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Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

Q. Other things you’ve learned?

A. The importance of overcommunicating.

Funny... I've had a friend who's been marked down at multiple companies for 'overcommunicating' - things like reiterating the todo list from a meeting out to everyone, and including people who couldn't be there but would be impacted, emailing a group with a question and to make sure everyone understands what the impact of XYZ will be. Most people hated it. Well, I was fine with it - I think there should be more of it, and I don't think most people really grok that in knowledge work, that's all you've got - communication. Making assumptions or ignoring/forgetting to notify some parties of XYZ have huge ramifications.

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There is overcommunicating and then there is noise. Getting the difference right is what successful overcommunication is about

One can possibly indicate in this case it was 'noise', but constructive feedback on things like "we don't need to know about X, but we do need to know about Y" would be helpful.

"Quit sending so many emails!" is about all he'd generally get. In at least one case, I suspect it was more about control of information than anything else - when too much info gets to too many people, it's harder to claim plausible deniability.

"Quit sending so many emails!" means he was sending too many emails to people who didn't want them. If every message had value to everyone receiving them, nobody would complain. An unattainable standard. without erring on the side of not sending useful stuff, but you have a decent margin where people will ignore your noise because your signal is valuable. Nobody complains about spam for things they end up buying.

CC'ing a group "just to keep everyone in the loop" is overcommunication. Pulling out the details that are useful for the whole group, if any, and then sending followups with additional details to a subset of people is the effective way to do it. It's a lot of work and it's why so many people who effortlessly handle in-person communication have trouble with written/broadcast patterns, they just aren't used to putting the extra work in.

In my experience, emails from people like this turn into those "Are you sure you want to exit without saving?" pop-up dialogs: if I get them too often, I start ignoring all of them, including the important ones.

What's worse, in my experience, is when people are unable to provide the necessary information, even when questioned directly, because they don't understand or appreciate the assumptions they've been making.

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