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Comment by glimshe | Hacker News Reader

My anecdote is that most of my coworkers across multiple jobs didn't like to explain anything. I think most engineers don't enjoy being interrupted for questions and I would have appreciated a way to get answers without bothering them.

At the same time, there's a type of person who loves to explain things. They give presentations and are extra helpful when engaged. I'm pretty sure you can still ask them questions.

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I don't like being interrupted, but I'm happy to answer a question when I'm at a good stopping/breaking point with whatever I'm working on.

How does the other person know you’re at such a point?

They send a message asking to see you when you have a moment. In office settings I ask people things when I see them getting coffee and am likewise asked things myself.

Send the question using an asynchronous communication medium (slack, email...) and I'll get back to it when I'm at that point.

Problem is that the type of person that leans towards collaboration and likes to explain things may be getting burned out right now or may be among the first to be replaced.

Anecdata: I am that person, loves explaining things, love seeing my colleagues learn things and grow. Needless to say, I no longer hold a job in the industry.

what did you switch to?

What did you move to?

As of now, unemployment.

OTOH, it's great for the type of person like me, who likes answering questions but is rarely asking them. Like, I don't want to interrupt my colleagues for something I can figure out on my own in comparable amount of time/effort. AI is now scaling this to questions previously way too difficult to answer on my own.

I maybe liked to explain things, but never liked to ask other people, always liked to figure things by myself. Maybe it was the experience from school and university with a lot of teachers that didn't know what they were talking about, which made me not trust other people.

I'm the same as you. I hate asking other people, unless it's for a reference or material to learn. I like to grind to understand myself, and then answer questions and explain things via presentations or a drawing board. I never wonder why I'm like that, tho

That said, hardly anyone asks for explanations now. In my team people default to a chatbot for work questions almost exclusively, and in private life for hobbies I share with other people, they increasingly go for chatbots too.

Turns out, not everyone seems to want a human connection.

Oh, we do want a human connection. But we also want good information, and want to actually know this (i.e. hobby is something to do, not merely a pretext to socialize). The overlap between the two is low.

> At the same time, there's a type of person who loves to explain things.

I like to explain things, and put them in an e-mail or Slack thread, so that I don't have to be bothered a second time about it.

Just yesterday I fixed an OpenLDAP issue we were having as a syadmin team: it was close enough to previous issues I had that I was able to circle to correct area, and was able to fix it, but I explained the context to everyone so I didn't have to be the one to deal with it if it ever rose again.

i love explaining things. it takes the workload off of myself because there is now one more person who could be more independent

Chatting with folks on other teams about technical issues was one of the best parts of my FAANG job.

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