from Hacker News

Paul Tudor Jones to Staff: Learn to Write or I'll Rip Up Your Memo

by jskonhovd on 10/23/15, 2:46 PM with 84 comments

by paul on 10/23/15, 4:13 PM
This also is good advice for anyone applying to YC. I'm not going to read your 10,000 word manifesto -- just tell me what it is you are building! :)
We've actually found that the ability to provide clear and concise answers strongly correlates with success, so this is a major factor when evaluating founders.
I'm also reminded of my favorite C. A. R. Hoare quote: "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."
The same thing applies to business. Long, complex pitches are a sign of muddy thinking and hidden icebergs.
by vegabook on 10/23/15, 3:31 PM
I cannot endorse this idea enough.
Paul Tudor (I don't know why anybody calls him Mr Jones. Anybody who has ever dealt with his firm calls him Paul Tudor) knows what everybody else in finance knows: you're dealing with people who have money, and when you have money, there are many, many, people trying to solicit your interest. This is not about the blog writing style, your deep intellect, your pitch. It's about "I get 10 really smart people 10x per hour trying to communicate with me (including my own employees). My bandwith is limited. You have 10 seconds. Get my attention".
This issue is less about tech, than about the basics of trying to get through to the wealthy/privileged in what is the biggest, most brutally competitive communication arena. Literally everybody wants Paul Tudor's attention. He's a financial genius, but he's just a man with a limited attention span and dozens of solicitations per hour. Make sure your 10 seconds count.
I was a fixed income strategist for many years. Realizing that there were 30 PDFs from my competitors hitting the target's inbox every hour, my successful strategy was to do what none of them were doing: sit back, really think about what was the essence of my piece that was different from the first principal component of everybody's obvious chatter, summarize that in a single line, and put that into the subject.
by joshu on 10/23/15, 3:43 PM
For the startup world:
Approximately 80% of the pitches I get are between garbled and incoherent. Even higher in the unsolicited ones.
Consider that your recipient is reading on a small screen and utilize pyramid structure. And don't bury the lede. Many pitches ask for money without saying anything at all about what they are about.
by jackschultz on 10/23/15, 3:37 PM
Wow all the comments here seem negative. The guy is just saying that people should be clearer with their writing and getting to the point right away to avoid confusion.
If they're writing about a topic that's more complex, sure, the writing will need to be more complex. But there's nothing wrong with communicating simply if the subject allows it.
by pjungwir on 10/23/15, 4:20 PM
In college I helped a lot of people write papers, and almost always they were trying to "sound academic", and the sentences were so complex they didn't even parse. So I'd ask, "What does this mean?", and whatever they said, I'd reply, "Write that down!" Basically they were trying too hard. It reminds me of the common advice to edit your work by reading it out loud.
If you are a great writer your prose might be better than speech, but I think for most of us, writing for non-literary goals, writing should approach common but correct speech. Good writing has the illusion (but not the reality) of being conversational.
by heydenberk on 10/23/15, 3:50 PM
Read your writing out loud to yourself, carefully observing the punctuation. You won't become Hemingway, but you will find the most obvious flaws in your writing.
by Splendor on 10/23/15, 3:30 PM
> "Jones says writing as a newspaper journalist does can help someone become a better problem-solver..."
by jbob2000 on 10/23/15, 3:20 PM
Eh, I think he's mistaken. Journalists aren't good at writing because they took a course, they're good at writing because they write. A lot. You want better memos, hold memo-writing practice sessions every week and give constant feedback. Ripping a memo up and saying "take a course" is ignorant.
by mindcrime on 10/23/15, 8:24 PM
A good book related to the topic of clear writing is "The Pyramid Principle". http://www.amazon.com/The-Pyramid-Principle-Writing-Thinking...
This book was recommended by a fellow HN'er a few years back in a different thread. I bought a copy and read it and was suitably impressed. I'm still working on integrating the ideas from the book, but I think it's worth reading.
Basically, the book teaches you to organize your thoughts (and writing) in a hierarchical, logical structure, and to present the most important idea first, and then branch out below that with sub-points and supporting material.
If you're interested in clear writing, I think this book is worth the money and time.
by afarrell on 10/23/15, 3:51 PM
Are there good classes one can take online which teach someone how to get through writing anxiety? Or how to write despite the fact that you cannot really ever know how your audience will interpret what you are saying?
by joesmo on 10/23/15, 3:18 PM
For news articles and business correspondence (memos, emails, letters), if I don't know what the article is about and the general conclusion of the article after reading paragraph one, the writer has failed horribly.
There's few things I hate more than 'news' articles not being written properly, something that's incredibly common these days on the Internet. I especially hate articles that start out with a couple of paragraphs of some stupid, boring, anecdotal story before even hinting at what they're about. Such things are evidence of terrible writing. I don't expect blog posts to adhere to this, but I see it so often on 'news' sites, it's horribly disgusting. Yes, there is a place for magazine stories but the news is hardly ever it. And certainly, business correspondence is the last place for that kind of literal gibberish.
by pcunite on 10/23/15, 4:14 PM
TL;DR
Get to the point in the first paragraph or I'll make you take an online newspaper writing course.
by puranjay on 10/24/15, 12:22 AM
I know HN keeps saying that great coders are hard to find, but the hardest role I've filled at my startup was for our chief content creator. People who get writing AND marketing are exceptionally rare.
by vincefutr23 on 10/23/15, 4:00 PM
anyone have any advice for online courses that deal with this? find myself struggling with it as well..
by illumen on 10/23/15, 4:05 PM
He should learn how to read better. Seriously. Hire lieutenants that can read really well, and trust them to filter.
That aside, sucking up to journalists is a really good way to get their attention. PR win!
by tonomics on 10/23/15, 4:12 PM
If you're technical, they'll tell you to make money you need to learn X framework/library/language.
Instead, if you can communicate well, you turn a WordPress theme into millions.
by asdf9900 on 10/24/15, 12:52 AM
Every time you write "tl;dr" you demonstrate that you don't know how to write. Your most important idea should come first by default.
by kordless on 10/23/15, 4:03 PM
The summary first style of writing is a hack to enable quick trust establishment. It doesn't work for all concepts and it's unlikely to be effective for communicating very complex and innovative subjects.
Also, some things just have to be shown visually to be trusted. A paragraph explaining an anti-gravity device isn't going to cut it. You need to show it working in person where there can be no doubt it's doing what you say it does.
by astral303 on 10/23/15, 8:40 PM
Absolutely. It is a requirement for a modern software engineer to be able to write well.
by buzzdenver on 10/23/15, 4:12 PM
"Every time I get a memo from someone written magazine style, I literally tear it up"
So they either communicate on paper, which would be stpid, or he misuses "literally", which would be ironic.
by mpdehaan2 on 10/23/15, 3:26 PM
Glad I don't work for this guy.
Being "efficient" at what you do at the cost of seeing the full picture, attention-deficit decision making, etc, is not a good thing.
A lot of people with positions of power think they are snap decision makers. They are snap decision makers because there's nobody to challenge those decisions, and often thinking a bit more and listening more, is a good thing.
As Herbert put it in Dune, "a mentat needs data".
I liked Bezos's requirement for a 6 page memo, and time to read it, before meetings. So many times meetings start and everyone wants to share an opinion, and people don't take time to listen.
Sure, inverted pyramid is nice. But so is understanding.
I really appreciate a good long-form article -- NYT and Salon or whatever - if it's somewhat focused. So much that passes for 'journalism' these days is reformatting quick summary feeds, and it loses meaning.
by SixSigma on 10/23/15, 3:35 PM
Oh, please don't write like journalists :
Something is definitely true
The thing that non-one thought was true is now definitely true. Or that's what researchers at somewhere say in a new report.
The report by the It's True Foundation ....
by justin_vanw on 10/23/15, 7:40 PM
Yes, he should rip up that memo. Then lean back and take in all the wood paneling while he sips an Old Fashioned and scans the paper ticker tape for his investments while his secretary takes dictation in shorthand.