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Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

ashley.rolfmore.com

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Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#151

Post by colechristensen »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #34
colechristensen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard philosophical problem, you're disagreeing about the definition of a word instead of the content of the message. Step back and think if a dispute over the usage of the word is necessary or helpful in this context. Amusingly this is where a lot of communication goes to die, loss of the big picture and discussion of how to use particular words. Clearly you agree with OP about how time is wasted but you're insis…

> Standard philosophical problem, you're disagreeing about the definition of a word instead of the content of the message. Perhaps I should have said we have a different understanding or expectation of communication, instead of "definition." For this confusion I introduced, I apologize. > Clearly you agree with OP about how time is wasted but you're insisting on using different language to express the same idea. I do…

You're still doing it. Now with "definition" vs. "a different understanding or expectation of"

You are not understanding, perhaps willfully, what people are writing and muddying the waters by trying to make unimportant distinctions about words instead of engaging with the meaning as intended by the author.

Every one of your clarifications has just been a pedantic restatement of what someone else clearly meant using different words trying to make a distinction which is not at all necessary to make.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#152

Post by estimator7292 »

mjburgess wrote: post #129
donatj wrote: post #127

I tend to be very exacting in my word choice. If I used a specific word, I meant it. Many people I find speak in what I would describe as tone poems. They circle around an idea using whatever word is within reach, and expect you to understand the meaning based on shared connotations. These people are tiring to interpret. When I write something, each and every word was chosen specifically and with intention. The numbe…

Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI. It might be that with precision, readability is lost. It's a tradeoff: the more compressed your language is, and hence the more precise, the more cognitive effort you require the reader to expend on each word. Reading is a translation from your mental model, as expressed in words, to the readers mental model. Words alone don't perform this translation, t…

No. Someone replaced well thought out documentation with AI fabrications and let GP take the fall for it.

That is malicious and inexcusable. It's not on GP, the fault lies with the idiot that ran gold documentation through the bullshit machine. Don't blame someone who was wronged, that makes you a malicious asshole.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#153

Post by rekrsiv »

donatj wrote: post #127

I tend to be very exacting in my word choice. If I used a specific word, I meant it. Many people I find speak in what I would describe as tone poems. They circle around an idea using whatever word is within reach, and expect you to understand the meaning based on shared connotations. These people are tiring to interpret. When I write something, each and every word was chosen specifically and with intention. The numbe…

[dead]

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#154

Post by roenxi »

dsego wrote: post #125
roenxi wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. As phrased it is bad advice - nobody actually needs to be "vulnerable". Everyone should be in a headspace where they might actually change their mind rather than persuade the counterparty, which feels like vulnerability to people who define themselves by their own beliefs. The trick is not to do that; a person isn't their beliefs. People have beliefs, but those can change. They're still a person both before and…

Some people are just too stubborn, especially if they come from a place of authority and seniority. I'm doing house repair work right now with an older relative. He learned how to do repairs and renovations by himself, things like working laminate floors, mortar, laying tiles etc. The things is, he has his own reasoning and rhythym of doing things and doesn't like to be challenged, but I feel his ways don't always ma…

That's kind of it though, isn't it? If you're going to convince him there has to be a reasonable chance that the opposite will happen and that he'll convince you that he's too old to learn new tricks or whatever and he's going to have to do it his way because he isn't up to the challenge of doing a better job.

If your range of outcomes is [He'll do things my way, There'll be a scene and a strained relationship] then sometimes there'll be a scene and a strained relationship. If the range of outcomes is [we do things my way and he hates it, we do things his way and I hate it] then that's at least softer on the relationship. If you're lucky maybe you don't even care and you can just live with some parts of the work being bad.

One of those awkward things is that being good at negotiating means that other people are more likely to get what they want. It is actually a bit counter-intuitive.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#155

Post by pxc »

rrgok wrote: post #77

I have better a idea, since everybody need an engineer to build the damn thing, how about we teach non engineer people to talk to engineer people. Why is it always our burden to learn and improve. UX problem, blame the engineer. Comunication problem, blame the engineer. Documentation problem, blame the engineer. I'm so sick of it. Comunication is a tango. If you - who need the product and are ready to pay for it - do…

> UX problem, blame the engineer. [...] Documentation problem, blame the engineer.

I see UX and usable documentation as among my responsibilities as a developer. It's not that I "blame" myself if the documentation is confusing for a user, it's that I say "oh, that's a documentation bug". And it's my job to fix bugs.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#156

Post by harvey9 »

estimator7292 wrote: post #152
mjburgess wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI. It might be that with precision, readability is lost. It's a tradeoff: the more compressed your language is, and hence the more precise, the more cognitive effort you require the reader to expend on each word. Reading is a translation from your mental model, as expressed in words, to the readers mental model. Words alone don't perform this translation, t…

No. Someone replaced well thought out documentation with AI fabrications and let GP take the fall for it. That is malicious and inexcusable. It's not on GP, the fault lies with the idiot that ran gold documentation through the bullshit machine. Don't blame someone who was wronged, that makes you a malicious asshole.

I can still see a path where the manager was stupid but not malicious. The manager sent on a document which he was too lazy to check at least had the right endpoints but left the GP's contact details on. I could also imagine intentional harm to GP's reputation was the goal, with really clumsy execution.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#157

Post by [deleted] »

cthor wrote: post #145
mjburgess wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI. It might be that with precision, readability is lost. It's a tradeoff: the more compressed your language is, and hence the more precise, the more cognitive effort you require the reader to expend on each word. Reading is a translation from your mental model, as expressed in words, to the readers mental model. Words alone don't perform this translation, t…

This is an insane response to someone having their carefully written work casually bastardized by an LLM that rewrote the entire design spec without even being informed. The amount of institutional noise generated by such carelessness far exceeds whatever improvement in readability you could possibly imagine. Any criticism you could aim at the original text that you don't even have on hand (i.e. are completely specul…

[deleted]

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#158

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

mjburgess wrote: post #147
cthor wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an insane response to someone having their carefully written work casually bastardized by an LLM that rewrote the entire design spec without even being informed. The amount of institutional noise generated by such carelessness far exceeds whatever improvement in readability you could possibly imagine. Any criticism you could aim at the original text that you don't even have on hand (i.e. are completely specul…

You're assuming malign motivations, I'm assuming misplaced ones. It seems more likely to me the manager tried to read it and struggled, then generated something of equivalent size or larger. I'm taking it the generated document passed around was actually at least as large as the one-pager, and hence entirely pointless to rephrase even with the malign motivations you're assuming. Since the poster here wears his person…

When I read documentation, I'm not there to enjoy the experience. I'm there to find out how the documented thing works and how to use it. It's not a novel. I'm not there for entertainment.

Chasing readability without maintaining accuracy is a failure in the context of documentation no matter the motivations involved.

I'm not saying that readability can't be a consideration when making documentation. I am saying that if you discard accuracy in the process, you've fucked up quite badly.

This anecdote would likely be very different if the AI-modified version had been passed back to engineering for a review before sending it out.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#159

Post by thaumasiotes »

apsurd wrote: post #53
thaumasiotes wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Communicating effectively is the central problem of all humanity! If that were true, there'd be something about it in the Bible.

It is! If I contort a little, the Tower of Babel is the communication problem in reverse. But original sin means we're born sinners so towards effective communication is toward God. But that's not the point of life, the point is serving God as a sinner for salvation (bible stuff, not my point).

> If I contort a little, the Tower of Babel is the communication problem in reverse.

That is what I was referring to. I don't see that you need to contort anything. The story plainly states that without communication problems, man is powerful enough to frighten God, and that the solution God reaches is to introduce communication problems, leaving us stuck in the situation we actually have.

The importance of communication has been recognized for a long time.

Re: Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people

#160

Post by pwdisswordfishq »

mjburgess wrote: post #147
cthor wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an insane response to someone having their carefully written work casually bastardized by an LLM that rewrote the entire design spec without even being informed. The amount of institutional noise generated by such carelessness far exceeds whatever improvement in readability you could possibly imagine. Any criticism you could aim at the original text that you don't even have on hand (i.e. are completely specul…

You're assuming malign motivations, I'm assuming misplaced ones. It seems more likely to me the manager tried to read it and struggled, then generated something of equivalent size or larger. I'm taking it the generated document passed around was actually at least as large as the one-pager, and hence entirely pointless to rephrase even with the malign motivations you're assuming. Since the poster here wears his person…

> You're assuming malign motivations, I'm assuming misplaced ones.

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

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