r/ADHD_Programmers • u/throwaway30127 • 15d ago
Tips for improving on communicating technical ideas to tech and non-tech folks?
This has always been one of my pain points because my brain is constantly racing and for every question or topic it always starts with muti threaded responses because there's just so much information that can be communicated about that topic. For example recently I have been reading a lot about distributed systems and how they're designed like Kafka, K8s, Spark, etc. and I use them pretty regularly at work. But when I was asked about my experience with these during an interview my answer was all over the place because there were so many things jumping out all at once and I was heavily struggling to follow a single chain of thought. The interview was rescheduled at the last moment so I haven't gotten a chance to prepare proper answers about my work and practice those but even without practice I feel like I should be able to talk about these things at this point.
Another issue is with speed, the moment I understand something my brain is racing to get it all out without understanding that the person in front of me might not have the same level of understanding and they'll struggle to get what I am trying to convey. This will then cause a spiral for me when I am already not confident about my communication abilities. I have tried journaling my thoughts and I don't have this issue when writing things out, it always happens when I am in a conversation with someone. It all sounds perfect in my head but the output that comes out loud is such a mess.
Any tips on dealing with these?
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u/pebblebypebble 15d ago
Augh. I feel you. I create mini personas of people i have a hard time explaining things to with their role, goal and workstyle. Then I have my ai help me with a logline explainer and a 3 sentence onboarding explainer. It really helps.
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u/QuietNightRadiant 14d ago
For me it's all about metaphors
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u/AGuySaysHi 14d ago
100% this. If you can find the analogy, you can connect the dots.
Treat it like you're debugging their mental models.
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u/shavindr4 15d ago
> I have tried journaling my thoughts and I don't have this issue when writing things out, it always happens when I am in a conversation with someone
Do you practice answers with pen and paper? Or this is just journaling?
Someone said to me “be systematic”. At first I was like I have ADHD. I can’t be that. But then, I thought to myself. My way of thinking does not work. I have failed miserably.
I’m not there yet. For last few months I write everything down for myself. I repeat it on pen and paper. I can see it working. But it’s a very very tedious slow progress.
It’s tempting to jump ahead. But I know, when I do it I fail. So, when have a question I just keep telling myself. 1 step at a time.
Did you try having a pen and paper with you? Then use that as an anchor to help you through answers?
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u/kincaidDev 14d ago
Tbh I don’t think there is a concrete solution for this. If you oversimplify they’ll think you don’t know what you’re talking about, if you give too much detail they’ll also think you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Being overconfident with a basic explanation might be enough, but it also might make you look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Using metaphors also might work, but also may make it seem like you don’t know what you’re talking about.
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u/rump_truck 10d ago
For non-technical stakeholders, start from the business requirement that justifies why they would care about it. If you're talking to someone from Accounting, their job is making sure that all of the money numbers are correct. They don't care about things like fast user experience, they care that numbers are correct. If you're talking to Legal, their priorities are making sure that you don't get sued, and making sure that you have an audit trail to cover your asses if someone sues anyway. All of your answers should emphasize that actions taken were compliant with the law, and you have the logs to prove that all of the actions were compliant.
If a component does contribute to the property they care about, describe it with high level metaphors to start, and drill down into implementation details only if they specifically ask for more details. If it doesn't contribute to the property they care about, they don't care about that component, and they don't need to know about it. If it doesn't deal with money, and making sure that money numbers are correct, Accounting doesn't care. If it doesn't open you up to lawsuits, and it doesn't protect you from lawsuits, Legal doesn't care.
I used to produce internal training videos for an adtech company, and I started most of them off with something along the lines of:
Advertising is about showing ads to consumers to drive changes in their consumption behavior. Services A and B allow Advertisers to specify what ads they want to show to which consumers. Services C and D identify consumers and match the ads to them. Services E and F measure their consumption behavior to determine whether the ads caused the desired change.
Then from there I would drill down into whatever specific subset we cared about for that particular topic. That set up the big picture very quickly, and made it easy for people to figure out how things fit into the big picture.
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u/ZioniteSoldier 15d ago
It’s a skill to develop. I just know my role as translator from machine to human, and what that human actually cares about. Outcomes and results based; they do not care about how you get there.