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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 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.

> 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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

> 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

If you take 'direct' vs. 'indirect' literally, you are right. Everything is somehow indirect, because language tries to represent reality, but isn't identical to reality.

But you are missing the point. The real issue is information density. Indirect communication generally has lower information density: You give examples of various possible interpretations of one phrase, and the more possible interpretations there are, the lower the information density is. The longer the phrase is, the lower the information density. One can come up with a few counter-examples, where for example a very long and very indirect phrase might just have one very unique and direct interpretation, but those are rare. In general, direct communication conveys more information with less words.

Sure, if we want to shift topic from directness to density, but that's not a cultural difference either: all (spoken) languages famously transmit at about 39 bits per second [1]. Specific idioms, especially newer ones, might be a bit more or less information-dense, but there will always be others that make up for it. And if an idiom falls too far below the 39 B/s rate it'll get worn down over time to something shorter.

If you are shortening your communication you are doing it by reducing the information content. In some cultures it's acceptable to spend longer buying bread than in others, so you might take the time to exchange more information with the baker. But that is a (to them, if not to you) valuable interaction that they have chosen to have, filled with information whose exchange is (to them) just as important as the price of bread.

[1]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594

>There are indirect cultures, where communication is primarily intended to convey social status, manipulate social bonds, or perform culturally necessary rituals

Very strange way to say being polite.

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.

They said that they were going to be blunt, not terse.

Fair, but they do often go together.

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.

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."

One will note that the book, while short, contained more than that one sentence.

Indeed. And all of them, iirc, to the point.

I think the point is that some of the extra words OP is complaining about aren't needless. It's on the writer to know their audience, but it's also asking a lot to tune a message in a PR review to the one particular person who demands bluntness, especially if they don't know that person well. If the majority of people in the organization respond positively to a certain style (which may involve some amount of phatic speech), then the person who is "over-writing" here is probably making a good decision.

Once I build rapport with someone, I tend to be more blunt, but still balance that with the fact that other people may be reading the interaction, and I don't want to model a rude communication style.

An organization can choose to promote a very direct approach to feedback (Bridgewater is famous for this), but it requires top-down work to get everyone on the same page, not just expecting one developer to mind-read another.

Nobody is advocating for a rude communication style; the disagreement is over what constitutes rudeness.

Some people/cultures see being blunt or to the point as rude.

Others see beating around the bush, wasting time and hogging the listener's brain space with fill material that serves no purpose other than delaying the actual closure/completion of the thought (including insisting on various rituals, either verbal or, in some cases, physical, such as drinking a cup of tea (or coffee) and not broaching the actual subject until both parties have finished drinking), or perhaps (though I suspect this is less common as an actual motivation than generally supposed) taking pains to respect the imagined feeling of the listener, and possibly most importantly, to reaffirm the social hierarchy, as rude.

It's just a difference of perspective.

Nicely put. I like the worked example in para 2. :-)

Tell me, did you ever watch Yes, Minister or Yes, Prime Minister?

If not, I think you might enjoy them.

"Needless." :-D But you're right.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brevity_is_the_soul_of_wit

Dang! A typo, a typo; I do confess't.

> Out of curiosity, are you a reader?

Very much so. I started reading adult novels at 7 years old, and by the time I was 12 or so, I could if I was hurrying read 5 or 6 novels a day. I read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time in 5 days at that age. I've reread it again another 4 times or so.

My personal library is somewhere in the region of 5,000 to 7,500 of my favourite books. I estimate that I have read at least twice as many books as I own, and probably more: in the tens of thousands, I'd think.

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6730645-liam-proven

I only started using Goodreads in my 40s though.

I am also a professional writer and have been for 30 years. I've had 2 short books published, many hundreds of articles for about 15 different print magazines and professional paid articles on 3 commercial websites.

Currently, I am the Linux and FOSS reporter for the Register:

https://www.theregister.com/Author/Liam-Proven

This was one of the hardest pieces to write for me:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/23/david_mills_obit/

I knew little of the man. I had to read at least 30,000 words about him in a single morning in order to learn enough about the man to write his obituary. It was hard work.

> When was the last time you read a full length chapter book for fun?

I have about 25 on the go currently. Most recent start was Polostan by Neal Stephenson. I also have 1 print magazine subscription on top of that, but mostly, I read online now, several tens of thousands of words a day every day.

I think it is far to say I am a big and voracious reader.

Why? Do you think I object to excessive verbiage because I struggle through it? No. I can at a push read about 3000 words a minute but I normally cruise along at 1,500 or so. When I see "estimated reading times" on things online, I typically find they are approaching 10x longer than I take.

FWIW I can also read 5 or 6 other languages than English, but I am painfully slow in all of those. Currently I'm reading a copy of Charlie Hebdo I bought at FOSDEM and the new Astérix album. :-)

> Do you think I object to excessive verbiage because I struggle through it?

That was the heart of my question, yes. The only way I could fathom it was to think that maybe some people just found reading generally difficult. The hypothesis being that those few extra words hurt, because reading in general was high effort.

It seems I was very far off the mark, at least in your case. For what it's worth, I've enjoyed several of your recent pieces and found both the Mills and Hoare obituaries to be both informative and empathetic.

Now I wonder if it is sometimes the opposite problem: A skilled writer losing patience when someone less skilled is at the wheel. Others in his thread explored that theory, and it seems they may be onto something.

> Now I wonder if it is sometimes the opposite problem: A skilled writer losing patience when someone less skilled is at the wheel. Others in his thread explored that theory, and it seems they may be onto something.

Could be.

The KISS principle applies in communication as in the rest of life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

Of course, but it takes skill and intelligence to speak plainly. Meanwhile, half the people you meet every day are of below average intelligence.

It's best not to expect more from people than they have to give.

Aside from the poor tone of this style of writing, short declarative statements don't convey the same information and leave a confusing message.

Without knowing how you arrived at "the point", you are pushing all the work onto the recipient (or worse, every reader of your comment on HN) to verify what you say and how much they can trust you. That could involve researching, checking your credentials, or putting in effort to understand/overlook the emotional tone.

"This is the answer. I have the answer" style dumping of information is a poor form of human-human communication, unless you are directly answering a closed-ended question.