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Comment by beefield | Hacker News Reader

Don't know about questions, but there are couple of answers I have learned to be serious red flags:

1. Yes, I understand. (with no further elaboration or clarifying questions) 2. It's okay/good/going well (again, with no further elaboration when asking how something is going/set up etc)

First one typically translates to something between "I have a completely unfounded illusion of understanding" and "I have no clue but don't dare to say it"

Second one translates typically to "I have no clue whatsoever"

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>"I have a completely unfounded illusion of understanding" and "I have no clue but don't dare to say it"

Or "I'm tired of this droning conference call/meeting where I can barely understand some people's accents and I'd rather just clarify some points in writing later where I don't have to rely on my memory."

>"I have no clue whatsoever"

Or it really is going fine and I don't want to spend forever going into technical details the person asking isn't even going to understand and get interrogated on anything that doesn't sound like it's going perfectly, when everything is under control on my end.

Yeah I am at meetings often like this because I have trouble paying attention or understanding voice communication - I also always watch films with subtitles, but I think tech wise or problem solving I am decent.

I say both all the time, am trusted to handle projects on my own from start to finish, and those projects tend to go very smoothly.

I do also ask questions without hesitation when needed (to the point where it starts to irritate non-developers), but saying "Yes, I understand" or "it's going well" when I do understand and when it is going well is not a red flag.

It's a shame that saying "I don't know" isn't as culturally acceptable in many orgs. Technology is incredibly vast and entirely designed by humans, more people than you could ever imagine in the enterprise actually have no idea what they are doing.

Whenever I have casual conversations with individuals that have the same skillset as me, outside of the environment where I wear my professional "all knowing" persona - Admitting that you don't understand something sparks incredible conversations.

What's even more incredible, is that every time I've stood up and said "I actually have no idea how X works. It is magic to me." Every single time somebody else in the room that had me completely convinced they had a strong grasp on those concepts will also admit they don't know either.

These answers are also my red flags. But I place more blame on culture than the individual sometimes.

#2 might alternately be symptomatic of not wanting to chat with you on the matter, no?

Of course. I thought the context was quite obviously me being in a position where I am expected, for whatever reason, to make a judgement of my opponent's capabilities/progress/quality of work/whatever. At that point I do not that much care if the opponent is a dunning krueger nutcase, just not interested chatting with me, or as per many of your sibling comments, just thinking they know what they are doing so well they do not need to explain details to me. Outcome is the same. Bayes makes me expect that these people are useless. (Obviously Bayes lets me make exceptions once a certain individual has proved himself)

I disagree. I do this all the time when I know (1) someone is presenting a fact to the limit of their knowledge and are not interested in going deeper, or (2) someone is not truly interested in how things are going, and my details will fall on deaf ears, in which case I prefer to conserve energy.

The scenario is even more complex when working for govt. Your role is often that of a sponge: Absorbing all the information presented and volunteering very little, if any, of your own.

As I get older, I try to keep my sentences short and to the point. Often they are dense, layered with meaning. In my experience, folks often wax poetic and use all sorts if inaccurate analogies when they understand very little about the subject.

> First one typically translates to something between "I have a completely unfounded illusion of understanding" and "I have no clue but don't dare to say it"

You didn't mentions the industry so maybe you're in an environment where you spoon feed everyone, but for me it translates "yes I understand the goal and the vague outline, let me go away and dig into the details, then I can ask good questions".

I've noticed that some people, when they don't know the answer to a question, just pretend the question was about something different and confidently answer that other question instead. I really strongly prefer people who know how to say "I don't know".

You can't know everything. What's important is that you know how to learn.

I wish I was better at reflective listening.

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