discounted immediately. Cultural bias is very much a thing.

That's a really interesting counter-example to what I've learned as the best way to write.

Can I ask what culture you're referring to?

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#279

Post by quicklyfrozen » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #63

hodgesrm wrote: post #11

I've been working on remote teams for almost 20 years. The key to success is overcommunicating. In other words--don't assume people have full context or share assumptions. Write emails that lay out assumptions explicitly and detail problems completely. As a manager I sometimes feel like a Habsburg bureaucrat buried in the Chancery offices sending painstaking messages to a far flung empire. Come to think of it, remote…

As a manager, you can probably get away with this. As an IC, people rarely read my emails if it doesn't fit in their screen (so 3 paragraphs is the max). The only thing I've found that works is to send details, and then probe the recipient on each important item in there to make sure they understood what I wrote. If I'm too detailed, they will get lost. If I'm very concise (but still complete ), they'll misinterpret.…

As an IC you probably have more time to fully read emails, esp. those from your management chain.

I like to lay out the decisions I'm going to make if I don't get feedback, if possible. That seems to prompt feedback when feedback is required -- it seems the human desire to fix mistakes is stronger then it is to answer open ended questions. It likely gives the reader some context as to why you need the information as well.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#280

Post by AceyMan » Wed, Nov 18, 2020, 6:02 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #221

hodgesrm wrote: post #11

I've been working on remote teams for almost 20 years. The key to success is overcommunicating. In other words--don't assume people have full context or share assumptions. Write emails that lay out assumptions explicitly and detail problems completely. As a manager I sometimes feel like a Habsburg bureaucrat buried in the Chancery offices sending painstaking messages to a far flung empire. Come to think of it, remote…

One thing I often do is split an email into two parts, I'll even label them. High Level Summary: 1-3 sentences that cover the main ideas, kind of an executive summary. Details: the nitty gritty, full context, screenshots, etc. People seem to really like this, each reader has the option to dive as deep as they need/want.

I've started using an equivalent pattern and my implementation has generally been a success, so I'll share:

My email body has everything the "optimal" reader (i.e., someone who is already familiar with the topic item) needs to |action_verb| regarding what I've written.

Then I "conclude" with my usual sign-off (e.g., Cheers, [CRLF] "/Aceyman").

BELOW that—but above my default signature/contact info block—I place all the deeper-dive / expository / rationalization narrative which provides that level of detail for anyone who needs more than my main body provides.

I've been using this pattern for about a year or so with good results.

/Acey

At the start of the supplementary section—and depending on the topic & audience—I'll sometimes use the 'section title' Extra-credit reading, because everyone loves a chance for some extra-credit, right? That's my little psych ploy to entice readers to take a look at the nominally 'optional' expository stuff.