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When hiring, I always pay close attention to a person's writing skills. I find it to be a useful heuristic for general software engineering competency. But I ac

When hiring, I always pay close attention to a person's writing skills. I find it to be a useful heuristic for general software engineering competency. But I actually look at this from the opposite direction - someone who's good at writing is usually also good at reading, and being a good reader is extremely helpful in our field. (Good) engineers spend so much time reading: technical books, documentation, requirements, specs, email, and of course code. Engineers who don't mind reading and are able to read attentively tend to be a lot more effective, as they will be more knowledgeable and less likely to miss important details.

ryanlpeterman 4y ago
That's a good point, I think Paul Graham has a similar line of thinking in the relationship between reading and writing. I linked this tweet in my article (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1618747829975130115 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1618747829975130115) but I've seen other places he's mentioned something similar as well.
bavila 4y ago
Where do I find more people like you when I'm job hunting? :) I used to work as an attorney before getting into software engineering, and I clearly took for granted that other educated professionals (particular those in a field where precision is required) would write clearly, logically, and succinctly. My expectations have frequently not been met. It's particularly humorous, as everyone who has hired me has acted like they were taking a big risk because of my non-technical background. Yet, each time, they quickly realize it was a good idea to hire someone with a strong command of the English language and a ruthless attention to detail. Of course, the technical skills are required as well, but I don't think people appreciate how easy those are to pick up for someone who is capable of reading and distilling voluminous amounts of information in a short period of time.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Some of the best people I worked with did something else professionally before becoming a software developer. For example army, accountants and electronic engineers. They are the good all rounders, good at going from ambiguity to decent code.
  - vsareto 4y ago
    >They are the good all rounders, good at going from ambiguity to decent code. That's useful for day-to-day issues, but if you're getting a lot of ambiguity that these folks have to address, someone higher up needs to write more.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      I have only worked in small companies. Developer means developer and all other gaps.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      most business problems require good understanding of the goal and only mid-level technical expertise. Ive seem more projects fail because requirements weren't understood, often by the customer themselves, than because of tech just like most cars are not F1 racecars and revolutionary engineering - other concerns like costs and aesthetics dominate
      - jrochkind1 4y ago
        Which is why domain knowledge is so important for software engineers. In most projects. Not always the way the industry works to stay in a given business domain though.
- mhluongo 4y ago
  Big hiring criterion for us as well! Details in my profile if you're looking.
  - bavila 4y ago
    I'm good now, thanks. :)
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  My theory is that the field has a big population "on the spectrum", and they're just not great communicators. Maybe because the "theory of mind" deficit. They do have extra gifts in writing code which compensates somewhat. But it's a huge problem when half your team struggles to carry a conversation.
  - jacob171714 4y ago
    Not exactly a theory that this field has a higher percentage of autistic people. I think the communication deficit is more of a deficit between non autistic people and autistic people.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    I'm not sure there's a correlation between austistic people and (lack of) ability to write "clearly, logically, and succinctly." I think there's a variation of skill there among all people. Some autistic people are excellent technical communicators and documentation or specification/standards writers.
- bavila 4y ago
  > particular And of course I would make a typo. That should say "particularly". :)
- jahsome 4y ago
  I have a journalism degree, and spent a short stint as a reporter before transitioning to engineering. I share much the same experience: both encountering a distinct lack of effective communication based on what I had expected, and being written off (pun intended) during the hiring process. My biggest daily struggle is with those who want to verbally discuss every single issue, or worse, chat over informal DMs. Typically those conversations are somehow both circular and meandering all at once. For me personally, I feel my commitment to writing-competency-over-technical-prowess has been my biggest asset throughout this second act. I'd like to think it allows me to back in to the technical aspects and keeps me better organized overall. I also have diagnosed ADHD and a form of dyslexia so perhaps I'm just too easily distracted. p.s. Please don't judge my grammar or spelling on this reply -- I'm writing from the bath with a fever!
  - v-erne 4y ago
    >> My biggest daily struggle is with those who want to verbally discuss every single issue, or worse, chat over informal DMs. That's interesting - I tend to have mixed feeling about this. Sometimes I wish I had all communication done in writting. But the reality is that as a dev and seminconsultant I work in 10 different domains at the same time and there is no way for me to have enough time to encode all my clients knowledge in structured writing - the only way for my situation to be bearable is to encode this into code and working applications. And the only way to quickly gather knowledge and and have feedback loop on it is to encode it as working applications. Because lets face it even if I was master communicator and writer most clients areny and never will be. And most areny paing for writing text but for providing solutions. So I'm in this dissonance here where I would love to be better writer but the reality is that its not really that useful in my situation. Ok, and now I feel depressed, thank goodness I just this moment went into confectionery.
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      >Ok, and now I feel depressed, thank goodness I just this moment went into confectionery. Where do we order?
fnordpiglet 4y ago
I’m a great software engineer but I think by talking not writing. I know others that are visual and draw things from I think and others that code POCs. Maybe that heuristic is more a projection of what you are good at and you look for that in others? Maybe having a team with a written word person, a visual person, an explanatory person, and a code it first person makes a team that can explain what they’ve written with excellent diagramming and a functional POC to demonstrate?
- tilne 4y ago
  One of the points from the article was that writing helps you scale yourself. If you were a great engineer on my team I would want you to write everything down regardless if that was the way you thought through the alternatives or if it was just recording the understanding after you’d gotten to it. That said, I don’t buy the idea that you reach the same clarity of thought by talking through an idea as compared to writing that same idea down with the intention of communicating it clearly to another person. The latter requires significantly more command over an idea.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    Why? Because you can’t? You’re illustrating my point. You are asserting something about my experience without having had it, based on your own. On my teams everyone writes stuff down to their ability, for instance a lot of non native speakers just can’t do a good job of this. But I always have the writer, and everyone works with them to be sure everything of importance is written down in a high quality way. But I judge people by their contribution, not the mode of the contribution. I’ll betcha my teams are more functional, but I’m sure you will disagree so I suspect we have to agree to disagree (but I’ll still poach your nonwriters and non English speakers with aplomb!)
    - marcellus23 4y ago
      I have to agree with tile and the OP. Even if you have a dedicated formal writer for writing formal documents like briefs or proposals, every engineer should be decent at writing. Especially now that more and more communication is asynchronous. I've worked with many engineers who couldn't write, and it always came across in the aspects of the work mentioned in the thread — less ability to parse error messages, to describe things to others over email/Slack/comments, and most critically, to understand things that others wrote. Fundamentally, a huge amount of engineering is reading and writing. And I find those skills are very often linked.
davnicwil 4y ago
> Engineers who don't mind reading and are able to read attentively One very direct application of this skill in day to day engineering is just reading and correctly interpreting error logs and stacktraces. It's pretty incredible how often that's just the cause of a bug being literally given verbatim, if one can only engage with the message on its terms and frame of reference, and parse out the info from it that's meaningful in the context of the software you're writing (and not, for instance, expecting the error message to somehow do that work for you, which is often impossible).
- recfab 4y ago
  It's surprising how many developers won't even bother to read an error message. At my list gig there were a few folks who would regularly message me anytime there was a failure in their CI pipeline. No reading the message. Possibly not even opening the failed job at all. Most of the time, the pipeline was doing what it was supposed to: failing a bad build. It didn't even occur to them that it was their code that was the problem. Just "the pipeline is red: send to @recfab".
  - sophiabits 4y ago
    I recently paired with someone who was running into issues configuring some settings in the Facebook developers console. I got them to demo the issue for me, and they /immediately/ closed out of the error dialog when it popped up. Maddening!
- pixelfarmer 4y ago
  > expecting the error message to somehow do that work for you, which is often impossible But that is in part also because many error messages are closer to "there was an error" than providing full context info. These few minutes more invested into proper error messages can save many many man hours down the line.
908B64B197 4y ago
With remote being more prevalent, clear written communication is a must for anyone we hire. One of the best signal for that is... a college degree.
sinenomine 4y ago
> I find it to be a useful heuristic for general software engineering competency. So, like an IQ test without naming it an IQ test?
- Wohlf 4y ago
  Communicating clearly doesn't require a high IQ at all, it's a general skill. If anything, high intelligence might be a detriment since a lot of the smarter people I've known can't or refuse to communicate clearly.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    then they arent that smart? /s Seriously, I think our judgement of 'smartness' is lacking. We call people of loelw emotional intelligence smart.
- latency-guy2 4y ago
  Nothing wrong with IQ tests at all, in fact we perform them all the time, maybe we call them coding tests, take home projects, or whiteboard interviews from time to time, but they are still a very effective measure of ability. Each of these has a way to eliminate people I have no reason to hire, including timid/shy people with no backbone of their own, people who are terrible at communicating, people who are clearly out of their depth even in a low stakes environment on a toy problem that doesn't even need to be fully solved.
analog31 4y ago
This isn't too shocking, given what's said about programming, namely that you're writing code to be read by humans first, and computers second.

ryanlpeterman 4y ago

That's a good point, I think Paul Graham has a similar line of thinking in the relationship between reading and writing. I linked this tweet in my article (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1618747829975130115 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1618747829975130115) but I've seen other places he's mentioned something similar as well.

bavila 4y ago

Where do I find more people like you when I'm job hunting? :) I used to work as an attorney before getting into software engineering, and I clearly took for granted that other educated professionals (particular those in a field where precision is required) would write clearly, logically, and succinctly. My expectations have frequently not been met. It's particularly humorous, as everyone who has hired me has acted like they were taking a big risk because of my non-technical background. Yet, each time, they quickly realize it was a good idea to hire someone with a strong command of the English language and a ruthless attention to detail. Of course, the technical skills are required as well, but I don't think people appreciate how easy those are to pick up for someone who is capable of reading and distilling voluminous amounts of information in a short period of time.

quickthrower2 4y ago
Some of the best people I worked with did something else professionally before becoming a software developer. For example army, accountants and electronic engineers. They are the good all rounders, good at going from ambiguity to decent code.
- vsareto 4y ago
  >They are the good all rounders, good at going from ambiguity to decent code. That's useful for day-to-day issues, but if you're getting a lot of ambiguity that these folks have to address, someone higher up needs to write more.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    I have only worked in small companies. Developer means developer and all other gaps.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    most business problems require good understanding of the goal and only mid-level technical expertise. Ive seem more projects fail because requirements weren't understood, often by the customer themselves, than because of tech just like most cars are not F1 racecars and revolutionary engineering - other concerns like costs and aesthetics dominate
    - jrochkind1 4y ago
      Which is why domain knowledge is so important for software engineers. In most projects. Not always the way the industry works to stay in a given business domain though.
mhluongo 4y ago
Big hiring criterion for us as well! Details in my profile if you're looking.
- bavila 4y ago
  I'm good now, thanks. :)
BurningFrog 4y ago
My theory is that the field has a big population "on the spectrum", and they're just not great communicators. Maybe because the "theory of mind" deficit. They do have extra gifts in writing code which compensates somewhat. But it's a huge problem when half your team struggles to carry a conversation.
- jacob171714 4y ago
  Not exactly a theory that this field has a higher percentage of autistic people. I think the communication deficit is more of a deficit between non autistic people and autistic people.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  I'm not sure there's a correlation between austistic people and (lack of) ability to write "clearly, logically, and succinctly." I think there's a variation of skill there among all people. Some autistic people are excellent technical communicators and documentation or specification/standards writers.
bavila 4y ago
> particular And of course I would make a typo. That should say "particularly". :)
jahsome 4y ago
I have a journalism degree, and spent a short stint as a reporter before transitioning to engineering. I share much the same experience: both encountering a distinct lack of effective communication based on what I had expected, and being written off (pun intended) during the hiring process. My biggest daily struggle is with those who want to verbally discuss every single issue, or worse, chat over informal DMs. Typically those conversations are somehow both circular and meandering all at once. For me personally, I feel my commitment to writing-competency-over-technical-prowess has been my biggest asset throughout this second act. I'd like to think it allows me to back in to the technical aspects and keeps me better organized overall. I also have diagnosed ADHD and a form of dyslexia so perhaps I'm just too easily distracted. p.s. Please don't judge my grammar or spelling on this reply -- I'm writing from the bath with a fever!
- v-erne 4y ago
  >> My biggest daily struggle is with those who want to verbally discuss every single issue, or worse, chat over informal DMs. That's interesting - I tend to have mixed feeling about this. Sometimes I wish I had all communication done in writting. But the reality is that as a dev and seminconsultant I work in 10 different domains at the same time and there is no way for me to have enough time to encode all my clients knowledge in structured writing - the only way for my situation to be bearable is to encode this into code and working applications. And the only way to quickly gather knowledge and and have feedback loop on it is to encode it as working applications. Because lets face it even if I was master communicator and writer most clients areny and never will be. And most areny paing for writing text but for providing solutions. So I'm in this dissonance here where I would love to be better writer but the reality is that its not really that useful in my situation. Ok, and now I feel depressed, thank goodness I just this moment went into confectionery.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    >Ok, and now I feel depressed, thank goodness I just this moment went into confectionery. Where do we order?

fnordpiglet 4y ago

I’m a great software engineer but I think by talking not writing. I know others that are visual and draw things from I think and others that code POCs. Maybe that heuristic is more a projection of what you are good at and you look for that in others? Maybe having a team with a written word person, a visual person, an explanatory person, and a code it first person makes a team that can explain what they’ve written with excellent diagramming and a functional POC to demonstrate?

tilne 4y ago
One of the points from the article was that writing helps you scale yourself. If you were a great engineer on my team I would want you to write everything down regardless if that was the way you thought through the alternatives or if it was just recording the understanding after you’d gotten to it. That said, I don’t buy the idea that you reach the same clarity of thought by talking through an idea as compared to writing that same idea down with the intention of communicating it clearly to another person. The latter requires significantly more command over an idea.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Why? Because you can’t? You’re illustrating my point. You are asserting something about my experience without having had it, based on your own. On my teams everyone writes stuff down to their ability, for instance a lot of non native speakers just can’t do a good job of this. But I always have the writer, and everyone works with them to be sure everything of importance is written down in a high quality way. But I judge people by their contribution, not the mode of the contribution. I’ll betcha my teams are more functional, but I’m sure you will disagree so I suspect we have to agree to disagree (but I’ll still poach your nonwriters and non English speakers with aplomb!)
  - marcellus23 4y ago
    I have to agree with tile and the OP. Even if you have a dedicated formal writer for writing formal documents like briefs or proposals, every engineer should be decent at writing. Especially now that more and more communication is asynchronous. I've worked with many engineers who couldn't write, and it always came across in the aspects of the work mentioned in the thread — less ability to parse error messages, to describe things to others over email/Slack/comments, and most critically, to understand things that others wrote. Fundamentally, a huge amount of engineering is reading and writing. And I find those skills are very often linked.

davnicwil 4y ago

> Engineers who don't mind reading and are able to read attentively One very direct application of this skill in day to day engineering is just reading and correctly interpreting error logs and stacktraces. It's pretty incredible how often that's just the cause of a bug being literally given verbatim, if one can only engage with the message on its terms and frame of reference, and parse out the info from it that's meaningful in the context of the software you're writing (and not, for instance, expecting the error message to somehow do that work for you, which is often impossible).

recfab 4y ago
It's surprising how many developers won't even bother to read an error message. At my list gig there were a few folks who would regularly message me anytime there was a failure in their CI pipeline. No reading the message. Possibly not even opening the failed job at all. Most of the time, the pipeline was doing what it was supposed to: failing a bad build. It didn't even occur to them that it was their code that was the problem. Just "the pipeline is red: send to @recfab".
- sophiabits 4y ago
  I recently paired with someone who was running into issues configuring some settings in the Facebook developers console. I got them to demo the issue for me, and they /immediately/ closed out of the error dialog when it popped up. Maddening!
pixelfarmer 4y ago
> expecting the error message to somehow do that work for you, which is often impossible But that is in part also because many error messages are closer to "there was an error" than providing full context info. These few minutes more invested into proper error messages can save many many man hours down the line.

908B64B197 4y ago

With remote being more prevalent, clear written communication is a must for anyone we hire. One of the best signal for that is... a college degree.

sinenomine 4y ago

> I find it to be a useful heuristic for general software engineering competency. So, like an IQ test without naming it an IQ test?

Wohlf 4y ago
Communicating clearly doesn't require a high IQ at all, it's a general skill. If anything, high intelligence might be a detriment since a lot of the smarter people I've known can't or refuse to communicate clearly.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  then they arent that smart? /s Seriously, I think our judgement of 'smartness' is lacking. We call people of loelw emotional intelligence smart.
latency-guy2 4y ago
Nothing wrong with IQ tests at all, in fact we perform them all the time, maybe we call them coding tests, take home projects, or whiteboard interviews from time to time, but they are still a very effective measure of ability. Each of these has a way to eliminate people I have no reason to hire, including timid/shy people with no backbone of their own, people who are terrible at communicating, people who are clearly out of their depth even in a low stakes environment on a toy problem that doesn't even need to be fully solved.

analog31 4y ago

This isn't too shocking, given what's said about programming, namely that you're writing code to be read by humans first, and computers second.