This post is a poor exposition of Crocker’s Rules.
Crocker’s Rules were a reaction to the avoidance of direct discussion of topics where some people treat the mere act of discussion in any capacity as offensive. Sacred cows and taboos for which there are social consequences even when asking honest questions. Crocker’s Rules, practically speaking, were a declaration that no good faith discussion was intrinsically offensive ipso facto for the person making the declaration. All taboos were open to good faith arguments and attempts at rigorous intellectual inquiry.
This article is focused too much on communication style and not enough on the subject of communication. The latter was the crux of it. Crocker’s Rules were about being able to rigorously discuss topics that society has deemed to be beyond discussion without taking offense at the fact it is being discussed.
I was present when Crocker’s Rules were “invented”. I see a couple other handles here that may have been as well.
I subscribe to the thesis of Death of the Author, that just because someone came up with something, it doesn't necessarily given them a permanent special privilege in its interpretation. Everybody can understand the work as they prefer, and if anything, the work takes on a life of its own in greater society and evolves together with it. (Hence the limits on the duration of copyright.)
This is why many common idioms are now used in their opposite meaning, and we all understand, and it's fine. As a random example, "It's all downhill from here" can mean either "it gets easier" or "it gets worse". The meaning has changed over time. Also: "I could care less", etc...
> This article is focused too much on communication style and not enough on the subject of communication. The latter was the crux of it. Crocker’s Rules were about being able to rigorously discuss topics that society has deemed to be beyond discussion without taking offense at the fact it is being discussed.
That's a distinction that's not as clear cut as you think.
The problem in the workplace setting is that the subject is the code/system/product/organisation, which has no feelings and hence can't be offended, but many people feel compelled to use an overly verbose style in order to avoid offending the humans charged with the care of the unfeeling object.
There is a certain freedom in treating things as things and calling out their objective properties as is, instead of dancing around the facts.
This is the very same thing as talking plainly and directly about taboo or sensitive subjects. Just do it! It's fine!
Someone's artwork _should_ be possible to (negatively) criticise. Of course, just saying "it sucks" is not constructive or helpful.
You can definitely hurt someone's feeling with unconstructive criticism of thier art. However, pointing out areas to improve should not be too painful to the artist, as they can make newer, better works.
I suppose a difficuly can arise if people get too attached to things they make (art, code, writing, whatever) and don't see any one thing as just a step on the road to even better things.
I think my roundabout point is that companies, code, policies, etc aren't just "things without emotions that can't be offended" because they're all made (or maintained) by people (like art).
There's a difference between constructive directness and immature ad hominem remarks. Kinda illustrates the problem with the authors take. Not everyone can handle it like an adult
Some of those examples are genuinely different as they convey different intent and certainty. Also some of the basic small talk level things are also there to gauge someone’s responsiveness right now. To ask directly can mean “I believe my issue is important enough to immediately change what you’re thinking about to my problem without checking first”. You might complain about breaking your flow, which is fine, but an interruption can be a lot less disruptive compared to getting nerd sniped.
> Both messages contain the same information, however one of them respects time.
Unless you’re an incredibly slow reader this is a tiny amount of time.
> The fact that you were stressed, or that you had inherited the config from someone else, or that the documentation was unclear3, or that you asked your lead and they said it was probably fine, none of that is relevant to the incident report. You can document contributing factors if they are actually actionable, meaning if there is something structural that needs to change, name it specifically and attach a proposed fix to it.
Those are absolutely relevant! A lead told you to do it? Documentation unclear? One stressed person unable to hand over the task?
And you don’t have to have a solution there to highlight a problem.
> If the payment service went down because a config value was wrong, the incident report should say: the payment service went down because config value X was set to Y when it needed to be set to Z.
Contains zero useful information as to how this happened. It’d be like saying you don’t want to know what the user did before the crash, just that it crashed but shouldn’t have done because it got into invalid state X.
The writer asks for it, so I will be blunt. They are demanding people have perfectly formed thoughts crafted in a way to give them just the information they wanted with no consideration for the process of thinking or consideration for the person speaking. It is selfish and impossible. Articles like this, I think, expose how bad we have gotten at both speaking and listening.
"I personally value directness, so when someone communicates with me in that way, it deos influence how I perceive them, even subconsciously."
Communication is mind control. The point isn't the words, it is literally trying to get a person to do something. I often point out to people that if you just couldn't see people's lips move then speech would appear like the sci-fi definition of psychic powers. The better a person is at communication the more they will fit their message to the audience to get the action intended. If 'direct' really works then over time it will be used but the fact that direct isn't used often implies strongly that it doesn't work for most people or it has secondary effects that are too negative. Demanding the exception is a pretty big ask especially if your aren't willing to meet half way.
A second aspect here is that while communicating we are developing our thoughts. We need time to tease out our real intentions and filler conversation helps that. Arguing 'they should have just said x from the start' is 20/20 hindsight a lot of the time. Expecting me to come to you with a terse, perfect information drop tailored to your quirks or else you will get annoyed with me is your problem, not the speaker's.
In the end speakers are practicing a really hard skill and the author ignores how hard it is. Learning to listen when someone has a hard time communicating something is also a really hard skill that this article completely ignores. If I could sum this article up it would be 'I want to give up trying to learn how to listen so now it is your fault I don't understand you'.
Directness can be taken to imply trustworthiness, as the author seems to be doing. But it can just as easily be taken as a sign of ineptitude, technical-mindedness, boorishness, courage, immaturity, confidence, impatience, or a dozen other attributes depending on context and participants.
For that reason, reading this is like reading a blog on poker strategies from someone who is only vaguely aware there are different suits in the deck. It's of course fine to ask others to play as if all the cards are diamonds, which is what I take this as. But the way it is written does strongly imply the author has a hard time imagining what the other suits could be for, or how an awareness of them could change their perception of card games.
Honestly, it's refreshing to imagine the lack of "suits" in this sense-- e.g., spending the day with a group of people who not only all claim to couple directness with trustworthiness, but who all earnestly deliver on that claim. I also get the sense that the author is probably not "sticky" in their judgments of others-- perhaps they'd initially judge me as inconsiderate for using niceties but quickly redefine me as trustworthy once I stopped using them.
I would like to know from the author: in the real world, are you aware of the risks of directness without a priori trust or full knowledge of someone else's internal state? I mean, for every one of you, there are probably several dozen people who claim to want unadorned directness but (perhaps unwittingly) end up resenting what they ultimately take as personal, hurtful criticism. And some number of them (again, perhaps unwittingly) retaliate in one way or another. And I haven't even delved into the social hierarchy of jobs-- it's a mess out there!
The idea that how your audience receives the communication is their problem and not yours is entirely why some engineers are shit communicators and seem lost when facing the realities of human culture and politics. You might wish the world would all just think exactly like you but the moods, interest, and preferences of the people around you are YOUR PROBLEM and you need to engage with them if you want to accomplish anything unless you're some kind of prodigy who will be accommodated because of your unique capabilities (almost no one who thinks they are this are).
> The person invoking Crocker's Rules is saying, in effect, "your feelings about how I might receive this are your problem to manage, not mine, just give me the information."
Isn't it quite the opposite? The person invoking Crocker's Rules is saying, in effect, "my feelings about the information and how I might receive it are my problem to manage, not yours, just give me the information."
It’s been my experience that those that most loudly say they value extreme directness like this are also those with the most fragile egos. If you directly tell them something they did is wrong or non-optimal, they conclude that you’re an idiot, don’t change anything (or, worse, double-down), and will sometimes even berate you (directness!). You need to couch your discussions with them more than is usual with others.
> If the payment service went down because a config value was wrong, the incident report should say: the payment service went down because config value X was set to Y when it needed to be set to Z.
The number of junior engineers I have had to coach out of this way of thinking to get the smallest fragment of value out of a postmortem process... dear Lord. I wonder if this person is similarly new to professional collaboration.
The larger personal site is very aesthetically cool, though – make sure you click around if you haven't!
The discussion shows just how many different communication styles there are. So many comments about "XYZ is the right way", "ABC is always wrong" or "I did UV to someone who says they like UV and they took offence".
It shows me:
- there are many communication styles and people tend to think their preferred one is obviously right
- people are often unclear on what they actually value in communication (and might like the opposite of what they say they value)
- people seem also to, at times, confuse other people's different communication style for rudeness, indecisiveness or small-mindedness.
So I guess the reasonable policy is to adopt a hybrid approach. Be tolerant of other people's comms style, try to be concise with enough politeness added in that you don't offend people, even if they say they want you to be ruthlessly direct. When you need to, try to steer the conversation towards your preferred style. Maybe "ok, I understand the background, let's try to distill the facts now", or equally "I feel I need more context before we continue, let's slow down and...".
For example, I have worked in a number of medium sized (50-200) companies that were so proud of being flat structured meritocracies, where anyone can say anything directly to their superiors. Every single time it turned out to be BS, higher ups wanted deference and following chains of command. But that sounds less catchy.
Many people are taking what I believe to be the wrong message here.
I believe the author's intent was (or should have been) to describe how THEY wanted to receive communication, not how EVERYONE should.
A skilled communicator will craft their message for the audience. Some want "just the facts" with no social lubricant. Others want the banter to build person-to-person relationships. Some want a quick statement of context for everything. If you can adjust the message to the audience you will be more successful at working with them.
I have begun including "how I want you to communicate with me" as part of my standard "introduce myself to new team members" talk.
If we accept that any one person can take responsibility for their feelings then it follows that everyone is responsible for their own mind. Otherwise what exactly are we saying? And emotions are complex, especially offence, it is practically impossible to say that something will reliably offend a specific person without trying it and seeing how they react. Even for the reactee. Someone can easily say "whatever happens I won't get offended". But they might get offended anyway and then we're rolling the dice on whether they are vindictive enough to hold a grudge.
People learn that lesson then don't stir the pot without reason. Rather than saying "I don't get offended" it is generally better to prove it and push people for feedback from time to time.
There is also a subtle point here in things like "if the design is wrong, say it is wrong" - how is someone supposed to know if the design is "wrong"? Philosophically it isn't possible for a design to be wrong, the idea is nonsense. Designs have trade-offs and people might or might not like the trade offs. But a design can't be wrong because that implies there was already a right solution that people could deploy. If someone is going to be direct that is also a problem they run in to constantly - they're going to be directly saying things that are harsh and garbled. A lot of humans aren't comfortable being that person, there is a more comfortable style of being clear about observations, guarded about making value judgements from them and associating with like-minded people from the get-go rather than pushing to resolve differences. And spending a lot of time playing social games to work out how to organise all that.
This is pretty autistic. I kind of agree, being somewhat on the spectrum myself. But I think the world would be a considerably worse place if everyone abided by such rules.
Everyone says that they value directness, and from what I can tell the vast majority of people actually don't.
For example, I had a job interview a couple years ago where the interviewer showed up fifteen minutes late for a thirty minute interview. Eventually he did show up, and the interview proceeds more or less fine, and near the end he asks if I have any questions. I said "is it common to show up fifteen minutes late for interviews that you schedule? Because it comes off as unprofessional to me".
He started giving me a bunch of excuses about how busy he was and eventually I interject and say "Listen, I don't really care. I'm sure your reasons are valid to you but from my perspective it just looks like you were happy enough to let me waste half the interview just sitting around staring at my watch."
A day later the recruiter tells me that they don't want to move forward. I asked if they gave a reason why and apparently they thought I wasn't a good "culture fit".
I wish I could say I'm above it and that I'm some hyper-stoic who always wants the most direct version of everything, but I'm certainly not immune to wanting some niceties instead of complete blunt directness all the time. I try and be above it, but I'm not.
I agree with the sentiment that gratuitous happy-talk adds noise to what ought to be clear, bottom-line-up-front engineering communications. But the recipients of those communications are people, and most people have feelings. So a good engineer ought to optimize those communications for overall success, and that means treating the intended recipients as if they matter. Some human-level communication is usually beneficial.
So, to use an example from the original post:
> "I hope this is okay to bring up and sorry for the long message, I just wanted to flag that I've been looking at the latency numbers and I'm not totally sure but it seems like there might be an issue with the caching layer?
There’s a lot of noise in this message. It’s noise because it doesn’t communicate useful engineering information, nor does it show you actually care about the recipients.
Here’s the original post’s suggested rewrite:
> The caching layer is causing a 400ms overhead on cold requests. Here's the trace.
This version communicates some of the essential engineering information, but it loses the important information about uncertainty in the diagnosis. It also lacks any useful human-to-human information.
I’d suggest something like this:
> Heads up: It looks like the caching layer is causing a 400ms overhead on cold requests. Here's the trace. Let me know how I can help. Thanks!
My changes are in italics. Breaking them down:
“Heads up” provides engineering context and human-to-human information: You are trying to help the recipients by alerting them to something they care about.
“It looks like” concisely signals that you have a good faith belief in your diagnosis but are not certain.
“Let me know how I can help” makes clear that you share the recipients’ interest in solving the problem and are not just dumping it at their feet and turning your back on them. You and they are on the same team.
“Thanks!” shows your sincere appreciation to the recipients for looking into the issue. It’s a tiny contribution of emotional fuel from you to them to give them a boost after receiving what might be disappointing news.
In sum, strip the noise and concisely communicate what is important, both engineering information and human information.
I'd say I generally agree with this sentiment, but it's important to first build the proper rapport with the recipient. If you show them kindness and respect outside the bounds of technical conversations, they'll be much more likely to assume the best of you when you communicate straight-forwardly over technical matters.
You also should take care to avoid crossing the line into just being a jerk. This type of thinking is also often used by people who are simply arrogant and rude and are patting themselves on the back for being that way in the name of "directness" or "efficiency".
Look man, people are going to talk they way they talk. Just let them do it and deal with it for God's sake.
This reminds me of a front-page post a little while ago where someone wrote how much it stressed them out when people routinely apologized for delayed responses. Get over it.
I also sometimes wonder if folks writing these articles have had to work closely with people from culturally different places. I've had coworkers that literally could not be direct if their life depended on it for that reason, and I learned to deal with it.
I find it funny that the post promotes stripping useless information and yet a ton of the most useful information in those examples is placed in the skippable part.
Your coworkers are under too high a load, documentation is faulty, chain of communication is breaking down, your coworker lacks expertise in something.
All of those are calls to action!!
And no, you can’t tell the other person to “just communicate if it’s actionable” because they might not realise it. There’s lack of seniority, there’s tunnel vision…
As with everything, I think there is an appropriate middle ground here. There is definitely too much beating around the bush in a lot of professional work, but some of that is actually useful and even good. Context doesn't always matter, but sometimes it does. Manners aren't always important, but sometimes they are.
A proper balance of direct and indirect is the appropriate tack to take.
I personally vastly prefer directness when I’m spoken to - but it’s important to recognize that most people do not have the emotional conditioning to handle that.
This is not something that will change within our lifetimes. Learn soft skills, learn how to be indirect. You don’t have to be as verbose with it as some of the examples in this article.
“Gassing them up”, “Letting them down gently”, “Little white lies”, etc - these are all examples of how benign emotional manipulation is essentially the crux of pleasant social interaction in most of the Western world.
It’s not my personal preference but it works because most people have unhandled insecurities.
Coming from a former production manager, communication takes style and you have to meet people where they are at. If they're at "Crocker's Rules," awesome! That takes 25 to 50% of the work out of the writing. They could be at "my best work was just trashed and I'm ready to quit," to which you could slow your roll and work through the crisis. Keep adding to your comm tools and you won't need one-size-fits-all theories.
322 comments
Crocker’s Rules were a reaction to the avoidance of direct discussion of topics where some people treat the mere act of discussion in any capacity as offensive. Sacred cows and taboos for which there are social consequences even when asking honest questions. Crocker’s Rules, practically speaking, were a declaration that no good faith discussion was intrinsically offensive ipso facto for the person making the declaration. All taboos were open to good faith arguments and attempts at rigorous intellectual inquiry.
This article is focused too much on communication style and not enough on the subject of communication. The latter was the crux of it. Crocker’s Rules were about being able to rigorously discuss topics that society has deemed to be beyond discussion without taking offense at the fact it is being discussed.
I was present when Crocker’s Rules were “invented”. I see a couple other handles here that may have been as well.
This is why many common idioms are now used in their opposite meaning, and we all understand, and it's fine. As a random example, "It's all downhill from here" can mean either "it gets easier" or "it gets worse". The meaning has changed over time. Also: "I could care less", etc...
> This article is focused too much on communication style and not enough on the subject of communication. The latter was the crux of it. Crocker’s Rules were about being able to rigorously discuss topics that society has deemed to be beyond discussion without taking offense at the fact it is being discussed.
That's a distinction that's not as clear cut as you think.
The problem in the workplace setting is that the subject is the code/system/product/organisation, which has no feelings and hence can't be offended, but many people feel compelled to use an overly verbose style in order to avoid offending the humans charged with the care of the unfeeling object.
There is a certain freedom in treating things as things and calling out their objective properties as is, instead of dancing around the facts.
This is the very same thing as talking plainly and directly about taboo or sensitive subjects. Just do it! It's fine!
> the subject is the code/system/product/organisation, which has no feelings and hence can't be offended
This is like saying that telling someone their artwork sucks is not offensive because "the artwork has no feelings."
You can definitely hurt someone's feeling with unconstructive criticism of thier art. However, pointing out areas to improve should not be too painful to the artist, as they can make newer, better works.
I suppose a difficuly can arise if people get too attached to things they make (art, code, writing, whatever) and don't see any one thing as just a step on the road to even better things.
I agree with all your points.
> The meaning has changed over time. Also: "I could care less", etc.
That meaning has not changed. Anyone who says "I could care less" to indicate maximal lack of caring is using the language incorrectly.
> "I could care less"
Do people really say this? Is it exclusive? I've only heard the inverse: "I couldn't care less".
Edit: genuine question. Please explain downvotes!
> Both messages contain the same information, however one of them respects time.
Unless you’re an incredibly slow reader this is a tiny amount of time.
> The fact that you were stressed, or that you had inherited the config from someone else, or that the documentation was unclear3, or that you asked your lead and they said it was probably fine, none of that is relevant to the incident report. You can document contributing factors if they are actually actionable, meaning if there is something structural that needs to change, name it specifically and attach a proposed fix to it.
Those are absolutely relevant! A lead told you to do it? Documentation unclear? One stressed person unable to hand over the task?
And you don’t have to have a solution there to highlight a problem.
> If the payment service went down because a config value was wrong, the incident report should say: the payment service went down because config value X was set to Y when it needed to be set to Z.
Contains zero useful information as to how this happened. It’d be like saying you don’t want to know what the user did before the crash, just that it crashed but shouldn’t have done because it got into invalid state X.
"I personally value directness, so when someone communicates with me in that way, it deos influence how I perceive them, even subconsciously."
Communication is mind control. The point isn't the words, it is literally trying to get a person to do something. I often point out to people that if you just couldn't see people's lips move then speech would appear like the sci-fi definition of psychic powers. The better a person is at communication the more they will fit their message to the audience to get the action intended. If 'direct' really works then over time it will be used but the fact that direct isn't used often implies strongly that it doesn't work for most people or it has secondary effects that are too negative. Demanding the exception is a pretty big ask especially if your aren't willing to meet half way.
A second aspect here is that while communicating we are developing our thoughts. We need time to tease out our real intentions and filler conversation helps that. Arguing 'they should have just said x from the start' is 20/20 hindsight a lot of the time. Expecting me to come to you with a terse, perfect information drop tailored to your quirks or else you will get annoyed with me is your problem, not the speaker's.
In the end speakers are practicing a really hard skill and the author ignores how hard it is. Learning to listen when someone has a hard time communicating something is also a really hard skill that this article completely ignores. If I could sum this article up it would be 'I want to give up trying to learn how to listen so now it is your fault I don't understand you'.
For that reason, reading this is like reading a blog on poker strategies from someone who is only vaguely aware there are different suits in the deck. It's of course fine to ask others to play as if all the cards are diamonds, which is what I take this as. But the way it is written does strongly imply the author has a hard time imagining what the other suits could be for, or how an awareness of them could change their perception of card games.
Honestly, it's refreshing to imagine the lack of "suits" in this sense-- e.g., spending the day with a group of people who not only all claim to couple directness with trustworthiness, but who all earnestly deliver on that claim. I also get the sense that the author is probably not "sticky" in their judgments of others-- perhaps they'd initially judge me as inconsiderate for using niceties but quickly redefine me as trustworthy once I stopped using them.
I would like to know from the author: in the real world, are you aware of the risks of directness without a priori trust or full knowledge of someone else's internal state? I mean, for every one of you, there are probably several dozen people who claim to want unadorned directness but (perhaps unwittingly) end up resenting what they ultimately take as personal, hurtful criticism. And some number of them (again, perhaps unwittingly) retaliate in one way or another. And I haven't even delved into the social hierarchy of jobs-- it's a mess out there!
> The person invoking Crocker's Rules is saying, in effect, "your feelings about how I might receive this are your problem to manage, not mine, just give me the information."
Isn't it quite the opposite? The person invoking Crocker's Rules is saying, in effect, "my feelings about the information and how I might receive it are my problem to manage, not yours, just give me the information."
> If the payment service went down because a config value was wrong, the incident report should say: the payment service went down because config value X was set to Y when it needed to be set to Z.
The number of junior engineers I have had to coach out of this way of thinking to get the smallest fragment of value out of a postmortem process... dear Lord. I wonder if this person is similarly new to professional collaboration.
The larger personal site is very aesthetically cool, though – make sure you click around if you haven't!
It shows me:
- there are many communication styles and people tend to think their preferred one is obviously right
- people are often unclear on what they actually value in communication (and might like the opposite of what they say they value)
- people seem also to, at times, confuse other people's different communication style for rudeness, indecisiveness or small-mindedness.
So I guess the reasonable policy is to adopt a hybrid approach. Be tolerant of other people's comms style, try to be concise with enough politeness added in that you don't offend people, even if they say they want you to be ruthlessly direct. When you need to, try to steer the conversation towards your preferred style. Maybe "ok, I understand the background, let's try to distill the facts now", or equally "I feel I need more context before we continue, let's slow down and...".
For example, I have worked in a number of medium sized (50-200) companies that were so proud of being flat structured meritocracies, where anyone can say anything directly to their superiors. Every single time it turned out to be BS, higher ups wanted deference and following chains of command. But that sounds less catchy.
I believe the author's intent was (or should have been) to describe how THEY wanted to receive communication, not how EVERYONE should.
A skilled communicator will craft their message for the audience. Some want "just the facts" with no social lubricant. Others want the banter to build person-to-person relationships. Some want a quick statement of context for everything. If you can adjust the message to the audience you will be more successful at working with them.
I have begun including "how I want you to communicate with me" as part of my standard "introduce myself to new team members" talk.
People learn that lesson then don't stir the pot without reason. Rather than saying "I don't get offended" it is generally better to prove it and push people for feedback from time to time.
There is also a subtle point here in things like "if the design is wrong, say it is wrong" - how is someone supposed to know if the design is "wrong"? Philosophically it isn't possible for a design to be wrong, the idea is nonsense. Designs have trade-offs and people might or might not like the trade offs. But a design can't be wrong because that implies there was already a right solution that people could deploy. If someone is going to be direct that is also a problem they run in to constantly - they're going to be directly saying things that are harsh and garbled. A lot of humans aren't comfortable being that person, there is a more comfortable style of being clear about observations, guarded about making value judgements from them and associating with like-minded people from the get-go rather than pushing to resolve differences. And spending a lot of time playing social games to work out how to organise all that.
For example, I had a job interview a couple years ago where the interviewer showed up fifteen minutes late for a thirty minute interview. Eventually he did show up, and the interview proceeds more or less fine, and near the end he asks if I have any questions. I said "is it common to show up fifteen minutes late for interviews that you schedule? Because it comes off as unprofessional to me".
He started giving me a bunch of excuses about how busy he was and eventually I interject and say "Listen, I don't really care. I'm sure your reasons are valid to you but from my perspective it just looks like you were happy enough to let me waste half the interview just sitting around staring at my watch."
A day later the recruiter tells me that they don't want to move forward. I asked if they gave a reason why and apparently they thought I wasn't a good "culture fit".
I wish I could say I'm above it and that I'm some hyper-stoic who always wants the most direct version of everything, but I'm certainly not immune to wanting some niceties instead of complete blunt directness all the time. I try and be above it, but I'm not.
So, to use an example from the original post:
> "I hope this is okay to bring up and sorry for the long message, I just wanted to flag that I've been looking at the latency numbers and I'm not totally sure but it seems like there might be an issue with the caching layer?
There’s a lot of noise in this message. It’s noise because it doesn’t communicate useful engineering information, nor does it show you actually care about the recipients.
Here’s the original post’s suggested rewrite:
> The caching layer is causing a 400ms overhead on cold requests. Here's the trace.
This version communicates some of the essential engineering information, but it loses the important information about uncertainty in the diagnosis. It also lacks any useful human-to-human information.
I’d suggest something like this:
> Heads up: It looks like the caching layer is causing a 400ms overhead on cold requests. Here's the trace. Let me know how I can help. Thanks!
My changes are in italics. Breaking them down:
“Heads up” provides engineering context and human-to-human information: You are trying to help the recipients by alerting them to something they care about.
“It looks like” concisely signals that you have a good faith belief in your diagnosis but are not certain.
“Let me know how I can help” makes clear that you share the recipients’ interest in solving the problem and are not just dumping it at their feet and turning your back on them. You and they are on the same team.
“Thanks!” shows your sincere appreciation to the recipients for looking into the issue. It’s a tiny contribution of emotional fuel from you to them to give them a boost after receiving what might be disappointing news.
In sum, strip the noise and concisely communicate what is important, both engineering information and human information.
You also should take care to avoid crossing the line into just being a jerk. This type of thinking is also often used by people who are simply arrogant and rude and are patting themselves on the back for being that way in the name of "directness" or "efficiency".
This reminds me of a front-page post a little while ago where someone wrote how much it stressed them out when people routinely apologized for delayed responses. Get over it.
I also sometimes wonder if folks writing these articles have had to work closely with people from culturally different places. I've had coworkers that literally could not be direct if their life depended on it for that reason, and I learned to deal with it.
Your coworkers are under too high a load, documentation is faulty, chain of communication is breaking down, your coworker lacks expertise in something.
All of those are calls to action!!
And no, you can’t tell the other person to “just communicate if it’s actionable” because they might not realise it. There’s lack of seniority, there’s tunnel vision…
A proper balance of direct and indirect is the appropriate tack to take.
This is not something that will change within our lifetimes. Learn soft skills, learn how to be indirect. You don’t have to be as verbose with it as some of the examples in this article.
“Gassing them up”, “Letting them down gently”, “Little white lies”, etc - these are all examples of how benign emotional manipulation is essentially the crux of pleasant social interaction in most of the Western world.
It’s not my personal preference but it works because most people have unhandled insecurities.