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Aurornistoday at 4:05 AM2 repliesview on HN

> Always judge an author by the length of their text.

Flashbacks to a past employer where the CEO decided that brevity was a core company value and started rewarding people for short communications and scolding us for longer text.

Over the next year a few charlatans moved up the ranks by spitting out half-baked thoughts and e-mails all the time, which looked like clarity and brevity on the surface. People were afraid to speak out or discuss nuance because it was too many words, and you didn't want to use too many words.


Replies

VorpalWaytoday at 9:43 AM

There is such a thing as balance. For some reason it tends to be very easy to go overboard in either direction.

Also, any metric ceases to be a good metric the moment it becomes a goal.

I have observed both of the above statements in many different contexts, they seem to be (somewhat) universal rules for human society.

abustamamtoday at 4:50 AM

Tangential but it kinda irks me when people just put their initials when signing off on an email. It seems like unnecessary brevity in a world where you can type your name once in your emails signature line and never worry about typing it again.

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