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Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI. It might be that with precision, readability is lost. It's a tradeoff: the more compressed your

Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI. It might be that with precision, readability is lost. It's a tradeoff: the more compressed your language is, and hence the more precise, the more cognitive effort you require the reader to expend on each word. Reading is a translation from your mental model, as expressed in words, to the readers mental model. Words alone don't perform this translation, the act of reading and interpreting does so. With your concision you give no help to the reader in this process. One suspicion I have is that your one-pager was passed through AI because it was too terse to serve the job of aiding the general reader in obtaining an understanding of the topic for themselves. Writing to be read by an audience is a vastly different activity than writing notes that merely, precisely, document for the maximally informed highest-context reader (or one willing to do the work of reassembling this context during reading). When you're writing for others, especially a "generic other", you're expected to adopt their uninformed, low-context, high-difficulty reading position, and fill-out the prose in an aid to their understanding. This will involve: repetition (restatement with different words and ideas), illustration with simple examples, grounding in examples most likely to be familiar to them, explicit statement of steps/procedures/processes that breakdown topics/actions into small units which are each easy to immediately understand, possibly: some humor to break the effort of reading, some asides which engage or interest the reader, some context which makes the reading reelvant to them so they will be willing to expend the effort to read it.

david-gpu 6mo ago
This is such a good summary of effective communication practices. It was the same sort of thought process that I went through when writing technical documentation and presentations, and it served me very well.
balamatom 6mo ago
>Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI. Note that the manager may or may not have incentive at all to provide useful or even meaningful feedback. I mean, he did pass on an incorrect version of the documentation, didn't he? hi! yes. perhaps he wil write inchoate sentence like point out which word is wrong >One suspicion I have is that your one-pager was passed through AI because it was too terse to serve the job of aiding the general reader in obtaining an understanding of the topic for themselves. "Too terse" beats "factually wrong" any day. Anyone who claims otherwise is evil. >Writing to be read by an audience is a vastly different activity than writing notes that merely, precisely, document for the maximally informed highest-context reader (or one willing to do the work of reassembling this context during reading). Now do "writing to be read by an unwilling audience", and "writing to be read by an audience that controls the feeder and shockprod".
- mjburgess 6mo ago
  On your last sentence: The very first sentences should clear warnings not to modify the document, and read it entirely. That the contents of the document are short (<5min of reading) and extremely important. That a lot of effort has gone into making the document short, to the point, and easy to read/use. And if that still doesnt work, arrange a 15min meeting with relevant stakeholders and go through the document quickly before releasing it. It is my view that we have always been an oral species, and the great tyranny of the written words always a great burden, and any writing of any complexity or technical depth, out of reach for all but an elite. Speaking to people in a meeting allows them to emote, express difficulty of understanding, understand the sentiment and priority of what they're hearing -- and most of all, it allows them to listen rather than read. People speak at a much lower information density, and this is a less taxing form of communication. Writing has always been a great burden. It should not be elevated to, nor equivocated with, some great utility or intellectual practice. That was for an era where sound was harder to record and transmit than words; and where meetings required moving around the world. A kind of writing which makes reading even harder is an even worse pathology. This isnt writing for a species of ape, but some one deranged enough to expend cognitive effort in such inhuman ways.
  - yyy3 6mo ago
    >Writing has always been a great burden. It should not be elevated to, nor equivocated with, some great utility or intellectual practice. That was for an era where sound was harder to record and transmit than words; and where meetings required moving around the world. Okay Socrates[1]. Obviously writing has not been a "great burden" because it's 5000 years later and we're still all doing it. It hasn't been enough of a burden for you to avoid this place after 14 years and 12331 karma. The way you've carried yourself on this thread indicates to me that you either don't understand other people's relationship to writing and why it is better than speech for them, or you are simply unempathetic. > Speaking to people in a meeting allows them to emote, express difficulty of understanding, understand the sentiment and priority of what they're hearing -- and most of all, it allows them to listen rather than read. People speak at a much lower information density, and this is a less taxing form of communication. Unless you have an intellectual disability, you can pay enough attention to the written word to get what you need out of it. Speaking is just as much a skill as writing. Who hasn't been in a meeting where the speaker is so boring, dull, or just bad at communicating that we zone off, go to another tab, and end up missing details? At least with writing I can go back and see what I missed. I can check myself. I have ADD and a speech impediment. It is harder for me to pay attention to someone speaking, especially if they are boring, than it is for me to pay attention to a document. If I skim a document and miss something, it's all still right there in front of me. I can buckle down and read the whole thing. I can't replay a conversation. And vice-versa. With writing, I can gather my thoughts, think through what I'm trying to say, and present everything at once as a complete package that can stand on its own. Who hasn't lost a train of thought... or forgotten the word for something... or has a foggy brain and can't seem to remember an important detail? With writing, all of those things happen in the process of creation and get pruned out and fixed in the process of publishing (I use this word loosely). --- The other thing I really wanted to comment on is the wild idea that is somehow okay for your manager to take your work, pass it through an LLM, and then present it to others as if it was your work. Like, what?!?! I don't know what model you're using but AI lies. It lies all the time. It has no understanding. OP shows that because the AI generated overview of his work was full of hallucinations. The fact his manager didn't come back to him and talk to him about his documentation and offer feedback is crazy. AI came and gave everyone a taste of a lighter workload and instantly adults with 20+ years of experience unloaded their minds and started acting like vessels. If I was that manager, I would be deeply embarrassed and ashamed. [1] https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/ https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/
cthor 6mo ago
This is an insane response to someone having their carefully written work casually bastardized by an LLM that rewrote the entire design spec without even being informed. The amount of institutional noise generated by such carelessness far exceeds whatever improvement in readability you could possibly imagine. Any criticism you could aim at the original text that you don't even have on hand (i.e. are completely speculating wrt its readability) you could direct 100x over at the manager's horrible communication skills.
- mjburgess 6mo ago
  You're assuming malign motivations, I'm assuming misplaced ones. It seems more likely to me the manager tried to read it and struggled, then generated something of equivalent size or larger. I'm taking it the generated document passed around was actually at least as large as the one-pager, and hence entirely pointless to rephrase even with the malign motivations you're assuming. Since the poster here wears his personality and writing motivations on his sleeve, it is very obvious to me that he writes at cross purposes with those who read. he says very clearly: he writes for precision, expended a vast cognitive effort per word. Even if, in this instance, my analysis is wrong -- its a comment for the poster here worth considering. Because people don't like to read writing which has taken such effort to produce, because it then requires a great effort to read.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 6mo ago
    When I read documentation, I'm not there to enjoy the experience. I'm there to find out how the documented thing works and how to use it. It's not a novel. I'm not there for entertainment. Chasing readability without maintaining accuracy is a failure in the context of documentation no matter the motivations involved. I'm not saying that readability can't be a consideration when making documentation. I am saying that if you discard accuracy in the process, you've fucked up quite badly. This anecdote would likely be very different if the AI-modified version had been passed back to engineering for a review before sending it out.
    - crispyambulance 6mo ago
estimator7292 6mo ago
No. Someone replaced well thought out documentation with AI fabrications and let GP take the fall for it. That is malicious and inexcusable. It's not on GP, the fault lies with the idiot that ran gold documentation through the bullshit machine. Don't blame someone who was wronged, that makes you a malicious asshole.
- harvey9 6mo ago
  I can still see a path where the manager was stupid but not malicious. The manager sent on a document which he was too lazy to check at least had the right endpoints but left the GP's contact details on. I could also imagine intentional harm to GP's reputation was the goal, with really clumsy execution.
  - antisthenes 6mo ago
    Either way, that person should not be managing anything. And if it was an honest mistake, they need to come out and apologize both to the IC and to the team that is using the documentation.
    - plumbees 6mo ago
      Many mangers shouldn't be managing anything.
    - slava_ 6mo ago
      I think it says a lot about micromanaging practice broadly. the person assigned for a task should be fully trusted and accountable. the manager could've criticize writing, recommend using LLM, but not interfere. what they've done shows lack of trust and responsibility first.
- plumbees 6mo ago
  Without context of who these people are, yes perhaps malicious but perhaps not consciously so. Merits a frank conversation of indicating that the action of AI reinterpretation introduced errors that poorly reflect on OP's reputation and THAT deserves rectification. My worldy observation is that people in all industries lack training. It's all been offloaded to automated systems. And nobody is there to ask questions or think logically. The hospital staff doesn't understand why I'm angry when they call me using an AI to give me information and the AI is asking for so much PII. (You called me! You already have that information! How do I know you aren't a scammer?) They are not the users of their garbage. They aren't trained to serve the customers, they are trained to serve their managers and that disconnect is occuring everywhere. Why do the grocery baggers put heavy objects with the bread. This was never a think in the 90s and 00s, and now baggers are just not being trained properly. Like, wtf... But yes do be on the lookout for malicous people, document, log and look for patterns... don't write it off, document.
sersi 6mo ago
> It might be that with precision, readability is lost The poster you replied to just wrote a comment on HN that is meant to be read by an audience, is clear, well written and well structured. Given that, why ever would you assume that the documentation that same poster produced would be too terse to serve the job?
- rayiner 6mo ago
  Ding ding ding, correct answer! OP's target audience was people who are supposed to be using an API endpoint. It's self-evident OP can write clearly enough to communicate with the target audience.
dogleash 6mo ago
Your post is a masterclass in slippery middle manager yapping. They tried to punch up a deliverable and didn't even check that their new version served the purpose of that deliverable. If parent poster's story is even half true, I'm reminded of the phrase "reckless disregard for the truth." This is one of the vast majority of times where it's perfectly legal to be reckless with the truth, but I can't think of a more succinct description of core problem.
grvdrm 6mo ago
> One suspicion I have is that your one-pager was passed through AI because it was too terse to serve the job of aiding the general reader in obtaining an understanding of the topic for themselves. One idea for you: provide a reference to an explainer with more context, examples, etc. The original one-pager might be instructions. Do A, then B, then C, without context for the purpose of not confusing the consumer with other information.
neutronicus 6mo ago
It's possible the receiving team may have complained about OP's writing before, too. I will say, though, that I think the manager would have done better to encourage the recipients to opt-in to using a LLM to expound on specific points of confusion so that they'd have the actual source document in hand.
Henchman21 6mo ago
You just did the fucking thing he was complaining about. Holy shit I have never seen a point so well made on HN, well done @donatj I believe the correct word choice here is "obtuse".
ehaliewicz2 6mo ago
"Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI." Because they were lazy and disrespectful, done.
krageon 6mo ago
It's kind of hilarious that saying "maybe he wasn't capable of reading comprehension" is supposed to be some sort of reasonable basis to have taken another unforgivable action on.

david-gpu 6mo ago

This is such a good summary of effective communication practices. It was the same sort of thought process that I went through when writing technical documentation and presentations, and it served me very well.

balamatom 6mo ago

>Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI. Note that the manager may or may not have incentive at all to provide useful or even meaningful feedback. I mean, he did pass on an incorrect version of the documentation, didn't he? hi! yes. perhaps he wil write inchoate sentence like point out which word is wrong >One suspicion I have is that your one-pager was passed through AI because it was too terse to serve the job of aiding the general reader in obtaining an understanding of the topic for themselves. "Too terse" beats "factually wrong" any day. Anyone who claims otherwise is evil. >Writing to be read by an audience is a vastly different activity than writing notes that merely, precisely, document for the maximally informed highest-context reader (or one willing to do the work of reassembling this context during reading). Now do "writing to be read by an unwilling audience", and "writing to be read by an audience that controls the feeder and shockprod".

mjburgess 6mo ago
On your last sentence: The very first sentences should clear warnings not to modify the document, and read it entirely. That the contents of the document are short (<5min of reading) and extremely important. That a lot of effort has gone into making the document short, to the point, and easy to read/use. And if that still doesnt work, arrange a 15min meeting with relevant stakeholders and go through the document quickly before releasing it. It is my view that we have always been an oral species, and the great tyranny of the written words always a great burden, and any writing of any complexity or technical depth, out of reach for all but an elite. Speaking to people in a meeting allows them to emote, express difficulty of understanding, understand the sentiment and priority of what they're hearing -- and most of all, it allows them to listen rather than read. People speak at a much lower information density, and this is a less taxing form of communication. Writing has always been a great burden. It should not be elevated to, nor equivocated with, some great utility or intellectual practice. That was for an era where sound was harder to record and transmit than words; and where meetings required moving around the world. A kind of writing which makes reading even harder is an even worse pathology. This isnt writing for a species of ape, but some one deranged enough to expend cognitive effort in such inhuman ways.
- yyy3 6mo ago
  >Writing has always been a great burden. It should not be elevated to, nor equivocated with, some great utility or intellectual practice. That was for an era where sound was harder to record and transmit than words; and where meetings required moving around the world. Okay Socrates[1]. Obviously writing has not been a "great burden" because it's 5000 years later and we're still all doing it. It hasn't been enough of a burden for you to avoid this place after 14 years and 12331 karma. The way you've carried yourself on this thread indicates to me that you either don't understand other people's relationship to writing and why it is better than speech for them, or you are simply unempathetic. > Speaking to people in a meeting allows them to emote, express difficulty of understanding, understand the sentiment and priority of what they're hearing -- and most of all, it allows them to listen rather than read. People speak at a much lower information density, and this is a less taxing form of communication. Unless you have an intellectual disability, you can pay enough attention to the written word to get what you need out of it. Speaking is just as much a skill as writing. Who hasn't been in a meeting where the speaker is so boring, dull, or just bad at communicating that we zone off, go to another tab, and end up missing details? At least with writing I can go back and see what I missed. I can check myself. I have ADD and a speech impediment. It is harder for me to pay attention to someone speaking, especially if they are boring, than it is for me to pay attention to a document. If I skim a document and miss something, it's all still right there in front of me. I can buckle down and read the whole thing. I can't replay a conversation. And vice-versa. With writing, I can gather my thoughts, think through what I'm trying to say, and present everything at once as a complete package that can stand on its own. Who hasn't lost a train of thought... or forgotten the word for something... or has a foggy brain and can't seem to remember an important detail? With writing, all of those things happen in the process of creation and get pruned out and fixed in the process of publishing (I use this word loosely). --- The other thing I really wanted to comment on is the wild idea that is somehow okay for your manager to take your work, pass it through an LLM, and then present it to others as if it was your work. Like, what?!?! I don't know what model you're using but AI lies. It lies all the time. It has no understanding. OP shows that because the AI generated overview of his work was full of hallucinations. The fact his manager didn't come back to him and talk to him about his documentation and offer feedback is crazy. AI came and gave everyone a taste of a lighter workload and instantly adults with 20+ years of experience unloaded their minds and started acting like vessels. If I was that manager, I would be deeply embarrassed and ashamed. [1] https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/ https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/

cthor 6mo ago

This is an insane response to someone having their carefully written work casually bastardized by an LLM that rewrote the entire design spec without even being informed. The amount of institutional noise generated by such carelessness far exceeds whatever improvement in readability you could possibly imagine. Any criticism you could aim at the original text that you don't even have on hand (i.e. are completely speculating wrt its readability) you could direct 100x over at the manager's horrible communication skills.

mjburgess 6mo ago
You're assuming malign motivations, I'm assuming misplaced ones. It seems more likely to me the manager tried to read it and struggled, then generated something of equivalent size or larger. I'm taking it the generated document passed around was actually at least as large as the one-pager, and hence entirely pointless to rephrase even with the malign motivations you're assuming. Since the poster here wears his personality and writing motivations on his sleeve, it is very obvious to me that he writes at cross purposes with those who read. he says very clearly: he writes for precision, expended a vast cognitive effort per word. Even if, in this instance, my analysis is wrong -- its a comment for the poster here worth considering. Because people don't like to read writing which has taken such effort to produce, because it then requires a great effort to read.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 6mo ago
  When I read documentation, I'm not there to enjoy the experience. I'm there to find out how the documented thing works and how to use it. It's not a novel. I'm not there for entertainment. Chasing readability without maintaining accuracy is a failure in the context of documentation no matter the motivations involved. I'm not saying that readability can't be a consideration when making documentation. I am saying that if you discard accuracy in the process, you've fucked up quite badly. This anecdote would likely be very different if the AI-modified version had been passed back to engineering for a review before sending it out.
  - crispyambulance 6mo ago

estimator7292 6mo ago

No. Someone replaced well thought out documentation with AI fabrications and let GP take the fall for it. That is malicious and inexcusable. It's not on GP, the fault lies with the idiot that ran gold documentation through the bullshit machine. Don't blame someone who was wronged, that makes you a malicious asshole.

harvey9 6mo ago
I can still see a path where the manager was stupid but not malicious. The manager sent on a document which he was too lazy to check at least had the right endpoints but left the GP's contact details on. I could also imagine intentional harm to GP's reputation was the goal, with really clumsy execution.
- antisthenes 6mo ago
  Either way, that person should not be managing anything. And if it was an honest mistake, they need to come out and apologize both to the IC and to the team that is using the documentation.
  - plumbees 6mo ago
    Many mangers shouldn't be managing anything.
  - slava_ 6mo ago
    I think it says a lot about micromanaging practice broadly. the person assigned for a task should be fully trusted and accountable. the manager could've criticize writing, recommend using LLM, but not interfere. what they've done shows lack of trust and responsibility first.
plumbees 6mo ago
Without context of who these people are, yes perhaps malicious but perhaps not consciously so. Merits a frank conversation of indicating that the action of AI reinterpretation introduced errors that poorly reflect on OP's reputation and THAT deserves rectification. My worldy observation is that people in all industries lack training. It's all been offloaded to automated systems. And nobody is there to ask questions or think logically. The hospital staff doesn't understand why I'm angry when they call me using an AI to give me information and the AI is asking for so much PII. (You called me! You already have that information! How do I know you aren't a scammer?) They are not the users of their garbage. They aren't trained to serve the customers, they are trained to serve their managers and that disconnect is occuring everywhere. Why do the grocery baggers put heavy objects with the bread. This was never a think in the 90s and 00s, and now baggers are just not being trained properly. Like, wtf... But yes do be on the lookout for malicous people, document, log and look for patterns... don't write it off, document.

sersi 6mo ago

> It might be that with precision, readability is lost The poster you replied to just wrote a comment on HN that is meant to be read by an audience, is clear, well written and well structured. Given that, why ever would you assume that the documentation that same poster produced would be too terse to serve the job?

rayiner 6mo ago
Ding ding ding, correct answer! OP's target audience was people who are supposed to be using an API endpoint. It's self-evident OP can write clearly enough to communicate with the target audience.

dogleash 6mo ago

Your post is a masterclass in slippery middle manager yapping. They tried to punch up a deliverable and didn't even check that their new version served the purpose of that deliverable. If parent poster's story is even half true, I'm reminded of the phrase "reckless disregard for the truth." This is one of the vast majority of times where it's perfectly legal to be reckless with the truth, but I can't think of a more succinct description of core problem.

grvdrm 6mo ago

> One suspicion I have is that your one-pager was passed through AI because it was too terse to serve the job of aiding the general reader in obtaining an understanding of the topic for themselves. One idea for you: provide a reference to an explainer with more context, examples, etc. The original one-pager might be instructions. Do A, then B, then C, without context for the purpose of not confusing the consumer with other information.

neutronicus 6mo ago

It's possible the receiving team may have complained about OP's writing before, too. I will say, though, that I think the manager would have done better to encourage the recipients to opt-in to using a LLM to expound on specific points of confusion so that they'd have the actual source document in hand.

Henchman21 6mo ago

You just did the fucking thing he was complaining about. Holy shit I have never seen a point so well made on HN, well done @donatj I believe the correct word choice here is "obtuse".

ehaliewicz2 6mo ago

"Perhaps you should ask the manager why he passed it through AI." Because they were lazy and disrespectful, done.

krageon 6mo ago

It's kind of hilarious that saying "maybe he wasn't capable of reading comprehension" is supposed to be some sort of reasonable basis to have taken another unforgivable action on.