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> My favourite tactic is to ask a yes/no question. Depending on culture and hierarchy that can be a bad idea. > do you need to scale up by hand? In many plac

> My favourite tactic is to ask a yes/no question. Depending on culture and hierarchy that can be a bad idea. > do you need to scale up by hand? In many places that is not a question, but just a rhetoric question that means 'doing it by hand is wrong' Open questions also allow to find concerns that I do not know about. Even asking 'how do you decide how to scale' may highlight hidden reason for that manual scaling. > state your current understanding I use this one a lot and it's very good to find when I may have misinterpret answers. > be willing to interrupt Quite cultural, depending who you are talking to, people will avoid talking to you all together. > take a minute to think If you find yourself entitled to interrupt people but ask others to wait for you that seems problematic. I guess that is a cultural thing. But I always get the best results by adapting to the other person preferred way of communication instead of imposing mine. My job requires to talk with people in different positions and in different countries, thou. Maybe it's different if you just talk with developers and with a very similar profile.

tharkun__ 5y ago
>> be willing to interrupt > Quite cultural, depending who you are talking to, people will avoid talking to you all together. It can be done in various ways I guess. One thing I've been doing for some time now is to not directly interrupt but just start making "noise". Like for example going "Mhhh", accompanied by a "thinking gesture" and maybe murmuring "interesting" or some such. Some people are able to pick up on those things and will give you an opening to then actually ask your question or reply. Thus it feels way less like interrupting, especially as it can give the other person a chance to finish the immediate thought but then let you "interrupt". Some people don't pick up on this though and you might need to interrupt but what I try first is to write down what I wanted to say. Some people have a way of just talking and talking and jumping from one topic or area of a topic to another without so much as taking a breath. I make a point of then going through my list and proclaiming that I will go back to the first point they made, then the second one etc. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes it doesn't and I literally have to stop them then and there and actually saying it like that too "Sure that's a great topic but let's stay focused, we were gonna discuss X".
tonyarkles 5y ago
> Depending on culture and hierarchy that can be a bad idea. Could you please elaborate on this? I’ve never been in a situation/environment like that, I don’t think, and I’m quite curious about what to look out for.
asoylu 5y ago
> In many places that is not a question, but just a rhetoric question that means 'doing it by hand is wrong' I hate it when people psychanalyse my question to find hidden meanings instead of giving a straight yes/no/dunno answer. Like "What let you to ask this question? I assume you actually want to ask B." Then they give you a long speech on completely irrelevant or obvious facts.

tharkun__ 5y ago

>> be willing to interrupt > Quite cultural, depending who you are talking to, people will avoid talking to you all together. It can be done in various ways I guess. One thing I've been doing for some time now is to not directly interrupt but just start making "noise". Like for example going "Mhhh", accompanied by a "thinking gesture" and maybe murmuring "interesting" or some such. Some people are able to pick up on those things and will give you an opening to then actually ask your question or reply. Thus it feels way less like interrupting, especially as it can give the other person a chance to finish the immediate thought but then let you "interrupt". Some people don't pick up on this though and you might need to interrupt but what I try first is to write down what I wanted to say. Some people have a way of just talking and talking and jumping from one topic or area of a topic to another without so much as taking a breath. I make a point of then going through my list and proclaiming that I will go back to the first point they made, then the second one etc. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes it doesn't and I literally have to stop them then and there and actually saying it like that too "Sure that's a great topic but let's stay focused, we were gonna discuss X".

tonyarkles 5y ago

> Depending on culture and hierarchy that can be a bad idea. Could you please elaborate on this? I’ve never been in a situation/environment like that, I don’t think, and I’m quite curious about what to look out for.

asoylu 5y ago

> In many places that is not a question, but just a rhetoric question that means 'doing it by hand is wrong' I hate it when people psychanalyse my question to find hidden meanings instead of giving a straight yes/no/dunno answer. Like "What let you to ask this question? I assume you actually want to ask B." Then they give you a long speech on completely irrelevant or obvious facts.