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Be Less Technical
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Re: Be Less Technical
#12Importantly, learn to modulate the level of technical detail at which you describe things and establish trust with your intended audience that your level of technical detail matches the nature of the problem. This gives your audience a clue that when you throw around jargon, it's because there's a subtlety in the implementation detail that breaks the abstraction and they need to care about it. There's a difference be…
as a security professional, there is nothing more frustrating than reading a report that completely misses the mark in terms of audience, and the overuse of industry jargon.
Re: Be Less Technical
#13I have a phone call with my stepmom most weekdays. Part of the call always involves discussing what we plan to do for the day. She’s very impressively technical about the things she’s interested in, but our areas of expertise have very little overlap. I find it rewarding for both of us, and a really good mental exercise to “explain it to my stepmom” and find we both share some understanding at the end of the conversa…
Back in my service desk days, we were encouraged to write and revisit SOPs in our downtime as it is and excellent way to pick up how things work, and how to write in a style that everyone is on board with.
The most effective part of that system was to get the older lady in accounts to run through some of the processes that required detail and rigor to see where things weren’t clear enough.
Re: Be Less Technical
#14I always have trouble parsing the Seemingly Wrong Thing That I’m Redefining writing style, so I’m not sure my comment is germane.
It seems like OP is saying to communicate about technical matters in a way that is not obscured by jargon and distracting minutia. That is generally good advice, and has an ancillary benefit that explaining deeply technical matters in plain language usually deepens the explainer’s understanding.
There is a less charitable interpretation where this is just “I talk to the customers so the engineers don’t have to!” dreck, in which case, Be Less Click Thirsty.
Re: Be Less Technical
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The levels of dumbing down is near endless This is the kind of patronising attitude that will further the gap between engineers and product people. Being able to articulate technical details with the right level of abstraction, and without "dumbing it down" is an essential skill when engaging with stakeholders of varying levels.
Agreed. When talking to a doctor, you expect to communicate in terms you understand, or at least have essential terms explained in a non-condescending manner. It doesn't matter if they know a technically correct term for something if it means nothing to you - you expect to be communicated with, not communicated to. The same expectations carry across to most jobs in tech. It is rare that you work in isolation, so bein…
In what universe doctors communicate in terms you understand? They even write freeking diagnosis on Latin that nobody knows.
Coming out of doctor that explained things to you is once-in-life event.
Re: Be Less Technical
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The levels of dumbing down is near endless This is the kind of patronising attitude that will further the gap between engineers and product people. Being able to articulate technical details with the right level of abstraction, and without "dumbing it down" is an essential skill when engaging with stakeholders of varying levels.
Agreed. When talking to a doctor, you expect to communicate in terms you understand, or at least have essential terms explained in a non-condescending manner. It doesn't matter if they know a technically correct term for something if it means nothing to you - you expect to be communicated with, not communicated to. The same expectations carry across to most jobs in tech. It is rare that you work in isolation, so bein…
I agree with you... mostly. I do find it frustrating that almost all the effort is expected to be on the technical personnel. I don't care if you are a "business" person (aren't we all?), I don't care if your job is sales, or product management, if you deal with software all day, you should put the effort in to understand it.
There is an expectation that the technical person has to explain everything at 100 different levels of detail, depending on the composition of the people in the room. But there often isn't the reciprocal expectation that the non-technical people put some effort in. If you work with a technical subject and you can't understand it, past a certain point, that is on you.
It's your job to understand this stuff, do your fucking job.
Re: Be Less Technical
#17Talking technical stuff to non technical is an enormous pain. The levels of dumbing down is near endless. Not everyone has to be able to explain their product to the masses, let someone else have that job.
>The levels of dumbing down is near endless This is the kind of patronising attitude that will further the gap between engineers and product people. Being able to articulate technical details with the right level of abstraction, and without "dumbing it down" is an essential skill when engaging with stakeholders of varying levels.
No its not. The commenter is right. There are schools that teach people how to transmit knowledge to other people. Not only it is not for everybody but even those that finish those schools usually suck.
Re: Be Less Technical
#18I always have trouble parsing the Seemingly Wrong Thing That I’m Redefining writing style, so I’m not sure my comment is germane. It seems like OP is saying to communicate about technical matters in a way that is not obscured by jargon and distracting minutia. That is generally good advice, and has an ancillary benefit that explaining deeply technical matters in plain language usually deepens the explainer’s understa…
My interpretation was that it was more of an encouragement to think about things at a higher level of abstraction rather thinking of implementation details, as is a common reflex for so many programmers. Being able to communicate at that higher level of abstraction is a consequence of first having trained yourself to think at that level.
Re: Be Less Technical
#19I always have trouble parsing the Seemingly Wrong Thing That I’m Redefining writing style, so I’m not sure my comment is germane. It seems like OP is saying to communicate about technical matters in a way that is not obscured by jargon and distracting minutia. That is generally good advice, and has an ancillary benefit that explaining deeply technical matters in plain language usually deepens the explainer’s understa…
OP here - I think your interpretation (the former) is pretty spot on. I also think the less charitable interpretation is not _exactly_ wrong. The title and repetition of "Be Less Technical" are definitely not devoid of "click thirst" - but the content is intended to be more in line with "we need to find ways to talk to each other, irrespective of whether we talk to customers or compilers".
Re: Be Less Technical
#20> Though not a perfectly applicable example, we can see that the English language, due to its rules and formalization, does not have a single word that describes the complexity behind the feeling of “Schadenfreude”. This is an inherent constraint in the English language as it pertains to its translation to German. Except English does have such a word and the author literally linked to its dictionary entry in an Engli…
OP here. I think it serves as a loanword, but I concede that linking to an _English_ dictionary can blur the point I was trying to make. Edited for clarity, thanks!