Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Technical Excellence Is Not Enough

raccoon.land

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 105 posts

Re: Technical Excellence Is Not Enough

#81

Post by watwut »

quotemstr wrote: post #71
watwut wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do not dismiss soft skills. But, they do not know how to play the politics and were given bad advice. I would even say that their observations are entirely correct, they accurately described how teams function. What they do not know is how to influence people. Bad advice given to them: > The standard advice is always "communicate better, get buy-in, frame it differently." [...] The advice for this position is al…

The point is that if you unite authority and responsibility in the same individual, you can move fast and confidently because you don't drain people's time and energy by making them "influence people". In a healthy organization, responsible people act and are held to account by their results. Democracy is a choice, not an obligation. You're right that organizations do often become consensus-driven. It's a failure mod…

If you unify authority and responsibility into a single person, that one person can both both move fast and super slow. They can prevent any change at all or cause unreasonable amount of change.

Literally everyone else who wants to change something or keep it the same has to play politics as they try to influence this one person. But also, practically speaking, this one person still have to do a lot of politics. A single team leads with great power still struggle to enact the change. They encounter both open and hidden opposition. Their opposition is even frequently right. They also encounter misunderstanding, passive aggression, seeming compliance, passivity. Or simply people fully agreeing, being onboard and still doing things the old way out of intertie or organization pressures.

> You're right that organizations do often become consensus-driven.

I did not said that at all. I did not even said that it is bad when it happens. I said that the usual advice OP was given makes people feel good, but it is a bad advice for achieving the change.

Re: Technical Excellence Is Not Enough

#82

Post by pverheggen »

wiseowise wrote: post #50
pverheggen wrote: post #36

OP's dismissiveness of soft skills is a big red flag. Unless you're a solo dev, software development is a social activity, and understanding the social dynamics is key to effecting change. Your efforts to improve quality could be vetoed by your coworkers for a variety of reasons: they don't care, they don't trust your judgement, they see other things as a higher priority... the list goes on and on. Some of these thin…

Where did they dismiss soft skills? The point is that every improvement is met with "just get better soft skills bro" dismissal, which in reality has nothing to do with soft skills. I've met this firsthand.

Their direct complaint is the "just get better soft skills bro" advice, but it's dismissed indirectly:

> The "soft skills" framing is wild. You're supposed to learn to communicate your way out of a structural problem. Like taking a public speaking class to fix a broken org chart.

If learning to communicate well wouldn't fix a structural problem, then communicating well wouldn't fix it either.

Re: Technical Excellence Is Not Enough

#84

Post by wiseowise »

pverheggen wrote: post #82
wiseowise wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did they dismiss soft skills? The point is that every improvement is met with "just get better soft skills bro" dismissal, which in reality has nothing to do with soft skills. I've met this firsthand.

Their direct complaint is the "just get better soft skills bro" advice, but it's dismissed indirectly: > The "soft skills" framing is wild. You're supposed to learn to communicate your way out of a structural problem. Like taking a public speaking class to fix a broken org chart. If learning to communicate well wouldn't fix a structural problem, then communicating well wouldn't fix it either.

That’s the point, though? That you’re being gaslit by “you’re not communicating well” when no amount of good communicating would fix the underlying issue or you being dismissed?

Re: Technical Excellence Is Not Enough

#85

Post by dw_arthur »

quotemstr wrote: post #68
grey-area wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe fix your writing then. This is not good writing.

It used to be. That's why LLMs adopted it. How do you think they got their preferences? A Magic 8 Ball?

It was okay writing in the context of marketing. A normal person never wrote like that.

Re: Technical Excellence Is Not Enough

#86

Post by grey-area »

sgarland wrote: post #73
grey-area wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe fix your writing then. This is not good writing.

Neither is Vonnegut's (which your short, choppy sentences reminded me of), but he was a very successful and beloved author. I'm in no way comparing myself to Vonnegut, but my point is just because it doesn't appeal to you, it doesn't mean it isn't good. Writing is art. Does it get the intended point across? Does it resonate with the reader? Does it make them feel something? Then it is good.

I disagree on Vonnegut. Most human authors at least have a voice, even if you don't like it it's recognisable and theirs, and I would rarely think to criticise that, it makes the writing come alive. If you truly write like an LLM (there is little evidence here of that) it would not be the same.

LLMs serve up a sort of bland pap with sugary highs of excitement which resembles a cross between manic advertising copy and a breathless teenager who's just discovered whatever subject they're talking about. They also sometimes confabulate and generate text which is at best tangential and at worst completely misleading.

It's exhausting and if you haven't carefully read what they generate (which most people clearly have not), you should not expect another human to read it.

Just as an interesting taste, here is my copy above rewritten to sound even more EXCITING and ENGAGING.

"They deliver a horrifying concoction – a sickly sweet, manufactured echo of thought, a grotesque blend of relentless advertising whispers and the manic, unearned enthusiasm of a teenager just discovering a world they don't understand! But the truly chilling thing is this: they fabricate. They weave elaborate lies, constructing text that’s not just tangential, but actively, dangerously misleading!

It’s a psychic assault, a draining vortex of intellectual despair! And if you haven’t wrestled with every single word, dissected it, exposed its flaws – and frankly, I suspect most haven’t – then don’t dare expect anyone else to salvage this wreckage! This is not a passive observation; it’s a desperate plea against a future where genuine thought is suffocated by the cold, sterile logic of a machine! We must guard against this, or we risk losing everything!” -- gemma3:4b

Re: Technical Excellence Is Not Enough

#87

Post by mapontosevenths »

quotemstr wrote: post #61
james_marks wrote: post #18

I find OP's communication style abrasive and off-putting, which tracks with them saying they've been coached on this, and found that advice lacking. Maybe it's still insufficient advice, but it hasn't worked for them at least in part because they haven't figured out how to apply it. From the post, I see low empathy and an air of superiority, (perhaps earned by genuinely being smarter than their peers-- doesn't make i…

> I find OP's communication style abrasive and off-putting Your comment is hilarious on a meta-level: it's an example of exactly the sort of socially-mediated gatekeeping the author of the article (machine or human, I don't care) criticizes. It is, in fact, essential to match authority and responsibility to achieve excellence in any endeavor, and it's a truth universally acknowledged that vague consensus requirements…

Consensus works in a Democracy because the best thing the government can do to help people is usually nothing.

Re: Technical Excellence Is Not Enough

#89

Post by sgarland »

grey-area wrote: post #86
sgarland wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither is Vonnegut's (which your short, choppy sentences reminded me of), but he was a very successful and beloved author. I'm in no way comparing myself to Vonnegut, but my point is just because it doesn't appeal to you, it doesn't mean it isn't good. Writing is art. Does it get the intended point across? Does it resonate with the reader? Does it make them feel something? Then it is good.

I disagree on Vonnegut. Most human authors at least have a voice, even if you don't like it it's recognisable and theirs, and I would rarely think to criticise that, it makes the writing come alive. If you truly write like an LLM (there is little evidence here of that) it would not be the same. LLMs serve up a sort of bland pap with sugary highs of excitement which resembles a cross between manic advertising copy and…

I don't disagree with your take on what how LLM copy is awful; I just disagree that this was written by an LLM. For example, this paragraph at the end:

> If you're in this position (relied upon, validated, powerless), you're not imagining it. And it's not a communication problem. "Just communicate better" is the advice equivalent of "have you tried not being depressed?"

I've seen "you're not imagining it" countless times from LLMs, but always as the leading sentence in the paragraph; for something like the above, they tend to use em-dashes, not parentheses.

FWIW, Grammarly's AI Detector thinks that 17% of it resembles LLM output, and ZeroGPT thinks that 4.5% of it resembles LLM output.

Re: Technical Excellence Is Not Enough

#90

Post by eithed »

elevatortrim wrote: post #39
loevborg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's a painful process, as I know from experience. What do you think is the reason for the gradual shift?

I think when you are new with good ideas, you are judged against average. If you are above average, you are listened to. As years pass, you are judged against the standard you set, and if you do not keep raising this standard, you start being seen as average, even if you are performing the same when you joined. I've seen this play out many, many times. When an incompetent person is hired, even if issues are acknowled…

I agree with this summary to a degree. Additional problem arises when you simply cannot raise the standard as you lack political influence to do so. As it is said in the article - sometimes companies are comfortable with status quo, irregardless of the problems, whether they are technical or not. Another issue stems when product, rather than looking at tech as a partner in pursuit of common goal starts to see it as an underling.
Post reply on HN