Comment by beaker52
6 years ago
Did you (try|consider) sshd?
"Yes, it wasn't suitable because..."
"No?" Ah ok, I think it'd work really well here because...
Direct, no assumptions, no trick questions, no toes trodden on.
6 years ago
Did you (try|consider) sshd?
"Yes, it wasn't suitable because..."
"No?" Ah ok, I think it'd work really well here because...
Direct, no assumptions, no trick questions, no toes trodden on.
The directness here is important. If you start playing word games to imply things (non-threatening, non-accusative) etc., you confuse the message. You know what's worse than a threatening or accusative question? One where the recipient spends their time trying to guess what second meaning might be implied with the obviously convoluted wording. Clear, direct questions that have only one distinct query.
>> Would there be any tradeoffs using sshd here?
Some might focus on the tradeoffs as the primary query, but others might assume that the real intent is press for an alternative to sshd. It sounds like you know something, but didn't want to say it, and now you want me to infer it from your question.
Some people might be offended or sensitive to direct questions, but that's for them to work through with their therapist.
> Some people might be offended or sensitive to direct questions, but that's for them to work through with their therapist.
It's a fair position to take, but in some cases where successful communication is a necessity, that stance doesn't cut it.
My go-to heuristic is "the wordier the question, the more likely it is to be perceived as well intentioned."
So if I'm wondering why someone didn't use sshd, I might say, "So I'm wondering if you considered using sshd for this? You probably did, I'm mostly curious about how you think it fits into things."
Wordiness works in my favor in two ways. One, the extra words help me to be precise in my _intent_ behind what I'm saying. Fewer words may, in some cases, technically be more precise, but have a tendency to leave the other person considering whether their initial interpretation is really the correct one or if there is some other implication to the words they're not seeing. Using more words cuts down on that effect quite a bit. It narrows the search space, so to speak.
The second way is that because I'm presumably actually speaking the question, it allows me to closely shape my intonation to be as neutral as possible. I say neutral rather than non-threatening, because non-threatening makes me think of how one speaks to a child, which is definitely not what you want when speaking to a colleague. And of course, you don't want to sound like you're coming from a position of superiority either. I like to think of it as an adventure between me and the listener to solve the puzzle. That takes the focus off some implied power struggle between me and them and instead frames things as the listener and I teamed up to slay the puzzle-dragon.
Number two doesn't apply if you're communicating through text, which is why it's important for those who communicate through text very often to have a tendency of always assuming the best intentions of a given piece of communication until proven otherwise, or by intentionally asking for clarification when necessary.
I was born when my dad was about 41 years old. The significant generational gap between us caused some difficulty in the way we communicated with one another and so I was forced to adapt my approach to communicating with him as I grew up. Now that I'm older, I find that I'm exceptionally good at communicating with other people where cultural differences between the communicators might otherwise result in issues for someone without the same type of "training" as me.
The downside is my written communication tends to be annoyingly wordy. Ironically, my high school English teacher didn't like me very much.
EDIT:
And knowing your audience is important too, of course. The direct, "Did you consider using sshd for this?" would be fine if I were talking to a senior dev, or someone I know is unlikely to take offense to a direct question. Actually, in the particular case of a senior dev, I'd probably reword it to be, "Why didn't you use sshd here? I would've thought it would be useful because of x, y, and z." This frames it as me asking for guidance from the master. I like to bring the wordiness technique in for cases where I know the listener has a tendency to take things the wrong way. Definitely not to be used all the time or else you get a reputation for being a wordy speaker.
> My go-to heuristic is "the wordier the question, the more likely it is to be perceived as well intentioned."
Just wanted you to know that I have a conflicting heuristic (which admittedly may or may not be unique to me): "the wordier the question, the more likely it is that the intention is being hidden from me".
Inefficient, wishy-washy, wandering questions set off my spidey sense that tells me I'm not getting the full picture. Earlier in my career, such an interaction would have left me with some risidual anxiety, feeling unsure that I'd been given honest feedback and questioning whether I'd done a good job.
I'm speaking only from the point of view of a review situation of course.
At the end of the day, if I need something from someone, I'll contort my discourse in any way necessary to achieve the end I need. Even if it means tip-toeing around someone who's extra sensitive. I'm not out to make my life harder. And to be clear, when I say "direct" I'm implying neutrality. I'm not talking about direct, yet antagonistic, questioning (which I'd argue is less direct than neutral questioning).
In person communication is less of an issue because you can use things like body language and tone to take the edge off.
However I've found through experience that the more words you add, the number of possible interpretations increases, and the likelihood you get a relevant answer decreases. Back to the example at hand, maybe it would make sense to chain two distinct queries together: Did you try sshd? If so, what was the result?
It's my belief that in written communication, clarity of purpose is king.
> My go-to heuristic is "the wordier the question, the more likely it is to be perceived as well intentioned."
Are you familiar with "How To Make Friends And Influence People"? It trades on exactly this idea.
Specifically, it trades on this idea to both seem well-intentioned and manipulate people. It uses this presumption of good intentions to cover the true intentions. It buries everything meaningful under an endless sea of noisome, excessive verbiage to lull the reader to distraction and smuggle its actual point past the listener.
Wordiness is what you do when you're worried about slipping something past someone's defenses, for fear of being unable to have the required conversation otherwise.
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Actually, the unfavorable assumption here is that the interviewee did not consider easy solution sshd.