
When to Overcommunicate - danshapiro
https://blog.glowforge.com/you-arent-communicating-nearly-enough/
======
throwaway713
I personally find overcommunication annoying and don't like to hear constant
status updates from people; just handle the work and let me know when it's
done unless you have any blockers.

That said, I've received feedback from multiple people that they never know
how my work is progressing, are surprised when it's completed, and would like
more status updates along the way, so I think it's safe to say that my
preferences are an anomaly and you should probably follow the article's advice
instead.

~~~
zenpaul
The overriding thing is to "take care of each other". If they want more
updates, send more updates. If they want less updates, send less updates. How
do you know what they prefer? Ask them.

Communicating about communicating is underrated.

~~~
cmonnow
> If they want more updates, send more updates.

Then comes the adage 'under promise over deliver'.

If you send out an update saying you're working on cool X
module/technology/idea to solve a problem, and then it turns out you couldn't,
it's a bummer across the table.

Even if it succeeds, you don't get much credit for it because everyone
'pitched in' with their ideas/tweaks at the beginning, so now the entire team
feels like you were just the implementer of the team's design/strategy.

Call me a lone-wolf cowboy if you will, but it's a plain truth that no amount
of 'team-players' can deny.

And if companies do not want to work with such under-communicators, no big
deal. Not everyone meshes with everyone else. There's plenty of other
candidates in the sea, and plenty of other companies in the sea.

------
dangrossman
I find it amusing to see this come from Glowforge, a company known for its
poor communication with customers. They sell $6000 lasers to consumers but
have no phone number to talk to them. You order, give them your money, and
then you'll hear nothing from them from over 30 days while you wait for your
purchase: often customers don't get so much as a shipping confirmation before
their order finally shows up at their door. If you email them, you get an
auto-reply saying they hope to get back to you within 3 business days, which
means troubleshooting an issue with their products can mean multiple 3-day
round-trips back and forth to get resolved under warranty. And they have a
habit of introducing and pulling software features without any advanced
notice, when many of their customers rely on their $6000 lasers as production
equipment for their small businesses, so these unannounced changes can be
disruptive to say the least. All issues that could be fixed with some better
communication. And it's too bad, because I think they easily have the best
product in their niche of consumer-targeted laser engravers (ping me if you'd
like a $500 discount... I own one).

------
jezclaremurugan
Anecdotal experience - I've noticed that shipping late by 2 weeks with advance
notice to stakeholders is taken way more positively than shipping late by 1
week but informing people late.

This seems like plain common sense and required courtesy but I've been on the
wrong side of this from both approaches enough times from both sides of the
table - people somehow have a block in sharing the bad news (also because in
unhealthy places the messenger is shot - just makes me realize that I'm in a
good place).

(In any case the blog actually talks more of sharing the context you are in
and not just about sharing bad news early - sharing context is definitely
safer and a better approach)

~~~
pfyra
I don't remember where I heard it but "It is OK to disappoint but not OK to
surprise" rings so true. Also, the earlier you know you'll be late the bigger
the chance is that additional help can avoid the late delivery.

~~~
bartread
That's my experience too: as long as you keep people up to date and your
updates follow some sort of schedule, late delivery is generally tolerated,
especially when it can be seen coming from a reasonably long way off.

I always try to front-load the riskiest and most difficult work on projects
for this reason: that way you're never in the situation where everything looks
fine until it all goes off the rails at the last minute.

------
specialist
I wish there were more articles like this about communications, organizational
psychology, effective coordination, etc.

But mostly, I wish there were ways to recognize, navigate, negotiate people's
different styles.

TMI from recent my turn at the woodshed:

Noob manager (Jane) is unhappy with my communication. Wants more detail. Her
prerogative, so I try. So in addition to adjacent desks, always on Skype,
standups, status reports, very verbose commit messages, novels added to JIRA
tickets, I start writing daily status reports.

Months of "improvement", no change in satisfaction.

So us chickens are sitting around trying to troubleshoot something. Me (Bob)
and another coworker (Stan) casually noticed that a third (Steve) seems to
have a great working relationship with manager (Jane).

Stan and I are astonished (gobsmacked) to learn that Steve is privately
texting (via Skype) Jane 15-20 times per day. The smallest updates. "Just
committed changes for JIRA 123". "PR 303 approved and merged." "Build
successful!" All sorts of emoji.

I would have _NEVER_ thought to spam my manager all day every day. But that's
apparently what Jane wants.

The weird part in all this, like most miscommunication, is Jane couldn't say
what she wants. Nor did it occur to her to tell Stan and me to be more like
Steve.

~~~
hairofadog
Same: I struggle with finding a balance between too much and too little
information for different people. For a while I wrote detailed, (and in my
opinion, clear) status reports for my higher-ups, but nobody ever read them,
so I stopped.

There was a line in an old TV show that stuck with me: one of the characters
asks, “When’s the date of that dinner again?” The other character says, “It’s
Saturday, I just told you that.” The first character replies, “Yeah, but I
only listen when I ask.”

In my experience, each person has their own way of listening, and it’s a
challenge to keep straight who consumes information in which way:

* Person A only reads the first line of any email, so you have to ask each question or offer each nugget of information in a separate email and there can only be a maximum of two sentences in the message

* Person B only wants to be told the information verbally in the hallway or in a meeting or over lunch, not in written form

* Person C has a lot going on and only has mental RAM, no long-term storage, so they want to be reminded of everything repeatedly: “Just a reminder, I’m out Feb. 15th.” Then “Just a reminder, I’m out next week.” Then, “Just a reminder, I’m out later this week.” then, “Just a reminder, I’m out tomorrow.”

* Person D needs quantified data, charts, and graphs

Etc. I’m not complaining – it’s the human condition, it is what it is – but
personally I find it challenging to thread the needle.

~~~
specialist
Thanks. Really good reply.

My response is that I will now be on the lookout for new strategies, ideas.

I imagine some kind of HR, team building, skill training exercises where
everyone discovers each other's communication style(s). Most of it will be
hooey, but there will certainly be some kernels of truth.

It also now occurs to me that UX & ethnography types could observe users to
infer what works. Eye gaze, like buttons, time spent, etc. Imagine building
"emotional intelligence" like feedback tools into Skype.

I know it's creepy. But brainstorming might lead to something useful.

Anyway, thanks again.

------
hinkley
Any long lived project (that doesn't want to end as legacy code) is a
performance art piece.

If you've ever seen five minutes of an opera (go to YouTube if not), they move
their mouths in an almost comical exaggeration so the people farther away can
see what's going on.

Early on when I relied on subtlety, I'd find repeatedly that someone has
grossly mistaken my intention and undone a bunch of work that I put time into.
The bigger the gesture the harder it is for them to either misunderstand or
feign confusion (easier to ask forgiveness... unless forgiveness involves
admitting you're an idiot).

------
xbryanx
George Bernard Shaw probably didn't say that, "The single biggest problem with
communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/31/illusion/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/31/illusion/)

The source of that aphorism is probably William H Whyte and is better
understood with its context about listening.

"LET US RECAPITULATE A BIT: The great enemy of communication, we find, is the
illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not
listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society–and
thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek
understanding."

------
terom
I do a lot of ops-ish work, and in addition to all the nice declarative
configuration-as-code things where infrastructure changes are reviewed and
applied in pull-request form, there's a lot of ad-hoc debugging/diagnosing and
one-off changes that get done.

I totally over-communicate on everything where I'm debugging or mutating the
actual shared infrastructure. In some places, this is literally in the form of
displaying all `sudo` logs in-line in the IRC channel. If I'm debugging some
issue, I'll be copy-pasting links to google results, screenshots of the the
monitoring graphs and any diagnostic command output into that slack thread.
Once I figure it out and either run some one-off commands or make a PR to fix
it, I'll include those in the the chat. If I typo some command and (almost)
make a mistake, I'll certainly mention that as well.

It's a real-time log/diary of the investigative process and any changes. These
slack threads are typically solo threads, with just me replying to myself.
This is fine. Occasionally other people will comment on something,
occasionally I'll be searching for and referring to those threads later on.

Stuff that I'm working on solo and isn't leaving my laptop outside of a `git
push`? Not necessarily worth mentioning before it hits GitHub, but please
spend some time and write a useful PR summary.

------
kaetemi
Both have advantages, from my experience.

Communicating useful everyday things with coworkers brings in a more friendly
atmosphere, which lets people trust you with work.

Going on full communication blackout helps in focusing on actually getting
said work done.

------
a_imho
The article is a fluff and mixes a few concepts. Quality over quantity.
Quantity is a bad proxy. Not in any particular order but some things more
important than quantity: availability, clarity, accuracy, transparency,
traceability. Too many people love to listen to their own voice and opinions a
bit too much anyway. If I had more time I would have written a shorter
comment.

~~~
CaptArmchair
Near the bottom of the article:

> And of course, overcommunicating can be taken too far. If you are taking 4
> hours to write up a detailed status on a 2-day project, that is obviously
> not the right return on investment! Get in the habit of writing status that
> is honest, relevant, and respectful, and also concise.

~~~
a_imho
So? It is still missing the point. Volume is not a good indicator of good
communication. Case in point, this is probably just a run of the mill PR piece
without much depth to generate some clicks, I came away with a bad taste for
wasting my time.

------
luord
The example given for negative feedback is kind of at odds with the point of
the article itself.

Seems like, in that case, the managers themselves didn't communicate until
they had to, and even though they were seeing a problem, they didn't
communicate earlier. Now it's in the onus of the employee to give constant
updates else he risks losing his job, even though he wasn't given constant
updates from the other direction in the first place.

In general, the article seems to be saying "tell everything to the managers,
make their jobs easier", and here I thought one of the responsibilities of
management was making work easier for the employees.

Sure, communicate, but it should be in both directions.

~~~
twoquestions
> I thought one of the responsibilities of management was making work easier
> for the employees.

Every place I've worked, it's management's job to enforce status hierarchies
on their subordinates, and making people's jobs easier is directly in conflict
with that primary objective.

You may work in a different culture than I do though, the vast majority of
work here no matter the industry is of the "no excuses" variety stated in the
article.

~~~
luord
I've worked in pretty much the same kind of companies as you have and I
completely agree with you.

I was being deliberately overly idealistic in my first comment (and it was
perhaps a bit of a reassertion of how I would handle management in my
hypothetical own company).

------
shruubi
I want people to be capable and independent, they should be up front and
honest about things but if someone is too stuck on the minutia of "how and how
much" in terms of communication then what's the point?

On top of which, to be perfectly honest, the people I work with are barely a
step above strangers to me, so the last thing I want is to hear about their
personal life. I certainly don't know or trust these people enough to trust
with anything more than "I've got personal/family/medical issues, can you work
with me while I handle these things?" and quite frankly I don't want or expect
anything more from my coworkers than that.

------
amwelles
I started communicating more by giving end of day updates to my managers after
I started falling behind on projects. It didn’t just help them—it helped me.
It kept me on track and I could more easily see when/if I was falling behind.

------
war1025
> The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has
> taken place.

I've found that usually when a conversation is going on, particularly in text
format, much less information is conveyed than you think at the time.

An interesting thing I've done before is to go back through old conversations
where I thought I really "bared my soul" about a particular topic.

Often there is next to no information actually exchanged. What I was actually
doing was feeling strong emotions. They were in no way conveyed over to the
other person.

------
mewpmewp2
There is one aspect of communication. Asking questions. Sometimes I wonder if
I am not asking enough. I will always try to figure out myself rather than
ask. I am afraid if I ask about something and it is actually findable I am
perceived as lazy, stupid or incapable of finding the answer myself so I have
to waste others time and ruin their workflow.

I wonder if I am hurting myself with it and is it good or bad for my career
and life.

I suppose there is a balance there somewhere, but I am not sure whether I am
underasking or overasking etc

------
rwnspace
We don't need any more arms races, thank you. It doesn't take much to work
slightly less hard (or less publically), communicate in a way that's efficient
with other people's attention and time, and stop humblebragging on social
media about your lifestyle and material goods.

It's not good to wear training wheels all the time. Worrying about the minutia
of communication makes you less able to see what is being said, and makes you
look for confirmation of your predictions/worries instead.

