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Be Less Technical

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Re: Be Less Technical

#41

Post by bright_light »

Thought train:

  - What are the first principles of communication.

  - Of what you want to say, what can they hear. 

  - The more refined (technical) your knowledge, the fewer people there are who can understand it.

  - "Language is the interface for describing problems." This phrase makes me rather happy for some reason.

  - Do you want to sound clever, or be clever. (It's easier to sound clever.)

  - What are all the functions of using more technical language than necessary.

  - Understanding what's relevant to another person is an advanced skill. In any context.

  - Filtering technical knowledge into a relevant format for a listener to comprehend in real time is a skill that can be learnt.

  - More people think they understand than actually do.

  - There are infinite layers to understanding even the simplest thing. 

  - At what point do you tend to decide you've understood. 

  - Where does the feeling of 'understanding' come from.

Re: Be Less Technical

#42

Post by a_square_peg »

Very true. This is why I think 'Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words' (Randall Munroe) is so brilliant. I think being able to communicate at the level your audience is an under-appreciated skill.

Re: Be Less Technical

#43

Post by MauranKilom »

Jensson wrote: post #36
MauranKilom wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I submit that you will always interface with people who are not purely technical, no matter how technical your role. But it is in the most technical roles that it's hardest to learn how to match your language to a given audience (for lack of practice/opportunities), so I actually think these are the groups that need to consciously work on developing this skill the most.

> I submit that you will always interface with people who are not purely technical, no matter how technical your role. This is provably false though, I've worked in jobs where entire large teams never talked to non-technical people. What you maybe meant is that you always talk to people less technical than you, which is true, but that is a very different statement. For example, when I worked on developer tooling at G…

That's fair. I concede that there are jobs that in no part rely on communicating with non-technical people. But I still believe you will find it beneficial to be able to explain your work to non-technical audiences. Your family, your lawyer, or a future hiring manager will all value it.

Re: Be Less Technical

#44

Post by O_H_E »

unfocussed_mike wrote: post #27
eyelidlessness wrote: post #5

I 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…

This was my telephone life with my Dad for thirty years, all of his later life and almost two thirds of my life, even well into his dementia (because his memories of his professional career were really untouched by it). After only one month I already miss it enormously. I am very glad you find these calls rewarding and I am certain she does too. I am going to have to find someone to fill this role in my own life agai…

I'm sorry for your loss, and I am glad that you had a fulfilling relationship with your dad.

It sounds like you are steadily strolling the road of healthy grieving, I'm sure he would be proud.

Keep your head above the water my friend.

Re: Be Less Technical

#45

Post by benreesman »

MauranKilom wrote: post #38
benreesman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm flattered that the OP took an interest in my comment, and when I said "less" click-thirsty I hope I didn't come off too judgemental: whether we admit it or not we're all pretty well wired-up for the engagement dopamine hit at this point, including me and my comment. Given that you've clarified the point you were making was the one I hoped: I am interested in hearing more from you and I would gently discourage tha…

> Anyone smart enough to write an optimizing compiler is smart enough to explain how one works, at least in outline, to a layperson. There is no need for a middle-man layer of blubber between the people who need to know why to buy or not buy one, and the person who knows how to write one. I don't think that conclusion follows from the premise. I could also mop the floor and clean the windows at work, but that doesn't…

I mean to be clear, I'm not drawing a conclusion from a premise: I'm making an assertion, and in fairness, that assertion is trivially false by virtue of invoking words like "anyone" and phrases like "no need". Nothing exists `forall` what I said. I'm also aware that the assertion is a flashpoint for a lot of people and extremely controversial, even when you relax propositional logic enough to admit the trivial counter-examples (intelligence is clearly not some nice, neat scalar quantity).

Nonetheless I think that everyone knows what I'm saying: which is that they're are more than enough people who can both do deep technical work and wear clothes well and work a fucking powerpoint that the industry doesn't need to resort to employing nontechnical people in roles that require both, and that outside of certain verticals, someone who knows their shit but makes iffy eye contact or stutters is still a better person to put in front of the slide deck than a slick, charismatic figure with a dim grasp of the subject matter. It's nowhere near the either/or that it is so frequently presented as, and even when presented with that either/or choice I'll take the competent nerd unless I'm selling IBM z-series boxes to credit unions or something like that.

Given that OP is on the thread I'll leave it to them to clarify the point of the article, but I will point that my reference was to a classic parody of this whole "good with people" trope that was already darkly funny long before pervasive cloud services, the vastly increased prestige in software engineering roles, exploding FAANG engineer salaries, and all the other things that have people with the right look signing up for CS classes in droves [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi25sLQ_t-k

Re: Be Less Technical

#46

Post by Jensson »

MauranKilom wrote: post #43
Jensson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I submit that you will always interface with people who are not purely technical, no matter how technical your role. This is provably false though, I've worked in jobs where entire large teams never talked to non-technical people. What you maybe meant is that you always talk to people less technical than you, which is true, but that is a very different statement. For example, when I worked on developer tooling at G…

That's fair. I concede that there are jobs that in no part rely on communicating with non-technical people. But I still believe you will find it beneficial to be able to explain your work to non-technical audiences. Your family, your lawyer, or a future hiring manager will all value it.

All I did was work on/design math/algorithm libraries. I can of course explain that I write code, and which parts of Google used it, but I can't explain anything I produced to non-technical people since there is nothing left when you removed the technical details.

I also worked on server message routing. I can explain that it is basically like the internet, ie explain why my job is important, but explaining any of my projects to a layperson wouldn't be possible without teaching the layperson a lot of technical skills.

Re: Be Less Technical

#47

Post by nthj »

unfocussed_mike wrote: post #37
shalmanese wrote: post #2

Importantly, 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…

Right. You can't hide the detail with a wave of the hand, you can definitely overcommunicate detail that is unnecessary, but the art of it is finding a way to explain the bit that matters in a way that makes it clear to the users that you're eliding detail that isn't important, without misleading them. There is a very fine example of this in cinema -- the senior partners meeting in Margin Call, where Zachary Quinto's…

That’s a great scene. For anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, I might recommend skipping the clip and watching the full film! If you’re on HN, odds are you would enjoy it, and it has an impressive cast.

Re: Be Less Technical

#48

Post by unfocussed_mike »

nthj wrote: post #47
unfocussed_mike wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. You can't hide the detail with a wave of the hand, you can definitely overcommunicate detail that is unnecessary, but the art of it is finding a way to explain the bit that matters in a way that makes it clear to the users that you're eliding detail that isn't important, without misleading them. There is a very fine example of this in cinema -- the senior partners meeting in Margin Call, where Zachary Quinto's…

That’s a great scene. For anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, I might recommend skipping the clip and watching the full film! If you’re on HN, odds are you would enjoy it, and it has an impressive cast.

It is an outstanding movie. But I think this particular scene is one of the finest scenes in any movie ever made. It could stand alone as a short.

Re: Be Less Technical

#49

Post by unfocussed_mike »

O_H_E wrote: post #44
unfocussed_mike wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my telephone life with my Dad for thirty years, all of his later life and almost two thirds of my life, even well into his dementia (because his memories of his professional career were really untouched by it). After only one month I already miss it enormously. I am very glad you find these calls rewarding and I am certain she does too. I am going to have to find someone to fill this role in my own life agai…

I'm sorry for your loss, and I am glad that you had a fulfilling relationship with your dad. It sounds like you are steadily strolling the road of healthy grieving, I'm sure he would be proud. Keep your head above the water my friend.

Thank you.

And yes -- navigating the line between the endings/beginnings bit, the loss (which it is), and tragedy (which it isn't) is difficult but this time around I am finding it easier.

One of the things I have already realised is that explaining-stuff-to-my-Dad is portable. I can do it in my head. And when I can do that without tears, I'll be able to add my Dad to any audience in the future, and hear his questions as well as theirs.

Re: Be Less Technical

#50

Post by unfocussed_mike »

jmchuster wrote: post #7
langsoul-com wrote: post #3

Talking 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.

I don't really think of dumbing it down, more like distilling it to its true essence. To be able to do so requires even more skill and understanding than just enumerating the details. I always think of the Feynman anecdote where he talks about skipping chalk on a chalkboard.

I tend towards the view that I do not understand any given thing until I can teach it.
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