communication.md

Communication

I like asking people what they are excited about.

One thing I learned is to always be proactive with reaching out to people. Just phrase the first message to short and actionable. Many great things came from someone sending that first message and connecting. Often times Twitter or email are best entry points.

And do ask for help kindly, many will gladly help you or advise.

I try to be thoughtful with my responses and communication. Steve Jobs is great example of what that means. Even so far as taking 10 seconds to craft a thoughtful response.

Notes

• Never underestimate the impact of informal positive feedback on a junior, career-changer or someone new to the stack. Often people just need to know they're on the right road.
• At the end of each meeting ask if they know anyone else you can meet with. I normally tell them I’m trying to expand my network with successful folks in the area/space. Nice way to indirect compliment them.
• Trust your people. Simplify and then simplify again. If you don’t trust your team to present complex concepts in a simple manner, the whole system breaks. Don’t use 10 words when you can use one.
• Remember that almost no conversation ends with a change of mind. That happens later, if at all.
• Bell ran a study to find out what the most productive engineers did differently from their peers. The answer was communication. They did a lot more of it. They bounced ideas with co-workers, they validated solutions with customers, they did their own research, and so on.
• The key to success is overcommunicating.
• Pay attention to who you have the highest-bandwidth conversations with (i.e., important ideas are exchanged quickly and clearly). Work with those people any way you can.
• Respect and honesty are the foundation layer that all human contact is built upon. Whatever the situation and whoever we're talking to, let's offer respect, and let's be deserving of people's trust. Offline or online, it doesn't matter.
• I’ve learned that when I have a positive thought about someone, it’s generally worth communicating it. If I think a coworker saved me on some project, I tell them. If my partner is making me feel warm and fuzzy, I tell her. If someone impresses me, I say so. I don’t think people express these things nearly as often as they feel them, and I expect that many of the positive things that do end up communicated have another motive behind them. Simple earnest positive comments are very much worthwhile.
• Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply.
• My love language is direct feedback and clear next steps.
• If you see something you love online, maybe consider emailing the person and letting them know! Worst case, they’ll ignore it, best case, you’ll forget about it and then be pleasantly surprised when they answer
• Never expect or require someone to get back to you immediately unless it’s a true emergency. The expectation of immediate response is toxic.
• Best calls I've had for months have been audio walk-and-talks and I love them.
• The gross thing about assuming all women in tech are dealing with impostor syndrome is that lots of men take it as permission to position themselves as your mentor rather than your peer.
• My favorite question anyone asks me when I am struggling is, 'Do you want empathy or strategy right now?'
• The business world now works like this: 1. If I don't know you > Zoom. 2. If I know you a bit > Email. 3. If we really work together / collaborate > Text.
• Don’t confuse your critics with your haters. Critics see good in you too. Learn to value your critics. They aren’t trying to mess with you. They may not be correct but critics aren’t haters. Learn to spot the differences.
• The way to keep politics out of work is to keep your work environment professional.
• Some companies think political discussions belong in any part of their work space. Others feel they get in the way of other communication. A suggestion to reject false trade-offs: actively create spaces for these conversations.
• Zoom has conditioned me to believe that if I don’t like an event or meeting, I can just leave—immediately and without a word to anyone.
• 7 principles for better networking (2021)
• Don't prioritize someone else's opinions, expectations or thoughts on your response times over your own needs/wants/availability. Some people will complain you aren't responsive enough, some will think its too much, some will reply to soon for your liking, some too slow.
• Show interest and ask follow up questions to whatever conversation is going on along with while sharing some of your own experiences.
• Tell your colleagues you appreciate them, directly and in private. Kudos are awesome, but a private message from a coworker feels really authentic and awesome.
• The best engineers I know admit when they don't know something.
• Everyone’s favorite subject is themselves. Remember that when you’re trying to strike up a conversation.
• Conversation should be back/forth, not interrupting.
• It's not a joke if only you thinks it's funny.
• Staying/sitting together is support too.
• People give and receive far fewer compliments than would be good for them.
• Pretty crazy you can just reach out to anyone whenever you want
• The best gauge of intimacy is the first people you want to tell good news and bad news.
• At the end of every meeting, create a feedback google doc. Use this template: [name] Like: Wish That:
• Be willing to speak up and take a stand.
• Put the most important thing out first in announcements, then justify why customers should be still happy.
• Underrated superpower in life: asking for things you want
• I always prefer people who work and root for things rather than rooting or arguing against. Even if you hate something and want it to change you can still channel that into rooting for / building something which fixes it rather than just talking about it.
• Higher level impact often requires influencing peers and leaders. You need to get good at crisply stating why something is important, tailoring details to your audience and communicating regularly.
• They don’t lie to you because the truth will hurt your feelings. They lie to you because the truth might provoke you to make the choices that won’t serve their interests.
• Take a moment before answering / deciding / reacting. Don't be pulled into someone else's tempo, keep your own rhythm and pace.
• Trust can be ruined with a single word, and it’s not easy to rebuild. (HN)
• If all you get out of incident review is engineers who talk more openly about how their stuff fails, you're winning.
• Intent does not erase impact. - Robust community benefits from intentional sporadic engagement. Not every actor has to contribute to liveness. Has to support different modes for different nodes. Communities thrive on growth of individuals, together. Intentions are good fuel for that.
• Basic principles of constructive feedback: 1. Before you give it, ask if they want to receive it. 2. Be clear that you believe in their potential and care about their success. 3. Be as candid as possible in what you say, and as thoughtful as possible in how you say it.
• People try ridiculously hard to make themselves look smart when they’d leave a more lasting positive impression by listening, loosening the other person up, and making them laugh — i.e. making the other person feel smart.
• There are 2 kinds of critics. Some respect the work + want it to be better. Others lack the guts to show their own work and jealously nit pick. 1's are medicine (tastes bad, good for the work). 2's are poison. Knowing the difference is hard but important
• Two insane unlocks: 1. Not caring (or managing) when others know you don’t know something. This lets you ask “dumb” questions, which are often foundational ones. 2. Agreeing with colleagues that feedback isn’t criticism, it’s opportunity. This removes festering frustrations.
• My main goal in most convos is to find the thing that makes the other person’s eyes sparkle.
• Who you bounce around reflections of the world with seems like the single most influential input on your curiosity, creativity, and how clearly you see the world. incalculable how much being + picking friends that coax conviction and help create contentedness pays off in purpose.
• Being low agreeableness is a tax on everyone who happens to encounter you.
• Communication can be a sign of dysfunction in teams. Means people aren't working together in a close, organic way.
• Don’t say maybe when you want to say no.

Links

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• A thread on nonviolent communication
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• Tips on communicating clearly
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• Importance of asking questions and not worrying about messing up (2021) (HN)
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• Chatting with Glue - Cognitive Tools for Augmented Conversation.
• When Should I Interrupt Someone? (2021) (HN)
• How to Give a Status Update To Executives (2021)
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• How to have fewer meetings (2021)
• Ask HN: How do you run better meetings? (2021)
• A practical guide to reducing loneliness (2021) (HN)
• How To Breathe Correctly When Speaking (2017)
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• You Can Only Maintain So Many Close Friendships (2021) (Tweet)
• Great example of well communicated email with action points by Apple Exec
• Ask HN: Books for Effective Communication (2021)
• Good Meetings (2021)
• How to win friends and influence people Summary
• How to communicate your needs as a girlfriend without feeling like you are becoming a mother? (2021)
• Pirijan - Creator of Kinopio.club and co-creator of Glitch.com - David and Pirijan discuss good communication, when to prioritize performance, and having empathy for the user.
• Assertiveness is a virtue that anyone can develop with practice (2021) (HN)
• How to improve your debate and argument skills in an engineering context (2021)
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• On bad advice
• Beyond small talk: Study finds people enjoy deep conversations with strangers (2021) (HN)
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• Почему с вами может быть действительно сложно общаться
• How to be a nice programmer (Lobsters)
• Banal binaries: How power plays into how we communicate (2021) (Tweet)
• How to have civil discourse without flamebait
• Manipulation versus Communication (2021) (HN)
• Ask HN: I'm making like 0 friends at college, how to fix it? (2021)
• Programmer's emotions (2021) (HN)
• Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community (2021) (HN) (Reddit)
• How to work better async through using Loom (2021)
• Rocket.Chat - Communication platform. (Docs) (Docs Code)
• Don't soften feedback (HN)
• Who gives the best feedback? (2021) (HN)
• How to Deliver Critical Feedback (Ed Batista) (2020)
• Every Proximity Chat, Metaverse, and Video Conference Socializing App
• How to mentor software engineers
• XMPP: the secure communication protocol that respects privacy (2021) (HN)
• Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale (HN)
• Precision In Technical Discussions (2022) (Lobsters)
• Don’t point out something wrong immediately (2022) (HN)
• Most helpful thing someone has said to you when you’re in a tough spot
• Ask HN: How do I develop skills to comfort people and offer compassion? (2022)
• Ask HN: What is your recommended stack for real time chat? (2022)
• Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human” (2022)
• What can replace the “what do you do” question at a party?
• Ask HN: If you used to be socially awkward and shy, how did you improve? (2022)
• Epistemic legibility: being easy to argue with is a virtue (2022) (HN)
• The phones of Ukrainian president Zelensky (2022) (HN)
• If you could only ask one single question of everyone you meet from now on, what would you ask?
• The Freedom of the Press | The Orwell Foundation
• Bonfire - Self-host your online community and shape your experience at the most granular level: add and remove features, change behaviours and appearance, tune, swap or turn off algorithms. (Code)
• Much of our waking life is spent in a desperate struggle to persuade others that we are not what we fear ourselves to be.
• The Endgames of Bad Faith Communication (2022)
• Be Less Technical (2022) (HN)
• Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone
• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson
• Not Rocket Science (Meeting Edition) (2021)
• Don't Snark (2020)
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• Ask HN: Why are people in real life so different? (2022)
• How to tame your inner advice monster (2020)
• How To Say No - Templates to help you say no in any situation.
• We don't show typing status (2022) (HN)
• Ask HN: Where do you go for discourse? (2022)
• Советы по знакомству тред
• RetroTool - Online, remote retrospectives made easy.
• flat.social - Fun video meeting app with 2D physics and proximity chat. (HN)
• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson
• The 37signals Guide to Internal Communication
• Building friend catchers (2022) (HN)
• Changing scientific meetings for the better (2021)
• CannedTXT - Business and personal canned responses examples to speed up your communication.
• Ideas for better 1 on 1's
• Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven (2022) (HN)
• Inclusive Design Communities, A Book Apart
• Please don't be spooky (2022) (HN)
• Ask HN: How to Master Verbal Communication? (2022)
• Why Men Are Hard to Help (HN)
• Poised - AI-powered communication coach. (HN)
• Ask HN: How do I learn to communicate effectively? (2022)
• There are three types of meetings
• How to communicate effectively as a developer (HN)
• Effective Sync Meetings (2022)
• Record and transcribe your meetings + more tips (2022)
• Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly? (2022)
• Many meetings during the day affect you negatively
• Impact of meetings on our brains
• Ask HN: How to work with people who push back forcefully? (2022)
• Ask HN: Strategies for Being More Eloquent? (2022)
• Steve Jobs Insult Response (HN)