Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by AdieuToLogic » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:45 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #151

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 d…

> You are not understanding, ...

Clearly I am not understanding your perspective on this topic.

> ... perhaps willfully, ...

Not at all and something I had hoped to communicate by a detailed analysis of the thread thus far.

> ... 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.

Words have meaning and I chose mine carefully. There is no such thing as "unimportant distinctions about words" if the words used have differing meanings and can reasonably be interpreted as conveying different thoughts.

> Every one of your clarifications has just been a pedantic restatement ...

This is one way to categorize my communication in this thread. Another way would be to say we disagree and perhaps have talked past each other.

I guess I still need to improve my listening skills. Perhaps you need to as well.

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

#302

Post by AdieuToLogic » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:50 AM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #75

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Too much time is spent attempting to communicate and as such, communication isn't actually happening. This is where I think we have a different definition of communication. > (i.e. we all spend way too much time in useless meetings where nothing happens and few people are any more informed than they were before) Hence my clarification of: Most meetings are not about communication. They are usually prescriptive in f…

That's certainly one way of looking at daily stand-up. The other way is that humans aren't perfectly spherical communicators so sometimes daily stand-up really does manage to bring up blockers for the manager to actually resolve.

>> Another example is when product and/or engineer managers use "stand-ups" to ask each engineer the status of their deliverables. Listen to what they are saying; we micromanage and do not trust the team.

> That's certainly one way of looking at daily stand-up. The other way is that humans aren't perfectly spherical communicators so sometimes daily stand-up really does manage to bring up blockers for the manager to actually resolve.

Good point.

I should have made the example more germane by saying "(always|only) using stand-ups for status updates." My apologies for the ambiguous exemplar.

EDIT:

Speaking of daily stand-ups...

IMHO, there are only two questions which need be asked of each team member in a stand-up:

  1 - Is there anything you need from anyone in
      order to be successful *today*?

  2 - Is there anything you want to share with
      the rest of the team?

Any other questions/concerns need to be addressed separately.

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

#303

Post by AdieuToLogic » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 2:58 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #98

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or maybe we're spending too much time on communicating. This is a phenomena I have yet to experience in the wild. > Cut all the unnecessary meetings and only allocate the minimum viable time to communicate. Most meetings are not about communication. They are usually prescriptive in form and dictatorial in nature. > Then everyone will be listening. Listening is a skill, one which is can be perfected if practiced. Ne…

> This is a phenomena I have yet to experience in the wild. I have totally seen infinite meetings where nothing is achieved, nothing is really said, but someone socially isolate just talks and talks and talks because it is his only chance to interact.

> I have totally seen infinite meetings where nothing is achieved, nothing is really said, but someone socially isolate just talks and talks and talks because it is his only chance to interact.

Is that communicating though?

Or are those meetings examples of people occupying the same space while audibly moving air with their lungs in order to feel better about themselves?

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

#304

Post by hellohello2 » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 11:56 PM UTC

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"?

Who knows why? That's my point, its not us

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

#305

Post by balamatom » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 4:17 PM UTC

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #299

mjburgess wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you prefer writing. Either way, writing is dying. It's dying because speaking and meeting can now be transmitted as easily. This itself should, empirically, demonstrate the point. The podcast killed the book, the meeting killed the memo. All around us writing is dying, and writing no one wants to read even more quickly. Soon, in my view, writing will be seen as an instrumental intermediate artefact for technical o…

This is a staffing problem, not a human one. There's plenty of non-knuckledraggers to hire, sack the illiterate and hire some competent people.

The problem is that non-knuckledraggers know bad words like "why" or "no", and are not afraid to use them.

Knuckledraggers, on the other hand, only know good words like "vibe" and "ew", and gladly tune into the gentle rocking back and forth of the (filter-)feeder.