Comment by nicoburns
10 hours ago
> It seems more likely to me the manager tried to read it and struggled, then generated something of equivalent size or larger.
Either way, it's poor management to interpose oneself between employees. As a manager you should be connecting groups of people to talk to each other directly, not injecting oneself as a go between. If they have issues understanding the material they're much better off asking the OP directly than asking the manager who doesn't understand it either. And they'll be in a much better place to do that if they have read the material OP actually wrote.
I didn't interpret mjburgess as defending the manager or even condoning the action. In fact, I read their comments as recognizing that action as a failure.
The difference is that mj was trying to give advice to donatj, and donatj can't control what their manager does. So the advice is crafted such that it gives actionable suggestions to donatj.
Yet, that might not be the correct interpretation. I don't know, I'm some third party, like you. Personally I agree that this is poor management but I don't think just blaming the problem on the manager solves anything, it just leaves the problem broken. So the things to do are either fix the problem or figure out how to work with the broken thing.
> So the things to do are either fix the problem or figure out how to work with the broken thing.
So, I will say that if you did not seen or read a text in question, there is no way for you to accurately diagnose issues with the text and give out advice on how to make it better. Such advice from someone who simply assumes the way the text was wrong based on some manager rewriting it with ai is less then useless.
It is, frankly, ridiculous to think one can give meaningful advice about text you have never seen. And then double down in comments.
It's not based on writing they didn't read...
The feedback is to the author of the post complaining (understandably) about their manager using AI and destroying the carefully written document.
That post alone is plenty to give feedback on absolutism and the nuances of existing in the world with mostly neurotypical people. [My interpretation of the feedback]
We dont care about the manager, they don't matter. This is not "defending" or "justifying" the manager, in case you see it that way.
I'm not the manager, there's no doubling down.
As for answering the question, you're right and wrong. You're right that I don't have enough information to give specific and nuanced suggestions. Like you said, I didn't see the original doc nor the AI rewritten one. I only have OP's comment. But you're wrong because I do have enough information to write the advice that I did. The advice is still broad because that's all that I can give with the information I have, but that doesn't mean it is useless.
You accuse me of not reading, but I'd encourage you to read my comment again. I explicitly stated that I am not advocating for what the manager did. I explicitly stated that I think it was wrong to do. But we're trying to solve problems, right? I took OP's comment as a legitimate request for help. Maybe they were just complaining and wanted someone to validate them. But hey, they posted in public and so are going to get a wide range of interpretations. That can be helpful, but may not be what was intended.
So either we try to respond to each other in good faith, acting as if everyone here is not acting maliciously, and trying to do their best, or we fight. I'm sorry, but that's what the situation is. If you just want to poke problems with things, then you're not helping. There are issues and limitations, and you're more than welcome to point them out but don't treat the setting like we're enemies. We're not. If you can't figure out how to critique while being collaborative then you aren't going to work well with others. And who knows how effective what I've said is. All I have to respond is your one comment that feels out of place to me. IDK if it's an off day for you, you didn't read right, I wrote wrong, or one of a million other things. But I'm trying to work with others (including you), are you trying to work with us?
Well, OP can learn from the experience or turn it into a hill to die on. Learning doesn't imply you were ever wrong, only that something you did produced an unintended result -- people are themselves problems to navigate around, not people whose actions you have to read as judgements.
The op is probably not the world's most reliable narrator. Based on his very, very specific preferences around writing I'm guessing he can be a bit prickly when it comes to feedback. The manager might have had a bad day and dreaded having the conversation and ended up with this. Still very stupid, but OP is not quite so clearly the martyred hero in this version.
Agreed. Anyone who believes they can write an English sentence that is clear, exact, and bulletproof is foolish at best.
This is the reason professional jargon exists: to narrowly define certain words. But even then, only a tiny fraction of words are so restricted.