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Ask HN: Am I the only one suffering from bullet points fatigue?

3 点作者 alexaholic将近 2 年前
I (tech worker) am not sure if I&#x27;m the only one, but I&#x27;m getting a bit tired of bullet points at work (tech company). I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s because I&#x27;m getting older (30+) and maybe crankier, or my eyesight is getting worse, but I&#x27;m finding I&#x27;m skipping over bullet points more and more. The problem is bullet points is all there is.<p>I don&#x27;t mind bullet points per se. When I&#x27;m taking notes for myself, or writing requirements, I tend to start with a list of all the raw and dumb ideas that cross my mind. Then I iterate over it and give it form and structure until, at least in my mind, it&#x27;s reasonably readable: text is clear; flow is logical, uninterrupted; document has a clear outline; things are easy to find etc. I do use actual lists when it makes sense to do so e.g. things to do, steps to follow.<p>It seems other people don&#x27;t do that. Mails, memos, requirements, tickets, more often than not the entire thing&#x27;s a list of lists of lists. Sometimes you get a skinny-fat, 13 pages long document with bullet points 7 levels deep. Literally each sentence is an item on a list, and it&#x27;s all expertly decorated with tables and improperly formatted code examples. I&#x27;m finding it very difficult to read that. It has no structure, no direction, no flow, no logic, no nothing. Oftentimes there&#x27;s not even a summary introduction, the document jumps right into a list. You have to read the whole thing 2-3 times before you get the basic idea, then another 2-3 times to be able to ask for explanations and do so coherently. And the subjects are very far from sending rockets to space.<p>I sometimes get so exhausted that I just give up trying, and seek to understand the problem intuitively i.e. WWID. I&#x27;ve seen other colleagues employ a different strategy. They simply dive into coding regardless of whether they got it or not. After several rounds of code reviews by seasoned engineers, multiple testing sessions by at least a tester and the PO, and a couple of weeks later, they will eventually get it. Paradoxically, business is often frustrated about folks not getting it, though doesn&#x27;t seem to mind this style of working. It&#x27;s their fault, after all, but I suspect they don&#x27;t imagine things could be any different. I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s because they don&#x27;t have the time, don&#x27;t know how to do it, don&#x27;t know how to write, don&#x27;t think clearly enough, or simply don&#x27;t care. I&#x27;m talking about people with academic degrees, some MBAs, and I&#x27;m disapointed. And tired.<p>What are other people&#x27;s experiences?

2 条评论

okl将近 2 年前
Sorry, this goes a bit beyond bullet points - In my opinion, this happens when people think they can work in parallel to the &quot;formal&quot; process because they don&#x27;t need it, they are smarter then people who came before who figured out that its a good thing to collect and organize information and control its flow.<p>Regardless if you work according to some &quot;formal&quot; process or not, you are working in some way (process) which is then not &quot;formal&quot; (as its called in contrast to what actually?), i.e., unstructured.<p>Putting stuff in a mail formatted as bullet point provides the impression of it being organized but probably its not because it does not belong in that mail in the first place.
DemocracyFTW2将近 2 年前
I sometimes wish people would do more easy-to-digest lists instead of casting things in a hard-to-follow narrative. There are sweet spots and there are the extremes—cryptic lists with no explanation on hand and the ambitious author trying to &quot;storify&quot; and embellish the presented facts, making it tedious at times and less memorable. As always, a middle way is what one should seek.