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Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

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Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#221

Post by f1shy »

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #164
f1shy wrote: post #14

YES. Absolutely! Many people seem to totally lack the capability of understanding simple questions. I often have to ask yes/no questions, and even then I have to say "please answer yes or no". Then I have to go beating 1 bit information at the time... really frustrating, specially with people with master or even PhD degrees! Ok, where I'm now it seems a PhD can be bought around the corner for 2 cents. In my experienc…

I recently had an experience where a project manager was basically demanding a yes/no answer in what felt to me like a power move. PM: Are we good to go live on Wednesday? (it's Monday) Me: Feature X isn't fully ready yet. Data science needs to address a bug that I found 2 weeks ago. If they fix the bug, I'll prepare a release for Wednesday. Alternatively, we can go live without feature X. PM: Feature X is required.…

In that cases my answer is "no". Ends the cycle pretty fast.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#222

Post by f1shy »

BeetleB wrote: post #136
f1shy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case is my subordinate. The idea of doing the measurement was discussed with other people, I have 20+ years doing such debugging. I already had asked him to do the measurement. My question started more to be sure he actually is going to do it, because I have experience with not doing what he is supposed to. Not a bad guy, but sometimes seems to just don’t understand. Btw: at the end the test confirmed the sus…

I agree with the parent. When there is confusion like this, switch to open ended: "OK, we both agree there appears to be a problem with the transmission. How do you propose we investigate?" From the dialog it appears you were two steps ahead of the person and what he really needed was time to think it through. Asking the open ended question gives him space to think.

Interesting example...

You propose I use an open ended question, where the discussion could easily go sideways, when I clearly stated:

"In this case is my subordinate."

"I already had asked him to do the measurement. My question started more to be sure he actually is going to do it."

I do not see how an open question would help here.

Nice example of communication going wrong here...

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#223

Post by cdavid »

A crucial point not mentioned yet: cross cultural issues.

In an American culture, it is "self-evident" that clear communication is about being direct and to the point. But this is far from universal. More generally, western cultures tend to conflate earnest and truth. "Telling it like it is" is valued. We don't realize our own "phoniness".

I have witnessed countless times people hitting a wall in meetings and other situations because they tried to address the point "butt head". Some typical examples I've witnessed

1. French/Japanese starting a simple resource discussion. As we French typically do, French manager starting a negotiating by saying no. Gradually softening while getting given more information. Result: French manager happy at the end, happy to start project, Japanese manager extremely stressed and thought nothing was decided.

2. American engineer excited about a starting project, mentioning how "awesome" things are. French engineer unimpressed, 50 % stuff not working, think the American is bulsshiting him, decides they can't be trusted. American just wanted to share his enthusiasm and wanted to build a working relationship. I was that French engineer long time ago, I really was super confused by American optimism. I thought it was all fake, I since learnt to tune and update my mental model :)

In all those cases, everybody thought they were very clear. I now work in Japan, and what Japanese would call very clear is very different from what we would consider clear in Europe or the US.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#224

Post by avisser »

tomg wrote: post #220
awb wrote: post #27

Here are some altruistic reasons these events might occur: > - don't directly address the point of your question / provide a much complex answer (or even worse, a non-answer) to a simple question > - don't stay focused to the point of the discussion I often dive deeper if the question itself raises suspicions that the question asker might not fully understand the topic. For example, if someone asked: "can you unbatch…

> For example, if someone asked: "can you unbatch those 1k RPCs?" "Can we do _________?" is the worst question to ask me as an engineer. Like, yes, we probably _can_ do literally almost anything, with enough hours and money. But what's the budget? What really is _______? Eg: If it's "analytics to a page", what do we want to track? Where does the data go? How do people view the data? I need to know the answer to those…

One thing I love at my current job is people embracing the X/Y question terms. People will frequently ask on Slack, "How do I do X?" and immediately follow up with "I'm asking because in implementing process Y, it seems like I need an X."

Helps so much getting to the root of the issue.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#225

Post by pdntspa »

One of the things I've struggled with in my communications with nontechnicals is that they often want simple answers to complex questions, when that simple answer often hides important details that might make it incorrect, dishonest, or disingenuous.

I think people should generally fight this need for simple answers... the world is a messy place, and if you're turning to a practitioner of said mess for advice then you should expect a suitable answer. (It also avoids the other person looking like a buffoon or pointy-haired boss to me, which is one of fastest ways to lose my respect)

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#226

Post by SoftTalker »

thwayunion wrote: post #49
f1shy wrote: post #14

YES. Absolutely! Many people seem to totally lack the capability of understanding simple questions. I often have to ask yes/no questions, and even then I have to say "please answer yes or no". Then I have to go beating 1 bit information at the time... really frustrating, specially with people with master or even PhD degrees! Ok, where I'm now it seems a PhD can be bought around the corner for 2 cents. In my experienc…

> Right now I'm relatively new in my position, and it was a real torture to understand the system, because nobody seems to be able to explain it in a linear way. This is... not surprising at all? Are you new to industry? Have you only worked at greenfield startups? Particularly true for products with significant R&D components, btw. > Ok, where I'm now it seems a PhD can be bought around the corner for 2 cents. Some…

> The masters degree itself is not a good signal. Especially in CS, MS programs are viewed as pure revenue streams and explicitly treated differently from other programs in terms of rigor and signalling value

I discovered this recently. Working in the CS department at a large state school, the masters students are not respected. I have had professors tell me they don't care if they cheat (they mostly do) or share solutions, they are just there to pay their tutition and get their degree. Working directly with some of these students, I have found that they lack understanding of basic computing concepts, even fundamentally how computers work. It's breathtaking. Maybe some schools are exceptions, but I've come to interpret a masters degree in any computer-related subject to only mean that the person had the funds to pay for it.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#228

Post by rantee »

m_fayer wrote: post #104

I am, charitably, a pretty decent developer. I also have what I think most would agree is a pretty successful career. My career is not built on programming. Rather, it's built on my ability to communicate effectively in writing and in spontaneous speech, and to serve as a translation layer between various parts of an organization. Your frustration is my opportunity. In my experience, few people without the training o…

As someone with a liberal arts degree who also, charitably, is a pretty decent developer, this is spot on. (No disrespect to those educated in different contexts, or those who have difficulty for other neurodiverse, cultural or ESL, or other reasons who excel in other areas.)

After years on non-technical or customer-facing teams, followed by a dozen years in technical roles, I've noticed that my ability to effectively communicate abstract concepts has greatly diminished. This has held even for things I deeply understand at both a micro (the technical details and dependencies) and macro (the business context) level.

Unedited, this comment full of parenthetical statements and loaded with commas, is a prime example of what's happened. Is it due to over-training one's brain to account for all the little details? Anxiety about all that could go wrong? Over-excitement about being on the precipice of nailing something? Or more general cultural trends in the way we process information? Time will tell, unless the Singularity catches up first.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#229

Post by dusted »

Let me reverse that for you:

> - don't directly address the point of your question / provide a much complex answer (or even worse, a non-answer) to a simple question

- Discusses a point that is not relevant to the subject matter / Expects simple answers to complex questions

> - don't stay focused to the point of the discussion

- Overly rigid and unable to explore the problem space / Keeps bike-shedding unimportant detail

> - don't have some level of clarity in their train of thought and speech

- Expects fully formed thoughts and opinions on a new topic

> - generally over-complicate matters by wandering off to other related subjects and extending the scope of the discussion

- Unable to follow discussion through related topics and unwilling to consider the broader perspective

--

There is also a big individual difference, during discussion, some people will quietly think out their entire argument, reach a conclusion and present it, they "think to talk". However, another group of people cannot do this to any useful extend, and will have to speak to make their arguments and conclusions.

I am in the latter group, in a discussion, I write (or speak) to think, I'm simply unable to prepare an entirey line of reasoning and then present it, I must make it up as I go, and this naturally leads to a bit of redundancy, backtracking and "moving around" the subject matter before reaching a conclusion.

Just like it is unreasonable of me to expect you (the think-to-talk type) to externalize your entire internal chain of thought, it is unreasonable of you to expect me to internalize mine.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#230

Post by sfpotter »

jahsome wrote: post #175
sfpotter wrote: post #4

You're clearly pretty annoyed by this. Have you considered that people at work may not want to stay rigidly on target 100% of the time, and may find your hidebound need to do so bothering as well?

Your comment could be interpreted to be condescending in tone, which I find quite ironic; the result of your rhetoric is you seem more "annoyed" than OP. Especially in a large remote meeting, mindless dialogue is incredibly annoying, and often very costly. I don't log in to work for small talk or personal enrichment. I'm there to accomplish work. Meandering, unconstrained conversation and boring personal annecdotes b…

It's not ironic. I do find OP's post annoying.
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