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Comment by chrstphrhrt | Hacker News Reader

Yep. I’ve been on a few remote teams where I write a lot (in plain language too), and have found that if my audience is non-technical management that they simply don’t read it. Decisions continue to be made on their gut whims despite access to the critical information.

I guess that what the article is on about. Writing on its own isn’t enough, the culture must be set top-down to include reading and value added communications as well.

I think a lot of workers who do not have a craft per se just want to coast and pretend to work, and get offended or embarrassed when they encounter serious contributors that make them look useless.

There is an attitude toward the writer of “if you know the topic so well, then just handle ‘it’ and get ‘it’ done”. Unfortunately their idea of “it” has nothing in common with what is described or advocated in the writings.

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Absolutely this. I've actually seen company founders get frustrated and upset at waking up and having Slack channels filled with complex debate that happened over night (even when they didn't need to read it). Not for any clearly articulated reason, just a vague feeling that people shouldn't do that.

Eventually it came out that a big part of it was:

1. Slow reading skills

2. Slow typing skills

With the result that some people felt they just couldn't keep up in such debates and would thus effectively lose by default. This was frustrating to the group of us that could read, write and type quickly because it was basically a mostly implied request that we stop being good at our jobs. The thing you say about workers "without a craft per se" just rings so true to me.

> I’ve been on a few remote teams where I write a lot (in plain language too), and have found that if my audience is non-technical management that they simply don’t read it. Decisions continue to be made on their gut whims despite access to the critical information.

It feels like writing in a business context can easily enter TLDR territory.

I've often felt like I've had to write walls of text regarding various things, where it feels like there has to be a better more efficient way to transfer information between parties.

Walls of text work well for technical documentation, not so much with other things. You want to be concise, but often you literally cannot be.

Maybe a tool like Loom can be useful, but personally I hate watching a video when I can read instead. Maybe others disagree.

that's easily solved by a summary at the beginning of the document, laying out the premise, the conlusions, and a short thread connecting the two.

if you want to get fancy, you can work on organizing the document itself so that it's easily scanned for pertienent info (headings, charts, graphs, footnotes, etc.). but as the oft-quoted twain is said to have said: "I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one."

> It feels like writing in a business context can easily enter TLDR territory.

I frequently actually put "TLDR: Whatever-the-point-is" at the top of my presentations/write ups, and then use the paper to actually provide support and pro/cons.

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