I think you hit an extremely important point: communication skills (both written, oral and even nonverbal) are EXTREMELY important for most engineers, even thou

I think you hit an extremely important point: communication skills (both written, oral and even nonverbal) are EXTREMELY important for most engineers, even though most software folks tend to not concern themselves with that too much. I understood this real early and it has helped me progress a lot not just in my career but in personal life as well (turns out good communication skills lead to healthy relationships... who knew? :) ) One experience that really change my life in many ways was writing a Masters Thesis under an advisor who was anal about explaining the ideas well and about eliminating typos and such. I found it very frustrating at first but I think overall it trained me to pay attention to what I say and write to try and be as clear as possible.