6 ms·

The writer asks for it, so I will be blunt. They are demanding people have perfectly formed thoughts crafted in a way to give them just the information they wan

The writer asks for it, so I will be blunt. They are demanding people have perfectly formed thoughts crafted in a way to give them just the information they wanted with no consideration for the process of thinking or consideration for the person speaking. It is selfish and impossible. Articles like this, I think, expose how bad we have gotten at both speaking and listening. "I personally value directness, so when someone communicates with me in that way, it deos influence how I perceive them, even subconsciously." Communication is mind control. The point isn't the words, it is literally trying to get a person to do something. I often point out to people that if you just couldn't see people's lips move then speech would appear like the sci-fi definition of psychic powers. The better a person is at communication the more they will fit their message to the audience to get the action intended. If 'direct' really works then over time it will be used but the fact that direct isn't used often implies strongly that it doesn't work for most people or it has secondary effects that are too negative. Demanding the exception is a pretty big ask especially if your aren't willing to meet half way. A second aspect here is that while communicating we are developing our thoughts. We need time to tease out our real intentions and filler conversation helps that. Arguing 'they should have just said x from the start' is 20/20 hindsight a lot of the time. Expecting me to come to you with a terse, perfect information drop tailored to your quirks or else you will get annoyed with me is your problem, not the speaker's. In the end speakers are practicing a really hard skill and the author ignores how hard it is. Learning to listen when someone has a hard time communicating something is also a really hard skill that this article completely ignores. If I could sum this article up it would be 'I want to give up trying to learn how to listen so now it is your fault I don't understand you'.

charlie0 7mo ago
At lot of this isn't true in practice because we live in an async word. Perfect example is giving bad news. So much dancing verbal dancing around it when people really know the answer. The best team I've ever worked on had little social cushioning. This doesn't mean people were being mean to each. The directness of everyone on that team was great because we could work towards resolving issues quickly and without any fluff. This also allowed us to find the best solution.
- zer00eyz 7mo ago
  > The best team I've ever worked on had little social cushioning. It is HARD to build this sort of thing in the modern workplace. We dragged politics into the workplace, in a way thats more about social signaling. We moved to work from home, removing the social interactions around the coffee pot and lunches that let you ask about peoples lives outside of work. Furthermore corporations took over the social channels: Slack/chat, email, zoom etc leaving people less inclined to be personal there. Where is the outlet to go bitch about your boss, your PM, your scrum master with your co-workers. The blunt, no nonsense request to a colleague, who you just asked about their kids in a separate interaction, reads a lot different, without these interactions.
lproven 7mo ago
You say you are being blunt, but then 5 paragraphs of exegesis follows. TL;DR. Talking takes time and effort. So does listening. Be brief. Get to the point.
- knappa 7mo ago
  They said that they were going to be blunt, not terse.
  - lproven 7mo ago
    Fair, but they do often go together.
- mapontosevenths 7mo ago
  Out of curiosity, are you a reader? When was the last time you read a full length chapter book for fun? Does it feel like work to you? Is it a slow process? I ask not to insult, but to understand. I can't help but wonder if a lot of this demand for terse language comes from a simple inability to read well? Reading is really not supposed to feel like work to the educated, and it does not to me. For me its just a state of consciousness, and doesnt require any more effort than being awake does. I am genuinely surprised to hear otherwise educated people imply that simply reading something a coworker wrote significantly slows down their work.
  - MarkusQ 7mo ago
    Not the GP, but I'm an avid reader. One of the books I read (Strunk & White's Elements of Style) had this to say to aspiring writers: "Omit needles words."
    - dcrazy 7mo ago
      One will note that the book, while short, contained more than that one sentence.
      - 7mo ago
lokar 7mo ago
Context matters. You communicate differently in person vs with async text. If you don’t have your thoughts together, if you see a problem but are not sure of the fix, just say that. Make it clear why you are communicating with me, do you have a specific request? A question? Just want to chat? Have a general discussion about an issue? All fine, just be clear
- jmward01 7mo ago
  I totally missed/muddled the 'clarity' and 'unity' arguments in my response. It would have been a great final point. There is a big difference between being direct and being clear. When there is an issue, what I am often trying to communicate is my goal to get information and to get the rest of the team on the same page. I am seeking clarity and unity and the tool I am using is communication. But there is a difference between seeking clarity/unity and being direct. My points stand about the process of thought and the style of communication there. You can be clear without being direct and being direct is often not the right answer and not even possible. In a previous life I was a pilot. Communication in aviation is exceptionally clear and direct. It is that way because time matters and understanding matters but also because the vast majority of situations have been clearly identified, thought out and formalized well before you are in the air. I suspect other environments have this too, like an operating room. In training we had a system of 'shacks' where if you messed up on the radio in the pattern the day before you owed a 'shack' (a beer to the common fridge) by the next day. The comms there were ridiculously direct and clear but also incredibly formalized. There were exact words for exact situations and the tree of possible interactions, and the communication required, were almost 100% memorized. However, as soon as things got a little out of the norm so did the comms. You really can't have perfect 'direct' communication with dynamic systems. The shack system was great because it shows both sides of the communication world. It emphasized the incredibly direct communication world but then when your mistakes came to light there generally was a lot of indirect communication involved discussing the shack. I would hate to think that software design is so well thought out that all communication could be formalized like aviation or an operating room. It would mean the age of the code assistant really is going to take engineering away because anything so perfectly formalized can also easily be learned by an LLM.
jcalvinowens 7mo ago
> Communication is mind control. The point isn't the words, it is literally trying to get a person to do something. You're describing manipulating people, not communicating with them. The point of communication between engineers is usually to establish a mutual understanding, not make them do something you want. Through that mutual understanding you both come to agree on what should be done. Often, coming to that mutual understanding on complex projects with experienced engineers can be difficult, because we're human and we inevitably misunderstand complex systems in a multitude of ways on our path to understanding them. Being able to be brutally honest with each other about our misunderstandings is what the author is talking about. When you work with people who get that individuals misunderstanding things is part of the process, and nobody takes or imputes it personally, you are suddenly free to focus on the actual meat of the problem instead of worrying how people may or may not feel about it.
- pardon_me 7mo ago
  > Being able to be brutally honest with each other about our misunderstandings Being specific to misunderstandings is an element that's overlooked. This advice tends to be taken onboard (often to extremes) by those who take it as a free pass to just say whatever comes to their mind, whenever they like, without explaining how they arrived there. Any excuse to avoid putting in effort to be understood or be conscious of the fact that human beings have emotions. We are not robots. I'm glad commenters here are aware of this, as HN sentiment is getting close to the point of treating each other as machines, whilst we train bots to have better communication skill such as empathetic reflection, and allow them more creativity and freedom. Some people are more patient and sympathetic towards computers making mistakes and not following commands perfectly, or being too verbose, than we are with our fellow human beings.
  - avilay 7mo ago
    Totally agree with this! Being "kindly honest" is way better than being "brutally honest". Being honest and direct is important of course. I have often found that delivering constructive criticism in the so-called sandwich manner often obfuscates the message, so delivering it directly is much better. However, being kind to the receiver of the feedback by having empathy for them and supporting them as they process that feedback will help land that message far more effectively than being "brutal" about it.
thyristan 7mo ago
> The better a person is at communication the more they will fit their message to the audience to get the action intended. If 'direct' really works then over time it will be used but the fact that direct isn't used often implies strongly that it doesn't work for most people or it has secondary effects that are too negative. Demanding the exception is a pretty big ask especially if your aren't willing to meet half way. 'Direct' can work and does work, depending on culture. There are direct cultures, where communication is primarily intended to convey information. There are indirect cultures, where communication is primarily intended to convey social status, manipulate social bonds, or perform culturally necessary rituals. With the actual information being secondary. In a direct culture you will tell say "I want to buy this bread". In an indirect culture, it might be more like "Hello, be greeted, o nicest and finest of all shop clerks, nice weather, $deity be praised for her mercy of having me walk this earth for one more day. All your wares look magnificent, but might I inquire if it would be possible, if it isn't inconvenient, reserved or forbidden, to maybe ask about how that very fine loaf of bread came into your possession? ...". All the while tourist me, back in the queue rolls his eyes in total annoyance, having suffered through innumerable minutes of waiting for people to get on with their useless diatribe. Since HN is primarily engineers, time is precious on this earth, and secondary considerations should be secondary really: There is only one desirable mode of communications. The direct one. Everything else is a waste of time. Being indirect and long-winded isn't "bad at speaking and listening". It is being inconsiderate and rude. It is putting secondary things before the main issue. I think cultures need to be changed to be more direct. Your last points are valid, sometimes you need some time and collect your thoughts. But in this case, you should just ask the other person to help you think, and directly tell them that you haven't fully formulated your issue and need help with that. That is a far more productive way to deal with the issue of half-formed thoughts and questions. Beating around the bush and using another person as a involuntary rubber-ducky is also rude, and only excusable in rare circumstances.
- Twey 7mo ago
  The Gladwellian direct/indirect dichotomy (or continuum) is a misapprehension of how language works. All communication is indirect in some sense because we don't have mind control powers over our fellow humans. Even saying ‘I want to buy this bread’ is indirect in a sense: you're not causing the baker to sell you the bread, nor even explicitly instructing them to, but just stating your personal internal desires. It is a cultural construct that being told someone's internal desire is supposed to function as a ‘direct’ instruction to satisfy it, and even in that there is a lot of room for ambiguity depending on context etc. For example, if I were speaking not to the baker but to my friend as we peruse the bakery together, ‘I want to buy this bread’ could have a variety of intended impacts on their actions. It could mean ‘let's come to an agreement about whether we should collectively buy this bread’. It could mean ‘pass me my wallet so I can pay for the bread’. It could mean ‘go and find me a shopkeep who can legally sell me the bread’. It could just mean ‘you are my friend and I'm telling you my internal monologue so that you can understand me better’. If you interpret the language of a different culture (separated by space or time — try reading the ‘flowery’ language of Victorian or Elizabethan literature) too literally, it reads as ‘indirect’. But that doesn't mean that the native speakers from that culture consider it so. You're simply missing the cultural context that makes their phrasing as ‘direct’ to them as ‘I want to buy this bread’ is to you.
throw10920 7mo ago
> They are demanding people have perfectly formed thoughts crafted in a way to give them just the information they wanted with no consideration for the process of thinking or consideration for the person speaking. No, this is not what the author asks for. There's nothing in their article that says that people need to have "perfectly formed thoughts" or "only give them the information they asked for". > It is selfish and impossible. You fundamentally did not understand the point that they made (quite clearly). The thing that they are actually advocating for turns out to be neither. > Communication is mind control. The point isn't the words, it is literally trying to get a person to do something. Author also does not say that they think Crocker's Rules should be applied in all cases or that convincing someone of something is unnecessary. > A second aspect here is that while communicating we are developing our thoughts. We need time to tease out our real intentions and filler conversation helps that. Author is not (specifically) talking about filler conversation. And on top of that it's really clear that they're primarily talking about digital communication - where filler conversation is unnecessary, unlike verbal communication. > The writer asks for it, so I will be blunt. Before being blunt, try being correct. And responding to the points that the author actually made instead of constructing a whole field of strawmen.

charlie0 7mo ago

At lot of this isn't true in practice because we live in an async word. Perfect example is giving bad news. So much dancing verbal dancing around it when people really know the answer. The best team I've ever worked on had little social cushioning. This doesn't mean people were being mean to each. The directness of everyone on that team was great because we could work towards resolving issues quickly and without any fluff. This also allowed us to find the best solution.

zer00eyz 7mo ago
> The best team I've ever worked on had little social cushioning. It is HARD to build this sort of thing in the modern workplace. We dragged politics into the workplace, in a way thats more about social signaling. We moved to work from home, removing the social interactions around the coffee pot and lunches that let you ask about peoples lives outside of work. Furthermore corporations took over the social channels: Slack/chat, email, zoom etc leaving people less inclined to be personal there. Where is the outlet to go bitch about your boss, your PM, your scrum master with your co-workers. The blunt, no nonsense request to a colleague, who you just asked about their kids in a separate interaction, reads a lot different, without these interactions.

lproven 7mo ago

You say you are being blunt, but then 5 paragraphs of exegesis follows. TL;DR. Talking takes time and effort. So does listening. Be brief. Get to the point.

knappa 7mo ago
They said that they were going to be blunt, not terse.
- lproven 7mo ago
  Fair, but they do often go together.
mapontosevenths 7mo ago
Out of curiosity, are you a reader? When was the last time you read a full length chapter book for fun? Does it feel like work to you? Is it a slow process? I ask not to insult, but to understand. I can't help but wonder if a lot of this demand for terse language comes from a simple inability to read well? Reading is really not supposed to feel like work to the educated, and it does not to me. For me its just a state of consciousness, and doesnt require any more effort than being awake does. I am genuinely surprised to hear otherwise educated people imply that simply reading something a coworker wrote significantly slows down their work.
- MarkusQ 7mo ago
  Not the GP, but I'm an avid reader. One of the books I read (Strunk & White's Elements of Style) had this to say to aspiring writers: "Omit needles words."
  - dcrazy 7mo ago
    One will note that the book, while short, contained more than that one sentence.
    - 7mo ago

lokar 7mo ago

Context matters. You communicate differently in person vs with async text. If you don’t have your thoughts together, if you see a problem but are not sure of the fix, just say that. Make it clear why you are communicating with me, do you have a specific request? A question? Just want to chat? Have a general discussion about an issue? All fine, just be clear

jmward01 7mo ago
I totally missed/muddled the 'clarity' and 'unity' arguments in my response. It would have been a great final point. There is a big difference between being direct and being clear. When there is an issue, what I am often trying to communicate is my goal to get information and to get the rest of the team on the same page. I am seeking clarity and unity and the tool I am using is communication. But there is a difference between seeking clarity/unity and being direct. My points stand about the process of thought and the style of communication there. You can be clear without being direct and being direct is often not the right answer and not even possible. In a previous life I was a pilot. Communication in aviation is exceptionally clear and direct. It is that way because time matters and understanding matters but also because the vast majority of situations have been clearly identified, thought out and formalized well before you are in the air. I suspect other environments have this too, like an operating room. In training we had a system of 'shacks' where if you messed up on the radio in the pattern the day before you owed a 'shack' (a beer to the common fridge) by the next day. The comms there were ridiculously direct and clear but also incredibly formalized. There were exact words for exact situations and the tree of possible interactions, and the communication required, were almost 100% memorized. However, as soon as things got a little out of the norm so did the comms. You really can't have perfect 'direct' communication with dynamic systems. The shack system was great because it shows both sides of the communication world. It emphasized the incredibly direct communication world but then when your mistakes came to light there generally was a lot of indirect communication involved discussing the shack. I would hate to think that software design is so well thought out that all communication could be formalized like aviation or an operating room. It would mean the age of the code assistant really is going to take engineering away because anything so perfectly formalized can also easily be learned by an LLM.

jcalvinowens 7mo ago

> Communication is mind control. The point isn't the words, it is literally trying to get a person to do something. You're describing manipulating people, not communicating with them. The point of communication between engineers is usually to establish a mutual understanding, not make them do something you want. Through that mutual understanding you both come to agree on what should be done. Often, coming to that mutual understanding on complex projects with experienced engineers can be difficult, because we're human and we inevitably misunderstand complex systems in a multitude of ways on our path to understanding them. Being able to be brutally honest with each other about our misunderstandings is what the author is talking about. When you work with people who get that individuals misunderstanding things is part of the process, and nobody takes or imputes it personally, you are suddenly free to focus on the actual meat of the problem instead of worrying how people may or may not feel about it.

pardon_me 7mo ago
> Being able to be brutally honest with each other about our misunderstandings Being specific to misunderstandings is an element that's overlooked. This advice tends to be taken onboard (often to extremes) by those who take it as a free pass to just say whatever comes to their mind, whenever they like, without explaining how they arrived there. Any excuse to avoid putting in effort to be understood or be conscious of the fact that human beings have emotions. We are not robots. I'm glad commenters here are aware of this, as HN sentiment is getting close to the point of treating each other as machines, whilst we train bots to have better communication skill such as empathetic reflection, and allow them more creativity and freedom. Some people are more patient and sympathetic towards computers making mistakes and not following commands perfectly, or being too verbose, than we are with our fellow human beings.
- avilay 7mo ago
  Totally agree with this! Being "kindly honest" is way better than being "brutally honest". Being honest and direct is important of course. I have often found that delivering constructive criticism in the so-called sandwich manner often obfuscates the message, so delivering it directly is much better. However, being kind to the receiver of the feedback by having empathy for them and supporting them as they process that feedback will help land that message far more effectively than being "brutal" about it.

thyristan 7mo ago

> The better a person is at communication the more they will fit their message to the audience to get the action intended. If 'direct' really works then over time it will be used but the fact that direct isn't used often implies strongly that it doesn't work for most people or it has secondary effects that are too negative. Demanding the exception is a pretty big ask especially if your aren't willing to meet half way. 'Direct' can work and does work, depending on culture. There are direct cultures, where communication is primarily intended to convey information. There are indirect cultures, where communication is primarily intended to convey social status, manipulate social bonds, or perform culturally necessary rituals. With the actual information being secondary. In a direct culture you will tell say "I want to buy this bread". In an indirect culture, it might be more like "Hello, be greeted, o nicest and finest of all shop clerks, nice weather, $deity be praised for her mercy of having me walk this earth for one more day. All your wares look magnificent, but might I inquire if it would be possible, if it isn't inconvenient, reserved or forbidden, to maybe ask about how that very fine loaf of bread came into your possession? ...". All the while tourist me, back in the queue rolls his eyes in total annoyance, having suffered through innumerable minutes of waiting for people to get on with their useless diatribe. Since HN is primarily engineers, time is precious on this earth, and secondary considerations should be secondary really: There is only one desirable mode of communications. The direct one. Everything else is a waste of time. Being indirect and long-winded isn't "bad at speaking and listening". It is being inconsiderate and rude. It is putting secondary things before the main issue. I think cultures need to be changed to be more direct. Your last points are valid, sometimes you need some time and collect your thoughts. But in this case, you should just ask the other person to help you think, and directly tell them that you haven't fully formulated your issue and need help with that. That is a far more productive way to deal with the issue of half-formed thoughts and questions. Beating around the bush and using another person as a involuntary rubber-ducky is also rude, and only excusable in rare circumstances.

Twey 7mo ago
The Gladwellian direct/indirect dichotomy (or continuum) is a misapprehension of how language works. All communication is indirect in some sense because we don't have mind control powers over our fellow humans. Even saying ‘I want to buy this bread’ is indirect in a sense: you're not causing the baker to sell you the bread, nor even explicitly instructing them to, but just stating your personal internal desires. It is a cultural construct that being told someone's internal desire is supposed to function as a ‘direct’ instruction to satisfy it, and even in that there is a lot of room for ambiguity depending on context etc. For example, if I were speaking not to the baker but to my friend as we peruse the bakery together, ‘I want to buy this bread’ could have a variety of intended impacts on their actions. It could mean ‘let's come to an agreement about whether we should collectively buy this bread’. It could mean ‘pass me my wallet so I can pay for the bread’. It could mean ‘go and find me a shopkeep who can legally sell me the bread’. It could just mean ‘you are my friend and I'm telling you my internal monologue so that you can understand me better’. If you interpret the language of a different culture (separated by space or time — try reading the ‘flowery’ language of Victorian or Elizabethan literature) too literally, it reads as ‘indirect’. But that doesn't mean that the native speakers from that culture consider it so. You're simply missing the cultural context that makes their phrasing as ‘direct’ to them as ‘I want to buy this bread’ is to you.

throw10920 7mo ago

> They are demanding people have perfectly formed thoughts crafted in a way to give them just the information they wanted with no consideration for the process of thinking or consideration for the person speaking. No, this is not what the author asks for. There's nothing in their article that says that people need to have "perfectly formed thoughts" or "only give them the information they asked for". > It is selfish and impossible. You fundamentally did not understand the point that they made (quite clearly). The thing that they are actually advocating for turns out to be neither. > Communication is mind control. The point isn't the words, it is literally trying to get a person to do something. Author also does not say that they think Crocker's Rules should be applied in all cases or that convincing someone of something is unnecessary. > A second aspect here is that while communicating we are developing our thoughts. We need time to tease out our real intentions and filler conversation helps that. Author is not (specifically) talking about filler conversation. And on top of that it's really clear that they're primarily talking about digital communication - where filler conversation is unnecessary, unlike verbal communication. > The writer asks for it, so I will be blunt. Before being blunt, try being correct. And responding to the points that the author actually made instead of constructing a whole field of strawmen.