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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

#231

Post by [deleted] »

watwut wrote: post #214
mjburgess wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. And in the process, you give zero benefit of the doubt to OP. You just assume he wrote it badly.

[deleted]

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

#232

Post by 3form »

watwut wrote: post #214
mjburgess wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. And in the process, you give zero benefit of the doubt to OP. You just assume he wrote it badly.

I see this behavior in many people, usually conflict averse. In a poor attempt to mediate, spread incompetence like butter on a slice of bread. Ranges from tiring to infuriating.

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

#233

Post by zahlman »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #148
monegator wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> about the same thing yes. I have to keep telling my colleagues "about what?" for about 4-5 times in a row, at least twice daily, until they finally realize they have to tell me which client, feature, product or whatever else they are referring to. Even if i know exactly what yhey are talking about.

Mine is "What's the question?" I basically have to ask that almost every other time someone starts a conversation. They talked for 3 minutes and never actually articulated a problem or request but just sort of recounted some seemingly random but presumably related facts.

Yep, that's a good one.

If my experience with beginning programmers generalizes to "the real world" (and I strongly suspect that it does, because the mindset non-programmers bring when they start programming has to come from somewhere) then I can also propose: "What needs to happen? What has been tried so far? What happened when that was tried, and how is that different?"

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

#234

Post by arduanika »

digi59404 wrote: post #54

Even here in the comments you see people who have read this article and fall victim to the very things it’s pointing out. It’s ironic. Let me add a couple to this list. 1. No amount of knowledge or discussion will make a person accept something they don’t want to accept. 2. To truly listen means to place yourself mentally and physically in a vulnerable state. Because you will likely hear things that run contrary to y…

> 2. To truly listen means to place yourself mentally and physically in a vulnerable state. Because you will likely hear things that run contrary to your experience, beliefs, and worldview. Judging people is often a self protection mechanism; which means you will almost never listen to someone.

A gem, thanks.

This can be especially rough for fans of early pg essays. You might find out that you didn't actually keep your identity so small after all. A double whammy!

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

#235

Post by idiotsecant »

nicoburns wrote: post #167
mjburgess wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It seems more likely to me the manager tried to read it and struggled, then generated something of equivalent size or larger. Either way, it's poor management to interpose oneself between employees. As a manager you should be connecting groups of people to talk to each other directly, not injecting oneself as a go between. If they have issues understanding the material they're much better off asking the OP directly…

The op is probably not the world's most reliable narrator. Based on his very, very specific preferences around writing I'm guessing he can be a bit prickly when it comes to feedback. The manager might have had a bad day and dreaded having the conversation and ended up with this. Still very stupid, but OP is not quite so clearly the martyred hero in this version.

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

#236

Post by lamasery »

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…

> The number of times I see my words interpreted as though my choice in words had been imprecise is a near constant source of pain, particularly in the workspace. I might be on the spectrum, I am undiagnosed.

Could be some of this, but also the median person is barely literate.

Reading historical correspondence of highly-literate people makes this clear. There's none of the shit you describe. It's not because they're all autistic, it's because they can in-fact read and write and think.

Pick any very-good author you're familiar and you'll easily discover a flood of writing about their works, online, by people who misunderstood even very-clear passages. You're not alone in being so-misunderstood. Reading well is a somewhat rare skill, even among the allegedly college-educated.

One major situation in which this problem is practically unavoidable—where you're not getting to choose who you read, and who you write for, and where reading and writing is extensive and necessary—is work. In fact, I suspect an under-appreciated source of resistance to things like remote work is that a majority of people find closely reading even simple texts draining and unpleasant, and aren't capable of writing clearly at all. "I'm barely literate despite somehow holding a bachelor's degree or even some variety of graduate degree" isn't a thing any of them are going to admit (consider how easily people admit to, or even volunteer, being terrible at math) but it's still part of why they take the positions they do on things like remote work.

The AI-related behaviors you point out are why I remain skeptical LLMs are going to increase productivity at all, across the whole economy. They're powerful enablers for many of the worst behaviors of the typical office-dweller, and in ways that I think will defy bureaucracies' ability to quash. Giving an LLM to the average office worker is like giving meth to someone with known addiction problems: sure it might make them more active, but I'm not sure the extra activity's going to be useful, and it might even be harmful.

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

#237

Post by gbjw »

Isamu wrote: post #143
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…

I have found that people who speak indirectly don’t agree that they are indirect, have no idea why you think they are not direct. It’s so ingrained it can’t be seen. I have extreme examples from friends, where somehow they “hear” the opposite of what I say because they are always looking for the indirect meaning, not what you are saying. Fun example from a friend: his family were extremely direct but his girlfriend’s…

> Fun example from a friend: his family were extremely direct but his girlfriend’s family was very indirect. As a young naive guy he was having dinner with his girlfriend’s family and her father asked: “is there any salt” and my friend looked up at the glass salt shaker and said “yes” and continued with his meal.

Are we supposed to side with your friend here? The fact that he couldn't infer that the father might want some salt is, at best, very shortsighted and pedantic. It's roughly equivalent to a teacher responding to "Can I go to the washroom?" with "I don't know, can you?" -- except in this case it's not said in jest.

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

#238

Post by watwut »

godelski wrote: post #208
nicoburns wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems more likely to me the manager tried to read it and struggled, then generated something of equivalent size or larger. Either way, it's poor management to interpose oneself between employees. As a manager you should be connecting groups of people to talk to each other directly, not injecting oneself as a go between. If they have issues understanding the material they're much better off asking the OP directly…

> it's poor management to interpose oneself between employees. I didn't interpret mjburgess as defending the manager or even condoning the action. In fact, I read their comments as recognizing that action as a failure. The difference is that mj was trying to give advice to donatj, and donatj can't control what their manager does. So the advice is crafted such that it gives actionable suggestions to donatj. Yet, that…

> So the things to do are either fix the problem or figure out how to work with the broken thing.

So, I will say that if you did not seen or read a text in question, there is no way for you to accurately diagnose issues with the text and give out advice on how to make it better. Such advice from someone who simply assumes the way the text was wrong based on some manager rewriting it with ai is less then useless.

It is, frankly, ridiculous to think one can give meaningful advice about text you have never seen. And then double down in comments.

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

#239

Post by TeamGTN »

WalterBright wrote: post #74
digi59404 wrote: post #54

Even here in the comments you see people who have read this article and fall victim to the very things it’s pointing out. It’s ironic. Let me add a couple to this list. 1. No amount of knowledge or discussion will make a person accept something they don’t want to accept. 2. To truly listen means to place yourself mentally and physically in a vulnerable state. Because you will likely hear things that run contrary to y…

I don't worry about such things, because I have never been in error yet.

OK Nomad!

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

#240

Post by giancarlostoro »

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…

> Within a day I start getting feedback that makes zero sense. Seemingly no one can get the RPC to work. I had tested this extensively, the complaints made zero sense. One of the complaints includes the actual request being made and the endpoint is entirely wrong. Not a single character typo, a complete fabrication. I ask where this came from and they point me to the documentation they were sent. Every single thing was wrong. The endpoints were wrong, the required parameters were wrong, there were invented features that do not exist. I am a very easy going guy, and I have genuinely never been so furious in my entire life. I am still angry as I write this.

This is really bad, and if you're going to "rewrite" something with AI, proofread it, especially technical documentation. How many hours were burned (and money) over some AI generated goof?

This is another reason I prefer to hand-write my docs over generating AI docs, I don't want documentation that looks pretty but its wrong. It also forces me to re-read all the output and validate it on my end, and then describe it.

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