Comment by troyvit

5 months ago

I manage an employee from another country and speaks English as a second language. The way they learned English gives them a distinct speaking style that I personally find convincing, precise and engaging. I started noticing their writing losing that voice, so I asked if they were using an LLM and they were. It was a tough conversation because as a native English speaker I have it easy, so I tried to frame my side of the conversation as purely my personal observation that I could see the change in tone and missed the old one. They've modified their use of LLMs to restore their previous style, but I still wonder if I was out of line socially for saying anything. English is tough, and as a manager I have a level of authority that is there even when I think it isn't. I don't know the point, except that I'm glad you're keeping your voice.

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troyvit

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scorpioxy  5 months ago

As a non-native English speaker living in AU, I can offer my opinion in case it's helpful.

Of course I can't speak to the person you mentioned but if you said what you did with respect and courtesy then they probably would've appreciated it. I know I would have. To me, there's no problem speaking about and approaching these issues and even laughing about cultural issues, as long as it's done with respect.

I once had a manager who told me that a certain client finds the way I speak scary. When I asked why, it turns out that they're not expecting the directness in my speech manner. Which is strange to me since we were discussing implementation and requirements and directness and precision are critical and when they're not... well that's how projects fail, in my opinion. On the other hand, there were times when speaking to sales people left me dizzy from all the spin. Several sentences later and I still had no idea if they actually answered the question. I guess that client was expecting more of the latter. Extra strange since that would've made them spend more money than they have to.

Now running my own business, I have clients that thank me for my directness. Those are the ones that have had it with sales people that think doing sales is by agreeing to everything the client says and promising delivery of it all and then just walking away leaving the client with a bigger problem than the one they started with.