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Ben Hoffman might have gone to the talking school. But, he's missing the point here.

There's two types of conversations in life.

"Brain in 5th gear conversations." Every word carefully chosen. And the second type, "Priority 2" conversations. Priority 2 is where both parties winging it and do their best via heuristic.

Most folk wait their turn during Priority 2. It's just the convention, nobody is in a rush.

For engineers, every conversation ends up being Priority 2 because their brain is gutted from coding. However, they need to get shit done, fast, and get back to coding. Hence the convention to interrupt conversations and get to the point.

It's a speed vs productivity vs margin of error triple constraint.

What Hoffman doesn't realize is the goal. Deliberately practicing 5th gear conversations forces you to concentrate on the material.



Totally agree. Not many forms of communication require as much careful decision making as coding. You can do it fast or you can do it right.

Getting priorities straight is a matter of competence, not culture.

If you've ever wondered why people scoff at the term "software engineer", this is one potential answer.




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