You assume what they say is the same as what they are thinking

The converse is also true. People saying something assume that people listening are understanding and thinking about the same thing. This is why it's important to write things down in details and as-unambiguous-as-you-can forms.

If you're in a meeting and someone puts up a slide deck with a 6 word bullet point that 'explains' what they want, that is a signal that literally no one understands the goal. If they put in a meeting without writing a one page doc about it, they don't understand it well enough to explain it.

And if your progression hangs off delivering that thing, you should by demanding that you get a clearer picture.

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monegator an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> about the same thing

yes. I have to keep telling my colleagues "about what?" for about 4-5 times in a row, at least twice daily, until they finally realize they have to tell me which client, feature, product or whatever else they are referring to.

Even if i know exactly what yhey are talking about.

	▲	atoav 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		If there is a tech-person problem it is this one. I constantly have to interrupt collegues when they try to explain a thing as their explaination attempts are usually way too low level or even bordering on being self-referential. So they explain the concept by using other concepts the listener won't understand either. In my opinion it all boils down to a lack of ability to remember how one felt before understanding a certain concept. If you did you would have an empathic understanding of how word-salady a lot of the explainations are. The first thing you need to tell a uninitiated person is simply where to generally put it and how they already know it. If you explain DNS for example you explain it via the domains they know and how it is like a contacts list for webservers so your browser knows where to look when looking for google.com. Whenever you explain anything you might want to ask yourself why the other side should even begin to care and how it connects to their life and existing knowledge. What problem did it originally intend to solve? Many tech people may start in a different

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nomel 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You also need to force them to justify their requirements, since asking for something way beyond what you actually need is an easy way to hide the fact that they don't understand what they actually need.

In my experience, people like that asking for 10x the actual requirement is fairly usual. But, every once in a while you hear someone say "we should buy the best, so we don't have to worry about it in the future" (when I heard it, that was a 500x cost difference).

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generic92034 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> This is why it's important to write things down in details and as-unambiguous-as-you-can forms.

While that might be a prerequisite for a deep shared understanding, I have made the experience in the last few years that the number of people really reading more than the starting sentence of any message/ticket/email is consistently decreasing. I often have to feed them the information in very small and easy to digest portions. I so dislike that.

	▲	serial_dev 30 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Nobody reads the docs, tickets, or comments under a task, nobody really checks the code they are reviewing, and nowadays thanks to AI, some people don’t even read the code they “write”. People love to ask for documentation, as long as it doesn’t exist. It lets them off the hook, “oh I would have known what to do, I wish we had this documented”. Then you point it out that you have it documented with video walkthrough, asked the team to read it and give feedback multiple times, and nobody gave a f. Managers ask detailed questions about the IC’s tasks and priorities, only to forget it half an hour later and ask again and again. I don’t see the point of fighting this, I’m sure I do the same to some degree. You just need to assume nobody reads anything and nobody listens or remembers anything, so be patient and explain everything every time… at least I don’t have a better strategy.
	▲	onion2k 27 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		People often don't, but AI always does. As we rely on AI more and more, having strong docs will become even more important.

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anilakar 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What I say: This is not ready for production.

What management hears: We can sell this to the customer for acceptance testing.

	▲	nlitened 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		What you say: I don’t want to take responsibility. What management hears: I want someone else to take responsibility for me.