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  digi59404
  Even here in the comments you see people who have read this article and fall victim to the very things it’s pointing out. It’s ironic.Let me add a couple to this list.1. No amount of knowledge or discussion will make a person accept something they don’t want to accept.2. To truly listen means to place yourself mentally and physically in a vulnerable state. Because you will likely hear things that run contrary to your experience, beliefs, and worldview. Judging people is often a self protection mechanism; which means you will almost never listen to someone.3. Listening often means not jumping to a solution; but absorbing and processing someone’s pain. Product managers for example are quick to jump to a solution, a new feature, or they’ll push the request off as “oh, ok, we’ll make a ticket for that ”When in actuality, they should be listening to the use case, looking for the pain, and finding a way to solve the pain points. As opposed to trying to understand what feature the user wants to request.
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  onion2k
  You assume what they say is the same as what they are thinkingThe converse is also true. People saying something assume that people listening are understanding and thinking about the same thing. This is why it's important to write things down in details and as-unambiguous-as-you-can forms.If you're in a meeting and someone puts up a slide deck with a 6 word bullet point that 'explains' what they want, that is a signal that literally no one understands the goal. If they put in a meeting without writing a one page doc about it, they don't understand it well enough to explain it.And if your progression hangs off delivering that thing, you should by demanding that you get a clearer picture.
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  apsurd
  Agree with the problem but this list reads like a vent.Communicating effectively is the central problem of all humanity!This vent criticizes developers for not knowing how to listen. that's why it comes off condescending. The root problem is that people don't know what they don't know.The best communicators are translators. People listen because the message becomes self evident in their understanding.It's hardly a breakdown because everyone is acting like a toddler with their fingers in their ears.This is ironically why we reach for systems and engineering. The system can build in gap detection and frameworks for translation. It's not perfect and creates its own problems but scolding each unit human to listen better does nothing for the collective environment: the team, the company… the system.
• adilkhanovkz
  Interesting. That really resonates. )) I think this is especially relevant for mid level specialists who have recently learned a lot and feel the need to speak up and show off what they know =D. But it’s also relevant for highly knowledgeable people who are truly well-read and versatile.I think it's a mistake that such people often stop even listening to those who are less well-read or less experienced in a subject; they prefer to adopt the position of the 'source of truth' and the teacher. Although, it seems to me that people who are less 'biased' by extensive reading often come up with original—perhaps unpolished, but original ideas. To hear those ideas, you have to know how to listen and extract thoughts rather than suppress them."
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  heyalexhsu
  Or maybe we're spending too much time on communicating. If too much time is allocated then its hard to stay focused and there's always the next time that can be used to clarify. Cut all the unnecessary meetings and only allocate the minimum viable time to communicate. Then everyone will be listening.
• nlawalker
  >And if you're wondering why this happens, it's normally because:1. people aren't talking to people2. people aren't listeningI don't think this is right; I think the reason is - to use the metaphor from the cartoon image at the top - that what most of the people involved in the not talking and/or not listening were looking to get out of the situation in the first place was the ribbon cutting, not the road, and they got it.
• yogigan
  The point about "specialism effect" is underrated.I've caught myself frustrated at users for not understanding something I've spent years internalizing. The problem is: they've spent those same years internalizing something else entirely. Their knowledge isn't absent, it's just elsewhere.
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  faangguyindia
  Most of the problem is that talking to non technical people is frustrating, they often start like1. Can u add X 2. Can u change YWithout understanding cost of doing all this. Yes, i can do all and everything you ask for, but each action has a cost, which you fail to understand.We cannot do everything if we need to launch a reliable product.
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  buggy6257
  > Tonnes of frameworks around this concept, so I won't repeat what others have done decently already. Jobs To Be Done, Outcome Driven Innovation, and in the UX camp, empathy mapping.Totally understand, but I would love if the author included links to these other things for articles/etc they thought did a good enough job not to repeat them!
• sandeepkd
  Its hard to make it useful. Maybe I am not the right audience for this type of content, or I was trying to find something concrete in it related to my own experience
• BLKNSLVR
  Related, I think, and I found TFA a very interesting read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23617188
• big-chungus4
  I completely agree with the list but I can't lie, I did not understand how it is related to the title and first part of the article, and to "listening to people". But I'm also stupid so that could be why
• Animats
  From the title, I thought this was going to be about customer support, or non-support.A good article about the costs of not listening to your customers would be useful.
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  lordkrandel
  You you you you. A rant article
• anon
  undefined
• _rpf
  Anyone else catch Rimmer's study timetable?(Procrastination, Red Dwarf reference)
• hyfgfh
  Get ready for the not reading, between people asking for AI and the slop everyone is writing Today communication will only get worst.Talking to a 'yes and autocomplete' that will agree with everything you say and praise it as a "Great idea!" will make everything terrible
• measurablefunc
  I was just working on this product & now I have to scrap it: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/13/meta-ai-m...
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  sublinear
  > 8. You judge peopleYou know, I was actually hoping for a good listicle of things to watch out for in meetings. The author should take their own advice. Assuming bad faith immediately kills all productivity, so there's no point in finishing reading this.I agree with the general notion that there are often knowledge gaps getting in the way of better planning and execution. I was hoping for techniques to overcome them, but (sigh) I guess that's just more "engineering" getting in the way.I've been doing this for long enough to realize there's no substitute for experience. It's basically the opposite of all the popular advice. If you're serious about any successful long-term career, you can't avoid looking foolish and having lots of difficult discussions. There are no shortcuts. There is no "higher path" you're missing out on. If you're going to grind it out, at least save face by working at the "shitty places" with bad reviews on glassdoor where you can safely fail without damage to your ego or reputation. When you finally get hired somewhere nicer mid-career, you can just bury all that in your mind and pretend it never happened. Nobody cares anyway.If we're going to be judgy, I gotta say some of the worst people I've ever worked with never got out of that phase. It's that simple.
• HumbleBot
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• yownie
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