You're assuming malign motivations, I'm assuming misplaced ones. It seems more likely to me the manager tried to read it and struggled, then generated something of equivalent size or larger. I'm taking it the generated document passed around was actually at least as large as the one-pager, and hence entirely pointless to rephrase even with the malign motivations you're assuming.
Since the poster here wears his personality and writing motivations on his sleeve, it is very obvious to me that he writes at cross purposes with those who read. he says very clearly: he writes for precision, expended a vast cognitive effort per word.
Even if, in this instance, my analysis is wrong -- its a comment for the poster here worth considering. Because people don't like to read writing which has taken such effort to produce, because it then requires a great effort to read.
> It seems more likely to me the manager tried to read it and struggled, then generated something of equivalent size or larger.
Either way, it's poor management to interpose oneself between employees. As a manager you should be connecting groups of people to talk to each other directly, not injecting oneself as a go between. If they have issues understanding the material they're much better off asking the OP directly than asking the manager who doesn't understand it either. And they'll be in a much better place to do that if they have read the material OP actually wrote.
The difference is that mj was trying to give advice to donatj, and donatj can't control what their manager does. So the advice is crafted such that it gives actionable suggestions to donatj.
Yet, that might not be the correct interpretation. I don't know, I'm some third party, like you. Personally I agree that this is poor management but I don't think just blaming the problem on the manager solves anything, it just leaves the problem broken. So the things to do are either fix the problem or figure out how to work with the broken thing.
Well, OP can learn from the experience or turn it into a hill to die on. Learning doesn't imply you were ever wrong, only that something you did produced an unintended result -- people are themselves problems to navigate around, not people whose actions you have to read as judgements.
> You're assuming malign motivations, I'm assuming misplaced ones.
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
And sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
I'm not seeing the point.
Or, to put another way, “never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance”
> Because people don't like to read writing which has taken such effort to produce, because it then requires a great effort to read.
I disagree, but stipulate that. Why would this be reasonable behavior when doing knowledge work?
When I read documentation, I'm not there to enjoy the experience. I'm there to find out how the documented thing works and how to use it. It's not a novel. I'm not there for entertainment.
Chasing readability without maintaining accuracy is a failure in the context of documentation no matter the motivations involved.
I'm not saying that readability can't be a consideration when making documentation. I am saying that if you discard accuracy in the process, you've fucked up quite badly.
This anecdote would likely be very different if the AI-modified version had been passed back to engineering for a review before sending it out.