[HN Gopher] Writing better by answering why, what, how ___________________________________________________________________ Writing better by answering why, what, how Author : 7d7n Score : 102 points Date : 2022-06-12 03:26 UTC (19 hours ago) (HTM) web link (eugeneyan.com) (TXT) w3m dump (eugeneyan.com) | drieddust wrote: | > Here's a story from the early days of Amazon Web Services: | Before writing any code, engineers spent 18 months contemplating | and writing documents on how best to serve the customer. Amazon | believes this is the fastest way to work--thinking deeply about | what the customer needs before executing on that rigorously | refined vision. | | Good luck explaining this to the new age Scrum certified gurus | who wants to complete all design work in 2 weeks of sprint 0. | leetrout wrote: | Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. | m463 wrote: | I don't know how to reconcile this with my view of amazon. | | "the customer" to amazon is not only the customer buying | products, but the "other customer" paying for search results. | The interests of the two are in opposite directions. I wonder | if they have some sort of laffer curve. | photochemsyn wrote: | This is more an AWS thing, I imagine, where the business is | providing the client with cloud computing resources in a | secure and efficient manner. That at least seems to be a | straightforward goal (although I wonder about how their | billing really works under the hood, I imagine there are ways | to push customers into more expensive tiers than they really | need). | | Amazon, the warehouse & shipping outfit, is riven with | conflicting interests and is probably something of a | nightmare to work as a dev at because of that. Current | legislation exposes this: | | > "The bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) | and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) would stop sites including Amazon | and Google from giving their own products a leg up in search | results. (NYPost Jun 2022)" | | Also, consider the people responsible for Amazon's "Time on | Task" warehouse worker monitoring system... kind of sadistic | at best. | lupire wrote: | > 18 months | | That's either an utter lie or one very specific research | project not performed by the "engineers". | mpyne wrote: | Yeah, unless they mean some other Amazon than the one that | believes in "2 > 0" in product portfolio management and that | "communication between teams is terrible!" (a quote | attributed to Jeff Bezos). | Etheryte wrote: | Granted I don't know the context of the given quote, but I | definitely agree with at least one interpretation of it. If | you need communication and synchronization between teams to | achieve your goal, there's a lot more room for missing | memos, misunderstanding etc. In that sense indeed, | communication between teams is terrible in the sense that | it adds extra drag to the whole process. Of course, there's | ways to spin this quote in a number of other ways too, | which is why I think the quote without any additional | context doesn't really illustrate any one point. | Sujan wrote: | The linked article spells out exactly what project it was | about: | | > Take AWS. It reached $10 billion in revenue in less than | four years. But what's remarkable is that they didn't get | there by forming a team, writing a lot of code, and then | testing and iterating. In fact, it took more than 18 months | before the engineers actually started to write code. Instead, | they spent that time thinking deeply about the customers they | were trying to serve and forming a clear vision for what AWS | should be | csdvrx wrote: | These are great sections to have - along with "Who" to delineate | responsibilities between teams for say future maintenance in case | several teams are involved. | 532nm wrote: | A neat guide for good technical writing goes as follows: | | 1. Tell the 'WHAT' (i.e what you have built/observed/intend to | do/etc.) | | 2. Explain the 'SO WHAT' without which the WHAT is almost | meaningless (i.e. that it reduces operating costs by X/.../etc.) | | I often find myself focusing too much on the WHAT, neglecting the | SO WHAT. However, the succinct phrasing helps me to also keep the | SO WHAT in mind. | | (I first stumbled upon this way of phrasing things in the neat | little book 'Trees, Maps and Theorems' by Doumont) | Swizec wrote: | "So what" is otherwise known as why. And it often flows better | if you put it before the what - why is it that you're doing the | what and why should I care? | | Another good writing tip: replace every "and then" transition | with a "and that's why" or "and despite that" transition | CharlesW wrote: | > _"So what" is otherwise known as why._ | | These are often different. "Why" is often interpreted to mean | why the _author_ did it, while "So What?" or "Why Should I | Care?" is why the _audience_ should care and continue | reading. | BugsJustFindMe wrote: | > _"So what" is otherwise known as why._ | | It's valuable to phrase it as "so what" rather than as "why", | because people without focus in all fields end up writing | only "why the thing being analyzed happened" and not "why | this analysis/suggestion/whatever matters". The problem with | "why" is that "why"ing the wrong thing ends up just being an | extension of the "what". Or at least be up front and clear | and say in its entirety "why you need to stop whatever else | you are doing right now and listen to me". Writing advice can | improve itself by careful attention to writer failure modes. | | > _And it often flows better if you put it before the what_ | | Indeed. You want to quickly convince the reader to stick | around. But often you need to give a little background first, | so really it becomes "what, so what, what for real, how, etc" | MichaelMoser123 wrote: | now how do you get anyone to read your document? Is there some | secret trick involved? | amfactor3 wrote: | Here's how it's done at Amazon: schedule an hour long meeting | with the people you want to read it. Make sure that the meeting | invite includes no description or agenda, and has only a vague | subject. If anyone declines your meeting invite, forward the | invite to their manager and say they are blocking you by not | joining your meeting. Do not provide a link to the document | until 1-5 minutes before the meeting starts. | | During the meeting, spend the first 5 minutes giving people | access to the doc (which is made stupidly difficult because | you're using the worst collaboration software known to the tech | industry: Quip). Spend the next half hour in silence while | everyone reads the document for the first time. Then spend 20 | minutes going over the comments left on the doc, bikeshedding | about minor details. Finally, spend the last 5 minutes talking | about how you ran out of time to discuss the important topics | and have to schedule a second meeting while everyone groans. | MichaelMoser123 wrote: | Ok, now does that mean that only a program managers can get | his documents into consideration? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-12 23:00 UTC)