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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

#281

Post by basilikum »

crispyambulance wrote: post #279
hellohello2 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be so critical of a stranger's work given that you haven't even seen it? "that reason was most likely because" -> Bear in mind you do not actually know the given situation.

None of us knows the exact situation but the fact that the person said his documentation was "complete, correct, and relatively terse" is a red-flag. It seems to me like smug over-confidence. If the document really was so clear and error-free, then why would the boss try to "fix it"?

People try to fix things that are perfectly fine all the time.

People often apply nonsensical standards to things.

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

#282

Post by [deleted] »

nh23423fefe wrote: post #195
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…

> Because people don't like to read writing which has taken such effort to produce, because it then requires a great effort to read. I disagree, but stipulate that. Why would this be reasonable behavior when doing knowledge work?

[deleted]

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

#283

Post by consumer451 »

david-gpu wrote: post #144
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 used to select my words very carefully and feel frustration when people misinterpreted them or did not understand the precise angle behind that choice. Reading other people's communication would often be confusing because they were not nearly as precise in their language. At some point I realized that if I didn't want to be permanently frustrated, I had to adapt to the broad reality of how humans communicate. I int…

I have been thinking about the parent comment and your reply all day.

Both are exactly my experience, and a really important lived lesson.

I suffer far less, and communicate much more effectively, when I write a work-related email that is crafted specifically for the receiving audience. This often means making it far simpler than I had first imagined.

The human condition when confronted with an email turns out to be: "I ain't reading all that!"

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

#284

Post by AuthAuth »

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…

You should have responded something like "its fine on my end, you are not following the documentation i've written please take any complaints up with [Manager]" and then left your manager to deal with the problem they caused. Or lodge a complaint to the person above them. If they think its ok to run docs through an AI and hand it out uncritically they should be fired on the spot.

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

#285

Post by vismit2000 »

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…

A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still!

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

#286

Post by klustregrif »

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…

> It seems more likely to me the manager tried to read it and struggled

Well obviously the manager struggled to read and understand it and also struggled to read the AI results. The clear root cause is utter incompetence on the managers part. Any feedback they wanted to give could be given, but you NEVER pass along modified documents as though they where what another author had created AI or not. If you don’t like it you can provide feedback or ask to coauthor another document, you never just append TFTFY with changes and send it along with the original author standing to take the consequences of whatever you cooked up. It’s just complete incompetence on the part of the manager.

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

#287

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#288

Post by ehaliewicz2 »

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…

"Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI."

Because they were lazy and disrespectful, done.

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

#289

Post by ehaliewicz2 »

crispyambulance wrote: post #279
hellohello2 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be so critical of a stranger's work given that you haven't even seen it? "that reason was most likely because" -> Bear in mind you do not actually know the given situation.

None of us knows the exact situation but the fact that the person said his documentation was "complete, correct, and relatively terse" is a red-flag. It seems to me like smug over-confidence. If the document really was so clear and error-free, then why would the boss try to "fix it"?

The boss also tried to fix it in the lowest effort manner possible, without even checking the results.

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

#290

Post by ehaliewicz2 »

brnt wrote: post #200
randusername wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tend to be very exacting in my word choice. If I used a specific word, I meant it. You aren't alone. My professional written communication is meticulous. I think carefully about my audience and optimize word choice for very low probability of accidental collision or misinterpretation. I don't think everyone should communicate this way all the time, but I do think everyone should recognize that loose communication…

> think carefully about my audience Consider that you may not be doing this very well. Or that it is even possible to even know what your audience is (going to be). I have found the less I assume about my audience, and thus the more verbose and elaborate I am, the better the reception of my communication tends to be, on the whole. I'll save the terse and meticulous for people who I know and level with in terms of tha…

"Clearly if your manager passes your doc through an LLM, you made an error in judgment" It could also be the PM, passing everything through an LLM to make it "more understandable". Clearly, they didn't care enough to check the result.
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