5 ms·

This resonates with me. My writing is clear and concise, I'm proud of it, and it pays off because I can communicate effectively. I'm not sure I agree with the

by Maro 7y ago

This resonates with me. My writing is clear and concise, I'm proud of it, and it pays off because I can communicate effectively. I'm not sure I agree with the "undervalued", in so far that I see a _lot_ of people who are not able to write clearly, and they get ahead and along just fine. Many executives who I worked with wrote terrible emails (sometimes they leave out the negation, so I'm guessing whether they mean X or not-X), and they're super successful, in so far as their companies are successful / they are in high positions. Sometimes the Amazon protocol comes up (before a meeting, the organizer submits the topic in writing, everybody has to read it before), and I always cringe - in my experience most people just can't write a clear 2 page document [or can't be bothered]. I would love it tough.

alexpotato 7y ago
I wonder if they have a junior person that does/did the writing for them. Reminds me of a story about fighter pilots from World War 2. Some of the best fighter pilot aces had, at best, average vision. Their coping strategy for this was to find pilots who weren't as good at dogfighting but had excellent vision as wingmen. Both parties benefited since the better pilot could spot enemy planes earlier and the lesser pilot got to fly with an ace and occasionally get kills they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
- Maro 7y ago
  Afaik in "modern times" at "modern companies", ie. startups, everybody does their own emailing. I worked at Facebook, maybe Zuck/Sheryl has somebody helping them with email (I don't know), but they're obvious outliers.
  - alexpotato 7y ago
    I meant more in the sense of "They have other people write and then send the important email/docs etc" and not the "hey, can you help me write this email". I've helped several managers over the years write emails and I'm pretty sure they didn't then go tell everyone "Yep, I had help with this email" so I think it be surprising to some folks how often this happens.
- aphextim 7y ago
  I recently got to ride in the co-pilot seat of our company plane and it was a neat experience to see everything and listen to the radio chatter and the view was amazing to watch the sun rise and the moon set at the same time. He showed me how as a fighter pilot he was trained to spot other aircraft. When one would show up on the radar he would point and be like see that plane over there? I could never see it until we were very close and I have great vision and no glasses. After a few times of this game he then said, "Now when you are looking for another aircraft you don't focus on where it is, scan your eyes left to right horizontally". Now I was able to pick out the what seemed like 1-2 pixel dot in the distance by not trying to focus on the dot but look at everything else and your brain somehow figures out the anomalous pixel/dark spot against the horizon. It reminded me a lot of when I was a kid bird hunting how my dad would try to point at the partridge and it was the same game. You try to focus directly at them and it was hard to see them in the brush, but scanning your eyes back and forth helps make them pop out and be visible.
  - lightsighter 7y ago
    Actually there is some vision science behind this phenomenon. Your fovea is what you use to focus on things and it's got lots of cone cells that are good at picking up colors and specific details but are not so good at picking up motion. The rest of your eye though has tons of rod cells that effectively see just black and white, but are really good at doing motion detection (mainly to recognize predators and prey in your peripheral vision). So instead of trying to use your fovea to find the plane (which it really sucks at doing), you instead keep your eye moving which exposes much more of the scene to rod cells and let their natural motion detection abilities go to work.
    - aphextim 7y ago
      Thanks! I always like to know the meaning behind things and this was very insightful!
    - sixstringtheory 7y ago
      There was a great article on this a while back: “A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to surviving on the roads” https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-surviving-on-the-roads/ https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-s... > Only a small part of the retina, in the centre and called the fovea, can generate a high-resolution image. This is why we need to look directly at something, by moving our eyes, to see detail. The rest of the retina contributes to our visual experience by adding the peripheral detail — hence peripheral vision. Peripheral vision cannot resolve detail, which prevents the brain from being overloaded with too much information, but it is very good at detecting movement. > Well, first, it is an unfortunate fact that if you are converging on a given point with another vehicle at the same speed, and assuming that you are both traveling in a straight line, then there is no apparent movement noticeable by the occupant of either vehicle. That is, to the driver of each vehicle, the other will remain in exactly the same position in the windscreen up to the point of impact. There is no relative movement — so our peripheral vision is not suited to detecting it. > Now for the really interesting part. When we move our head and eyes to scan a scene, our eyes are incapable of moving smoothly across that scene and seeing everything. This makes perfect sense: just like trying to take a picture without holding the camera still. The image would be blurred. So, our clever brain overcomes this by moving our eyes (really fast, remember) in a series of jumps (called saccades) with very short pauses (called fixations and it is only during the pauses that an image is processed. Our brains fill in the gaps with a combination of peripheral vision and an assumption that what is in the gaps must be the same as what you see during the pauses. Previously discussed: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422378 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17900759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17900759
- JoshTriplett 7y ago
  > I wonder if they have a junior person that does/did the writing for them. Many senior non-technical people have a "technical assistant" or similar, a talented generalist who helps wrangle the thousand different technical things the non-technical person needs to deal with.
shados 7y ago
> I'm not sure I agree with the "undervalued" Agreed. Sometimes its even the other way around. You could be an awful engineer from a technical angle, but if you can write good blog post and shiny docs, the powers that be (those who don't look at the code) will think you're awesome. Still, the skill is insanely valuable. As someone who's not a native english speaker/writer, I can manage, but it takes me 5 times as long to do something less than half as good as my peers, yet I always find myself needing to write a new page of doc, a wiki/blog post, etc. If I was better at it, I'd be much, much more successful.
jboy55 7y ago
>Sometimes the Amazon protocol comes up (before a meeting, the organizer submits the topic in writing, everybody has to read it before), and I always cringe - in my experience most people just can't write a clear 2 page document [or can't be bothered]. I would love it tough. At Amazon the protocol is to read during the start of the meeting. Typically this can be the first 30 mins of a 60 min meeting.
Xplosiveoctopus 7y ago
Any suggestions about how to improve? Your writing IS clear and concise. =]

by Maro 7y ago

alexpotato 7y ago

I wonder if they have a junior person that does/did the writing for them. Reminds me of a story about fighter pilots from World War 2. Some of the best fighter pilot aces had, at best, average vision. Their coping strategy for this was to find pilots who weren't as good at dogfighting but had excellent vision as wingmen. Both parties benefited since the better pilot could spot enemy planes earlier and the lesser pilot got to fly with an ace and occasionally get kills they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Maro 7y ago
Afaik in "modern times" at "modern companies", ie. startups, everybody does their own emailing. I worked at Facebook, maybe Zuck/Sheryl has somebody helping them with email (I don't know), but they're obvious outliers.
- alexpotato 7y ago
  I meant more in the sense of "They have other people write and then send the important email/docs etc" and not the "hey, can you help me write this email". I've helped several managers over the years write emails and I'm pretty sure they didn't then go tell everyone "Yep, I had help with this email" so I think it be surprising to some folks how often this happens.
aphextim 7y ago
I recently got to ride in the co-pilot seat of our company plane and it was a neat experience to see everything and listen to the radio chatter and the view was amazing to watch the sun rise and the moon set at the same time. He showed me how as a fighter pilot he was trained to spot other aircraft. When one would show up on the radar he would point and be like see that plane over there? I could never see it until we were very close and I have great vision and no glasses. After a few times of this game he then said, "Now when you are looking for another aircraft you don't focus on where it is, scan your eyes left to right horizontally". Now I was able to pick out the what seemed like 1-2 pixel dot in the distance by not trying to focus on the dot but look at everything else and your brain somehow figures out the anomalous pixel/dark spot against the horizon. It reminded me a lot of when I was a kid bird hunting how my dad would try to point at the partridge and it was the same game. You try to focus directly at them and it was hard to see them in the brush, but scanning your eyes back and forth helps make them pop out and be visible.
- lightsighter 7y ago
  Actually there is some vision science behind this phenomenon. Your fovea is what you use to focus on things and it's got lots of cone cells that are good at picking up colors and specific details but are not so good at picking up motion. The rest of your eye though has tons of rod cells that effectively see just black and white, but are really good at doing motion detection (mainly to recognize predators and prey in your peripheral vision). So instead of trying to use your fovea to find the plane (which it really sucks at doing), you instead keep your eye moving which exposes much more of the scene to rod cells and let their natural motion detection abilities go to work.
  - aphextim 7y ago
    Thanks! I always like to know the meaning behind things and this was very insightful!
  - sixstringtheory 7y ago
    There was a great article on this a while back: “A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to surviving on the roads” https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-surviving-on-the-roads/ https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-s... > Only a small part of the retina, in the centre and called the fovea, can generate a high-resolution image. This is why we need to look directly at something, by moving our eyes, to see detail. The rest of the retina contributes to our visual experience by adding the peripheral detail — hence peripheral vision. Peripheral vision cannot resolve detail, which prevents the brain from being overloaded with too much information, but it is very good at detecting movement. > Well, first, it is an unfortunate fact that if you are converging on a given point with another vehicle at the same speed, and assuming that you are both traveling in a straight line, then there is no apparent movement noticeable by the occupant of either vehicle. That is, to the driver of each vehicle, the other will remain in exactly the same position in the windscreen up to the point of impact. There is no relative movement — so our peripheral vision is not suited to detecting it. > Now for the really interesting part. When we move our head and eyes to scan a scene, our eyes are incapable of moving smoothly across that scene and seeing everything. This makes perfect sense: just like trying to take a picture without holding the camera still. The image would be blurred. So, our clever brain overcomes this by moving our eyes (really fast, remember) in a series of jumps (called saccades) with very short pauses (called fixations and it is only during the pauses that an image is processed. Our brains fill in the gaps with a combination of peripheral vision and an assumption that what is in the gaps must be the same as what you see during the pauses. Previously discussed: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422378 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17900759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17900759
JoshTriplett 7y ago
> I wonder if they have a junior person that does/did the writing for them. Many senior non-technical people have a "technical assistant" or similar, a talented generalist who helps wrangle the thousand different technical things the non-technical person needs to deal with.

shados 7y ago

> I'm not sure I agree with the "undervalued" Agreed. Sometimes its even the other way around. You could be an awful engineer from a technical angle, but if you can write good blog post and shiny docs, the powers that be (those who don't look at the code) will think you're awesome. Still, the skill is insanely valuable. As someone who's not a native english speaker/writer, I can manage, but it takes me 5 times as long to do something less than half as good as my peers, yet I always find myself needing to write a new page of doc, a wiki/blog post, etc. If I was better at it, I'd be much, much more successful.

jboy55 7y ago

>Sometimes the Amazon protocol comes up (before a meeting, the organizer submits the topic in writing, everybody has to read it before), and I always cringe - in my experience most people just can't write a clear 2 page document [or can't be bothered]. I would love it tough. At Amazon the protocol is to read during the start of the meeting. Typically this can be the first 30 mins of a 60 min meeting.

Xplosiveoctopus 7y ago

Any suggestions about how to improve? Your writing IS clear and concise. =]