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What a rude, presumptuous, offensive and self-aggrandising title. Seems like someone, probably connected with the authors, is downvoting all the posts in this thread criticising it too. LOL. You have my utter disgust and contempt.
I personally find overcommunication annoying and don't like to hear constant status updates from people; just handle the work and let me know when it's done unless you have any blockers. That said, I've received feedback from multiple people that they never know how my work is progressing, are surprised when it's completed, and would like more status updates along the way, so I think it's safe to say that my preferen…
A lot of communication (what I'm going to work on next week) falls under promise. So I don't tell what I'm doing until I've already done it. Or when I'm unable to do it.
In other words, I let success or failure be known only after I've made sure of either using my best efforts. This usually takes ~2 weeks of isolated/concentrated effort to find out.
Then as a consultant at Big Tech working with different customers, I found out they are not big fans.
'promise. deliver or not' - is what they seem to prefer.
Obviously none likes shocks. But they also don't like surprises.
Source - got fired despite extra-mile technical achievements.
I personally find overcommunication annoying and don't like to hear constant status updates from people; just handle the work and let me know when it's done unless you have any blockers. That said, I've received feedback from multiple people that they never know how my work is progressing, are surprised when it's completed, and would like more status updates along the way, so I think it's safe to say that my preferen…
The overriding thing is to "take care of each other". If they want more updates, send more updates. If they want less updates, send less updates. How do you know what they prefer? Ask them. Communicating about communicating is underrated.
Then comes the adage 'under promise over deliver'.
If you send out an update saying you're working on cool X module/technology/idea to solve a problem, and then it turns out you couldn't, it's a bummer across the table.
Even if it succeeds, you don't get much credit for it because everyone 'pitched in' with their ideas/tweaks at the beginning, so now the entire team feels like you were just the implementer of the team's design/strategy.
Call me a lone-wolf cowboy if you will, but it's a plain truth that no amount of 'team-players' can deny.
And if companies do not want to work with such under-communicators, no big deal. Not everyone meshes with everyone else. There's plenty of other candidates in the sea, and plenty of other companies in the sea.
What a rude, presumptuous, offensive and self-aggrandising title. Seems like someone, probably connected with the authors, is downvoting all the posts in this thread criticising it too. LOL. You have my utter disgust and contempt.
Please don't stoop to this on HN. It's against the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you have a feedbackless censorship mechanic like downvoting, one expects people to complain when there's a clear pattern of it being abused; this is exactly what happens when posts in China get censored - people complain. Before my comment, several other very reasonable comments were downvoted to grey as well.
I wish there were more articles like this about communications, organizational psychology, effective coordination, etc. But mostly, I wish there were ways to recognize, navigate, negotiate people's different styles. TMI from recent my turn at the woodshed: Noob manager (Jane) is unhappy with my communication. Wants more detail. Her prerogative, so I try. So in addition to adjacent desks, always on Skype, standups, st…
Same: I struggle with finding a balance between too much and too little information for different people. For a while I wrote detailed, (and in my opinion, clear) status reports for my higher-ups, but nobody ever read them, so I stopped. There was a line in an old TV show that stuck with me: one of the characters asks, “When’s the date of that dinner again?” The other character says, “It’s Saturday, I just told you t…
My response is that I will now be on the lookout for new strategies, ideas.
I imagine some kind of HR, team building, skill training exercises where everyone discovers each other's communication style(s). Most of it will be hooey, but there will certainly be some kernels of truth.
It also now occurs to me that UX & ethnography types could observe users to infer what works. Eye gaze, like buttons, time spent, etc. Imagine building "emotional intelligence" like feedback tools into Skype.
I know it's creepy. But brainstorming might lead to something useful.
Anyway, thanks again.