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Comment by borplk | Hacker News Reader

I adjust the level of details and technical stuff pretty well according to who I am speaking to.

But sometimes someone with very limited knowledge of something asks me a detailed question about X.

What they ask is too difficult and complex to be described in a simple way. Either I have to overly simplify it which may insult them and will do no good or I have to go on and step by step give them digestible chunks of explanation which will inevitably be a bit technical even though I try to minimise that.

I think it's a two-way thing. The person should also consider their own level of knowledge before asking for an explanation of something and adjust their question based on that.

I don't ask my doctor to tell me why my heart does this and that because I simply don't have the knowledge to be able to understand his answer. I ask, my heart is doing ok? cool!

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Looks like I'm one of the people you are referring to. Like anyone with a healthy dose of curiosity, I'm interested in anything that is, well, interesting. I'm excited to meet people with expertise in various areas and ask them questions. I don't expect to understand their answers in full but in most cases I can still grab part of them. Based on my partial understanding in the first answer I can ask a better question the next time, and after several cycles I can probably learn something valuable (at least in the sense of satisfying my own curiosity).

The point is, if you don't ask questions in areas you are not familiar with, you will never become familiar to these areas. Well, unless you learn everything from books and Wikipedia.

I'm not sure how many people see me as an annoyance, but at least I'm consistent, in that if other people ask me questions in my expertise, I'm happy to try my best and explain.

Oh, and if it's just impossible to reasonably answer my question in a way that makes any sense to me, I expect you to just say it, and I'm happy with this.

You are not the person I'm referring to because you say you are happy with that.

I do what you described too, in parties or whenever I have an opportunity for a discussion with someone and I enjoy it and they ask me questions too and we try our best to teach each other something which is perfectly ok and fun.

What I was referring to was mostly employee/boss situations where the boss asks the employee about the details or internals of system X and then gets pissed when the engineer can't explain it to him and blames it on them because they were incapable of explaining complex things to non-technical people.

I mean they have to appreciate that there's a limit to how much you can explain to non-technical people in simple terms. At some point it just doesn't work, and either you have to use the big words, and concepts and assume knowledge, or drop back to dead simple insulting analogies. You see that server boss? That's like a train! choo-choo!

I honestly I can't think of a single example where I was unable to determine the right level of explanation for someone. I think it's a unique skill that even non-engineers are often only superficially proficient at; though on that note, I do think that engineers aren't exposed enough to communication topics in University - most CS classes don't require group work, don't require verbal explanation of complex systems, etc. [1]

Reading, writing, and any sort of public speaking (especially debate if there's an opportunity) are TREMENDOUS for teaching you how to get into other peoples' heads, figure out how they're perceiving what you're saying, and adjusting what you're saying. I will sit in most of my CS classes and be PAINED when the class spends 10 minutes on a question because there is a disconnect between the misassumptions the student is making and the instructor thinks something else is the culprit.

These skills are also incredibly helpful in being charming and getting what you want without being manipulative.

[1]: Which is why some, like mine, created programs to blend CS and business to start to solve that problem. Students have to interact with paying customers, have to be accountable for their own code releases, are responsible for ALL of the requirement soliciting and fulfillment, etc.

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