Explaining Technical Information to Non-Technical People
Vložit
- čas přidán 28. 08. 2021
- The single greatest skill you can have beyond your own technical skills is communication of technical topics to non-technical people. Not only is this efficient but people will feel more involved and in the know and you'll be well liked. Don't talk down to people, it's not nice.
Hope you enjoyed the video!
Join my Discord server and come say hi:
/ discord
Check out some code on my GitHub:
github.com/realtux
github.com/engineer-man/youtube
Send me a Gab:
gab.com/engineerman
Other Social:
/ engineerman
/ _engineerman
/ engineermanyt - Věda a technologie
I heard a joke where a C-level is talking to an engineer,
C - I want a system where people can upload and browse pictures of national parks.
E - Sure, i can have a prototype in a week
C - I want to be able to search by location
E - Sure, thats two days work
C - I want to be able to search by time of day in the photo
E - Sure thats another two days work
C - I want to search by the wildlife in the photo
E - I need two years and a team of grad students minimum
That joke doesn't work anymore, neural networks that do image classification exist now
Kudos to intern for the title
I'll let me know.
Me explaining how I made the site faster: think of the site database as a book, we added a index to our book
LMAO XD
I love this.
I started explaining IT topics using hotels (lobby=DMZ, front desk=API gateway, kitchen=async/batch processing, storage rooms=database instances, security=monitoring, doors=ports, suites=subnets, floors=domains, ....) years ago and find that analogy extremely useful.
This is really good, wow.
@@EngineerMan hah, didn't expect you to read the comments on a video that old. Happy you like it. Explaining IT, especially infrastructure, to non-tech people is a challenge but so important.
I found your channel looking for a refresher on Node.js concepts and found way more than that. I like your video style. Concise and very helpful :)
I read all comments, I just can only reply to ones that catch my eye.
Only real people know that the video was called “video”
Yea lmao
xD
i honestly thought that was an intentional joke considering what the topic of this video is
It's an inside joke now since I've updated the title.
Yeah lol
The title represents the content better than any other CZcamsr, it’s a video.
How I forgot to set the title is beyond me.
@@EngineerMan I don't know how you managed to respond almost to everyone who mentioned about the title. Great !
This is absolutely right. But there are a lot of issues at work here.
Here's a few of them.
1. Geeks like to be geeks. They perceive it as giving them some sort of status. Which it certainly does, amongst their peers. But not with others. And it can very easily exclude people; that's a big problem for some.
2. Quite a lot of technical people only understand what they're dealing with at a certain level. Quite a few are actually incapable of thinking about a problem at a level that other people can understand.
3. For some, it's a mask. Their technical knowledge is actually fairly limited, but they know that if they use the right language nobody will question them about it.
With all that said, for those capable of hearing and acting upon this message, do it.
Yes! Those are really good observations. I would also add observation 4. Engineer syndrome - tech people having a sense of superiority to non-tech people
I liked all points, especially the 3. A lot of tech leads / team leads use complicated words because they represent them as all-knowing. They don't want to admit they don't understand something because that is often seen as weakness.
Manager: Why is our system breaking down.
Engineer: The guy you hired to build it was incompetent and did a bad job.
Manager: You're fired.
lol
So true!
As Albert Einstein once said, "If you can't explain a subject simply, you don't understand it well enough"
Then he gave you E = mc2 which took up hundreds of chalk boards and analytics to understand and calculate, but he was able to SQUASH it down to the Essence of it all in the end....that my friends was the TRUE GENIUS and a TRUE teacher. Engineer Man nails it yet once again
See, I'm not an engineer, I work in accounting as revenue audit for 4 companies. That said, I do write macros and design spreadsheets for my people and other departments in the companies I work for. Before I knew it, I was relied upon for all sorts of projects.
One major part of that is deciding to communicate effectively using advice like what's in this video. I don't always succeed at it, but it's the best approach.
But in that process you learned a lot of other stuff that is useful...
I once explained the concept of VLANs and trunking to a plumber. Something like this:
Imagine, if there was a single pipe, and you could pump in multiple different kinds of fluid in said pipes, and then have a way to separate them out on the other end.
Then he actually replied something like: "would that decrease the amount of volume available per fluid than just running each separate pipe?"
I actually just said to him that it's one of the dilemmas between setting up VLAN's or running different network equipment for each network.
So, just by relating it to a client, I actually had an interesting conversation about technology to someone who isn't literate in computers but instead a different type of technology, plumbing and HVAC.
This never happened.
@@smedleybelkin19 Source?
Thanks for the video, it was a good refresher for me, as I'm about to get involved with an organization that has a bunch of non-technical people working with web developers
I had to talk to the customer many times to explain what was going on in the development process. I can assure to you that if you can do this part of our job correctly, the customer will be much more satisfied and you can receive more accurate feedbacks. I have received an incredible feedback from the CEO itself and a raise.
Good one this. The last point about ppl feeling talked down to is most pertinent. Esp if said people are PhDs in less technical fields.
awesome video,
this is great advice experienced engineers
Will it work if your accountant named Sarah and not Rebecca?
no
This is spot on. I always say you must be able to explain this to a child.
What do you mean? 😂😌
@@bartmeeus9033 its true for teacher, as developer maybe not to a child but you have to be aböe to explain some of it easier.
@@usernametaken3098 i tottaly agree, was just making a joke that i didn't understand it LOL
In my experience it's not the person with the best explanation that wins the day, it's the person with the best line of bull excrement. Jim gave me an excellent explanation on how through exercise and diet I can lose weight, but John made this wonderful speech about how his software would make me thin with no effort at all!
I was new as a sysadmin at a startup. Two weeks in, we had a problem with the Synology fileservers, which I knew nothing about. Ultimately we rebooted the faulty one and stuff was working again.
"What was the problem?" asked the team lead engineer.
"There was schpilkis in the genekicazoink." I said, not know how much to tell him.
"Ooo-kay" he replied. I don't think he'd heard Yiddish before, even fake Yiddish.
Engineer Man uploaded: video
Nice
Thank you so much. Very good information. Do you have github projects? If so whats your github. Thanks.
You know it's a good video if the title is "video".
whoa cool title, are you on bitchute?
great content! thx
Hey Engineer Man, i asked this questions on an old video of yours but our probably don’t read that old comments so I’ll reask it here:
What do you use your home server(the one you showed in that old video about your setup) for? Do you host some websites or repositories yourself?
I actually don't run it anymore but when I did it was for everything: storage, virtual machines, vpn, processing power, etc
@@EngineerMan What is the point of a VPN if it is in the same location as you? Definitely not to mask your location, but maybe it can fool Google and the like on Incognito for a couple days, before the same browsing patterns reveals it's you once again.
@@EngineerMan interesting, thanks!
He seems like a great youtuber, you should upload some more videos 😂😌
U are a rare wise person
You deserves 10M subscribers atleast. Sometimes i think why the people like you are not famous much:(
Maybe one day :)
In short, know what problem they are expecting you to solve and familiarize yourself with the moving parts they are aware of and talk in those terms. If they need or want more explanation, they'll ask for it. Sometimes, I won't always be able to get through something without inevitably getting through a technical explanation. In those cases, I try to make sure I've got a demonstration as an explanatory aide while my mouth goes talking about whatever. If I can't not be technical, at least I can give them a visual frame of reference. Incidentally, this also helps fine tune your ability to explain things, because it tends to center your focus to the task at hand rather than the minutia of details that often derail the conversation.
Just want to say thanks
video, best
yup done this many times: explained to product owner what info i need to complete a ticket in way yoo technical way. they just say i dont know anything about databases
Best click bait title for a video that I've ever seen! :)
I can't believe I forgot to set the title. Whoops.
what atom theme do you use?
this is SO true!
thanks
Oh..a video
I also think that the goals of the listener plays a big role in how you would explain things to them. It can be most difficult to find out their goals though.
I was Just talking about a Pallet nothing technical guess i was talking to a non technical person i had to explain there was one pallet instead of 2 but they had put the goods on top without a pallet has given me so much confidence that i will apply for a city job a lot of confidence tricksters out there to put you down
Literally all the comments are about how the title is just called “video”.
Technically, yours is too, because you're talking about it... Not too different huh
Also i have to Read directions 4 to 6 times i still have no idea and it's Roon ,, Tidal & Music servers simple things
I hope to impart some knowledge and wisdom from THE video
I always say that I have no idea what is going on but that I am looking around for another job.
Yo i made software that does exactly that.
Its in beta now.
Should be ready to ship soon.
Need more videos in python bro 🤩
As a technical guy, I appreciate when I don't get bombarded with terminology as well, if possible...
She was very Technical
comment
Can I not just slap down a pile of computer science books and say "Ill explain it next week"
video
You should automate Bloons Tower Defense. Maybe use Machine learning so the bot can learn where to place monkeys 🐵
AKA "How to speak to the humans"
This skill is invaluable in all walks of life. During my practice on the floor it is absolutely necessary. Especially with the current global pandemic we're under/I'm dealing with at work. Patients are much more likely to carry out the recommended actions if you talk to them in normal language and explain *why* you want them to do this or that. Just telling them to do it rarely works but explaining it and the reasoning behind it has yet to not work for me.
Video
I'm insanely bad at this.
An interview question I have used is "explain DNS as if you're explaining it to your mother". They get a bonus point if the term "directory enquiries" is used in their description 😁
“Take a second before you think” should be the title! Wouldn’t the 🌎 be much better?
Did you mean "Take a second before you speak"?
Or "Meet people at their level" might also work
You are very wise man.
My problem is that I get excited when explaining it and don’t realize I am speaking complete Latin to them until I see their blank stares.
I am capable of using common knowledge terminology and never intend to communicate pretentiously. I just sometimes get caught up in my fascination for the subject, and forget that my enthusiasm can get in the way of communicating effectively.
Yeah, probably the best audience for this video are the members on elitist discord group.
video comment
Comment
viewer
hand puppets.
Funny. Wrong, but funny.
Not to mention, audio!
I always deliver.
@@EngineerMan ❤️
I think you should preface this by admitting that this material is actually better suited for marketing types that can't understand the guy making the websight.
From a strong technical communicators perspective, this advice is a wrecklessly oversimplify mockup of the truth. (Imaging the crayon drawings people made of the cybertruck)
Only when you can reasonably estimate the target audiences objective desires can you extract the "truth" from technical lingo. If you cant do that, it might be better to saying nothing at all.
I've watched until the very end but you skipped the so called "technically a third group of people" - people who are technical but not in the same category as you, that should be interesting
You can use examples how a motor works and comparing that to the problem and then end up explaining how the motor works LOL
LMAO title
video
🥧 ?
“Video”
Video titles are bloat
Technically speaking, that's impossible.......
I'm sorry, I'll leave now.
video
comment
Video
video
video
comment
video
video
video
video