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Wow, I would have to sit down and think for a bit in order to come up with something I disagree with more than this. Being able to write well is a golden ticket

Wow, I would have to sit down and think for a bit in order to come up with something I disagree with more than this. Being able to write well is a golden ticket to getting things you want, especially economic opportunities. If you can communicate well, people will trust you with important, valuable things. If you aren’t writing, you’re not thinking as well as you could be, and therefore not communicating as well as you could be.

deathanatos 3y ago
Really? I see people in my job doing far less writing than they ought to. Little to no documentation, little to no design docs, and where stuff is written, the document fails to explain the why/how of its design, includes grave errors about how preexisting system work, etc. None of that seems to hold them back: they plow into code head first … and … stuff comes out the other end. Even Slack messages from many of my co-workers are broken fragments of terrible grammar. The syntax is corrupt … let alone the semantics of whatever the hell they're trying to convey. And I see no correlation between these people, and failure in the corporate world.
- omginternets 3y ago
  That tells us that people aren’t writing as much as they should, not that writing isn’t a valuable skill. Looking at the top quartile of every profession I have been involved in, those people consistently write more and better than their peers.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    > That tells us that people aren’t writing as much as they should, not that writing isn’t a valuable skill. It depends on what it means by valuable. We may value it, sure, but in his example the poor communication didnt hurt their performance reviews or salaries.
    - omginternets 3y ago
      Valuable means “having a significant positive impact on one’s career opportunities”.
nonethewiser 3y ago
Can you quantify that though? I mean if you look at people who study writing in college the salary outcomes are pretty bad. Im not saying its not useful, or that its easy.
- omginternets 3y ago
  This is a classic main effect vs interaction. Looking at “people who study writing” is not the useful category here, since it’ll include literature degrees (and probably exclude skilled writers who haven’t formally studied writing, to boot). More useful is to consider skilled writers vs unskilled writers within a same profession.

deathanatos 3y ago

Really? I see people in my job doing far less writing than they ought to. Little to no documentation, little to no design docs, and where stuff is written, the document fails to explain the why/how of its design, includes grave errors about how preexisting system work, etc. None of that seems to hold them back: they plow into code head first … and … stuff comes out the other end. Even Slack messages from many of my co-workers are broken fragments of terrible grammar. The syntax is corrupt … let alone the semantics of whatever the hell they're trying to convey. And I see no correlation between these people, and failure in the corporate world.

omginternets 3y ago
That tells us that people aren’t writing as much as they should, not that writing isn’t a valuable skill. Looking at the top quartile of every profession I have been involved in, those people consistently write more and better than their peers.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > That tells us that people aren’t writing as much as they should, not that writing isn’t a valuable skill. It depends on what it means by valuable. We may value it, sure, but in his example the poor communication didnt hurt their performance reviews or salaries.
  - omginternets 3y ago
    Valuable means “having a significant positive impact on one’s career opportunities”.

nonethewiser 3y ago

Can you quantify that though? I mean if you look at people who study writing in college the salary outcomes are pretty bad. Im not saying its not useful, or that its easy.

omginternets 3y ago
This is a classic main effect vs interaction. Looking at “people who study writing” is not the useful category here, since it’ll include literature degrees (and probably exclude skilled writers who haven’t formally studied writing, to boot). More useful is to consider skilled writers vs unskilled writers within a same profession.