I once worked at a startup and reported to the CTO. This guy was a genuinely smart guy, a little bit of a genius, in the sense that he had a knack for approachi

I once worked at a startup and reported to the CTO. This guy was a genuinely smart guy, a little bit of a genius, in the sense that he had a knack for approaching problems from a different perspective and coming up with different/creative solutions. Having said that, his emails were horrible. Sometimes he would accidently put in a 'no' in the sentence, so he actually wrote the opposite of what he meant. I knew him well, so I could guess that this is the case, and followed up verbally to check what he means. At the same company the CEO also wrote pretty terrible 2-liner emails. I personally put great value on clear and concise communication, esp. clear and concise writing. However, in my experience, having worked at ~10 companies, I'm an exception on this. Most people seem to view the act of typing a message/email as a necessary evil, and they will just do one pass of typing, send it, and hope for the best. Most people do not: (i) proof-read what they write (ii) care about grammar (iii) consider whether this is clear and concise (iv) don't think whether this is a good time to write this. On the last point, eg. as a manager I never write any emails that might affect people's mood on a Friday, because I don't want to f--k with their weekends; there's no point, I can just send it at 9am on Monday and everybody had a great weekend. But, in my experience most managers aren't considerate like this.