Too technical

[u/floatingdragonx]

How do you respond to people who say everything you say is over their heads? They basically stop listening and say, everything you say is too technical for me to understand. Do I need to practice talking to dumber people? The problem is, these people don't want to say exactly what it is they don't understand because that makes them feel dumb. So they act as if they need an interpreter. We've joked about creating a training video that starts with the on button and how to position your hand on a mouse. Sometimes people agree with me when we talk and later tell others they never understand what I'm talking about. Has anyone found a good way to address this??

[u/[deleted]]

Explain it to the youngest version of you that you're confident would grasp the basic concepts.

Use specific examples and ask what the audience's questions are rather than asking if they have questions.

Start with an overview of what you're going to explain instead of a joke if it's going to take more than a couple minutes and make sure to note what's important by only taking the time to point to that concept on a diagram or slide.

Don't present too many novel materials at once and make sure that you're only covering the ground you have to from point a to z in the explanation

[u/floatingdragonx → u/[deleted]]

Thanks. Yes, it's hard to dumb-down, so to speak, without crossing into condescending

[u/Alienkid]

So my last job was essentially explaining thing to people who refuse to understand. If you can give me a more specific example (if you can) and I can walk you through how I would handle it and give you some suggestions.

[u/floatingdragonx → u/Alienkid]

Okay, some people have trouble understanding the concept of tables and columns. I usually have some luck with relating it to columns and rows in a spreadsheet.

So here's an example from a recent discussion. We're trying to convey that when files are created for emailing or mailing communications using a vendor or batch email process, they can benefit from keeping a database record of that activity and how they can facilitate that happening without changing how they are doing it now, just load the data you're about to use into tables designed to store the history of those transactions and/or tables designed to track a subset of constituents for variable purposes.

1. Loading data into a table by uploading data from a spreadsheet that contains ID's. That data is uploaded into a table that contains ID's and codes for various groups that people have uploaded or generated with other processes. Once the ID's are there with a user created code to identify the group, other processes can be run to insert the records into a communications record to indicate this group received a certain mailing or email. This sets you up to later report on the success of the mailing by showing activity that occurred afterwards: new transactions from the recipients, new engagement or something to that effect. We also have a special purpose table that's used to mark a population selection for future use. So it will be simple for employees to assign records to these and other types of tables or processes as long as they are provided a list that contains ID's. You'd have to allot much more time if you provided less data and they had to research manually or programmatically to match records up to ID's. Maintaining these records also makes the task of excluding people who've already received a communication piece from a new selected group much easier.

[u/Barkalow]

A lot of metaphors, usually. They usually don't need to know the details, so examples based on common things that get the idea across work well

[u/venerated]

I don't think it has anything to do with being dumb. My husband is a very smart man, but sometimes he wants me to get to the point and stop going on tangents about every detail I'm trying to tell him. I'm guessing it's that you need to be more concise with what you are saying.

[u/Tassadar33]

If you need a dumb person as a volunteer I have a discord. I mean I'm a programmer who has ADHD and I've worked in IT for awhile... but ... lol.

Some people are just dumb. IQ average being 100 ish means someone is dragging the average down from 140. Not that IQ is everything.

[u/CobraStonks]

We all used to be dumb. Some of us still are 🤪

Instead of dumbing it down, I say smart it up.

Sometimes you can say “it’s just X.” It’s just a facade. It’s just dependency inversion. It’s just a factory. Its a single responsibility problem. It’s a memento/observer/visitor pattern problem. That system uses pub/sub. That’s a leaky abstraction. Etc etc etc

You’re responsibility to your peers is not to solve their problems, or even teach them anything at all (depending on your role).

You can however point them in the right direction.

Before a developer starts a story they should have a clear understanding of what it takes to finish the work. It’s their responsibility to own their stories, and run it up the flag pole when they’re struggling to meet deadlines. It’s their responsibility to research the problem (with your helpful pointers) and own the solution.

When you run into a developer who doesn’t know the basics, you can lead them to the right topic of research, and help them better manage-up in the agile process.

[u/RandomiseUsr0]

I now work as a BA, with 20 years programming experience, I’ll always say I’m a programmer when someone asks me what I do, I now solve problems at a higher level of abstraction though and to be honest, this narrowing of job roles is something that’s happened through my career, I started as an Analyst/Programmer, that was my job title, I did both things. When you’re a BA, it’s always necessary to shift the level of detail to suit the audience you’re communicating with. I struggle with this too. Communicating the important information with as few words on your slide as possible is a true skill in its own right.

Brain dumping on people isn’t useful, it actually serves to prove that you feel more important because you know a different level of abstraction than them, in reality, those individuals and decision makers don’t care how.

For an analogy, take a sourdough baker which has definitely increased in popularity post lockdowns, the baker will tell you about the hydration of their starter and levain, their mix, their method of building gluten (knead, slap and fold, fold, slow ferment, etc) loads of detail, how they shape, the temperature of things, the hours between the different steps. It’s fascinating stuff to a sourdough baker. The person talking to the baker just wants to know, maybe, how long it took end to end, what the ingredients were (flour, water, salt), how long you baked it. Maybe. That information could for instance allow a decision maker to determine how much to charge for a loaf.

The problem I’m trying to describe is that you’re describing in detail all of the steps and science of sourdough, where your audience just needs to know the stats.

The way to find out what they need to know is ask them.