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> 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

> 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.
Twey 7mo ago
Sometimes what you're trying to get them to do is understand something that you (think you) understand. There's a reason software has tutorials as well as reference documentation. Sometimes telling someone something directly isn't as effective at getting them to understand it as explaining it more slowly or obliquely. Sharing your learning journey to arrive at the understanding is (one possibility for) presenting a working path to understanding. It's also the case that, especially when someone's knowledge diverges a lot from your own, it may not be obvious to them what information is relevant to you — and it may even be surprising to you. As an extreme example, there was a bug where OpenOffice wouldn't print on Tuesdays [1]. This happens a lot with non-technical users, but can also happen with other technical people who don't have the same level of understanding of a particular subsystem (in both directions — if you understand it better they may not know what information is key to understanding its behaviour, and if they understand it better they may not realize what information they're taking for granted that you don't know — e.g. the famous joke about ‘monads are just monoids in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?’). As I've spent more time in technical discussions I've got better at homing in on the information I need — but I can't materialize information that wasn't given to me in the first place. So I'd rather people shotgun information at me than narrow it down to just the one point that they think is relevant. [1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161/comments/28 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161...
wat10000 7mo ago
The point of communication in general is to alter the recipient’s mental state in certain ways. Maybe you want to alter their mental state such that they understand a technical problem. Maybe you want it to be a state that causes them to explain something. Maybe you want to alter their mental state such that they pick you up from the airport. The key thing is that there is a particular goal, and if you want to achieve that goal, you need to work with people as they are, not as you wish them to be.
- jcalvinowens 7mo ago
  Unless you are as open to having your mental state altered by the other person as you expect the other person to be to having theirs altered by you, I don't think you're really communicating.
  - wat10000 7mo ago
    I don’t understand the point of this reply. Of course I’m open to it. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t expose myself to their side of the conversation.
castillar76 7mo ago
> The point of communication between engineers is usually to establish a mutual understanding... I tried to let this pass in the discussion, I really did, but since it came up in various other replies I felt like I just couldn't. We need to get the hell over ourselves as a profession: the fact that someone is an "engineer" says nothing about their communications styles, needs, or preferences as a person. There is absolutely nothing intrinsically different about two engineers discussing a software codebase and two doctors discussing a surgical plan. Or two artists discussing a mural design. Or two musicians discussing a score. Or two stone masons discussing an arch design. Two professionals are discussing a professional issue as peers, and they are both people, which means they will have preferences about their communication styles and needs and none of that is dictated or predictable based on their choice of profession. I have worked with engineers who valued social interaction buffering comments about their code; I have met musicians who valued just being told what to do better in the next run-through. If you[0], as a person, value directness, bully for you. Express that need to your peers, ask them to respect it, be prepared to be annoyed when they don't. But don't assume or expect them to assume that that's your communication style — or that it should be your communication style — because you are an engineer. [0] The reader of this comment, not directed specifically at the person who posted this.
- jcalvinowens 7mo ago
  You read far too much into my word choice. I think you could substitute any technical profession (I would include everything you mentioned explicitly) for "engineer" and what I wrote would be equivalently true. I just happen to have the most direct experience with engineers, and the original article was about engineers. It's true of the technical aspects of art too: professional musicians rehearsing, for example. It's less true when you get into the ingantible parts of art, though... taste is inherently personal.
  - castillar76 7mo ago
    That’s fair! There were a couple comments that used similar language; I didn’t mean to call you out. Yours was the first I saw with it, so I hit reply. Thanks for clarifying.
kajaktum 7mo ago
This is patently false because no one can actually understand something from just trading RFCs or understand things from just purely reading the code. 90% of the time the damn thing is unspecified so you have to give motivating examples
dpark 7mo ago
> You're describing manipulating people, not communicating with them. You interpreted the parent comment in a shallow and uncharitable fashion. You missed the deeper insight the statement has. > 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. You are describing a form of mind control, just not the sci fi/fantasy version of total mind control. If I start a conversation with you about a problem and we end with a mutual understanding (meaning I understand your perspective and you understand mine and we share perspective about the facts of the issue) then I literally used my words to directly impact your your mind (and you did the same). Assuming the "mutual understanding" lands in a place where we both agree the problem needs to be fixed, there's a really good chancw my words also impact your actions. Mind control. Manipulation. Whatever. Communication literally controlled your mind and your actions or it wasn't effective communication.

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.

Twey 7mo ago

Sometimes what you're trying to get them to do is understand something that you (think you) understand. There's a reason software has tutorials as well as reference documentation. Sometimes telling someone something directly isn't as effective at getting them to understand it as explaining it more slowly or obliquely. Sharing your learning journey to arrive at the understanding is (one possibility for) presenting a working path to understanding. It's also the case that, especially when someone's knowledge diverges a lot from your own, it may not be obvious to them what information is relevant to you — and it may even be surprising to you. As an extreme example, there was a bug where OpenOffice wouldn't print on Tuesdays [1]. This happens a lot with non-technical users, but can also happen with other technical people who don't have the same level of understanding of a particular subsystem (in both directions — if you understand it better they may not know what information is key to understanding its behaviour, and if they understand it better they may not realize what information they're taking for granted that you don't know — e.g. the famous joke about ‘monads are just monoids in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?’). As I've spent more time in technical discussions I've got better at homing in on the information I need — but I can't materialize information that wasn't given to me in the first place. So I'd rather people shotgun information at me than narrow it down to just the one point that they think is relevant. [1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161/comments/28 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161...

wat10000 7mo ago

The point of communication in general is to alter the recipient’s mental state in certain ways. Maybe you want to alter their mental state such that they understand a technical problem. Maybe you want it to be a state that causes them to explain something. Maybe you want to alter their mental state such that they pick you up from the airport. The key thing is that there is a particular goal, and if you want to achieve that goal, you need to work with people as they are, not as you wish them to be.

jcalvinowens 7mo ago
Unless you are as open to having your mental state altered by the other person as you expect the other person to be to having theirs altered by you, I don't think you're really communicating.
- wat10000 7mo ago
  I don’t understand the point of this reply. Of course I’m open to it. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t expose myself to their side of the conversation.

castillar76 7mo ago

> The point of communication between engineers is usually to establish a mutual understanding... I tried to let this pass in the discussion, I really did, but since it came up in various other replies I felt like I just couldn't. We need to get the hell over ourselves as a profession: the fact that someone is an "engineer" says nothing about their communications styles, needs, or preferences as a person. There is absolutely nothing intrinsically different about two engineers discussing a software codebase and two doctors discussing a surgical plan. Or two artists discussing a mural design. Or two musicians discussing a score. Or two stone masons discussing an arch design. Two professionals are discussing a professional issue as peers, and they are both people, which means they will have preferences about their communication styles and needs and none of that is dictated or predictable based on their choice of profession. I have worked with engineers who valued social interaction buffering comments about their code; I have met musicians who valued just being told what to do better in the next run-through. If you[0], as a person, value directness, bully for you. Express that need to your peers, ask them to respect it, be prepared to be annoyed when they don't. But don't assume or expect them to assume that that's your communication style — or that it should be your communication style — because you are an engineer. [0] The reader of this comment, not directed specifically at the person who posted this.

jcalvinowens 7mo ago
You read far too much into my word choice. I think you could substitute any technical profession (I would include everything you mentioned explicitly) for "engineer" and what I wrote would be equivalently true. I just happen to have the most direct experience with engineers, and the original article was about engineers. It's true of the technical aspects of art too: professional musicians rehearsing, for example. It's less true when you get into the ingantible parts of art, though... taste is inherently personal.
- castillar76 7mo ago
  That’s fair! There were a couple comments that used similar language; I didn’t mean to call you out. Yours was the first I saw with it, so I hit reply. Thanks for clarifying.

kajaktum 7mo ago

This is patently false because no one can actually understand something from just trading RFCs or understand things from just purely reading the code. 90% of the time the damn thing is unspecified so you have to give motivating examples

dpark 7mo ago

> You're describing manipulating people, not communicating with them. You interpreted the parent comment in a shallow and uncharitable fashion. You missed the deeper insight the statement has. > 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. You are describing a form of mind control, just not the sci fi/fantasy version of total mind control. If I start a conversation with you about a problem and we end with a mutual understanding (meaning I understand your perspective and you understand mine and we share perspective about the facts of the issue) then I literally used my words to directly impact your your mind (and you did the same). Assuming the "mutual understanding" lands in a place where we both agree the problem needs to be fixed, there's a really good chancw my words also impact your actions. Mind control. Manipulation. Whatever. Communication literally controlled your mind and your actions or it wasn't effective communication.