3 ms·
Problem is they don’t know how to express themselves and many people, especially those interested in tech, don’t want to learn. I can’t tell you how many times
by ModernMech 7mo ago
Problem is they don’t know how to express themselves and many people, especially those interested in tech, don’t want to learn.
I can’t tell you how many times I have a CS student in my office for advising and they tell me they only want to take technical courses, because anything reading or writing or psychology or history based is “soft”, unrelated to their major, and a waste of their time.
I’ve spent years telling them critical reading and expressive writing skills are very important to being a functioning adult, but they insist what they need to know can only be found in the Engineering college.
- abustamam 7mo agoMuch of my time at work is reading through quickly typed messages from my boss and understanding exactly what questions I need to ask in order to make it easy for him to answer clearly. Engineers who lack soft skills cannot be effective in team environments.
- theshrike79 7mo agoBeing able (and willing) to write shit down is a superpower among 10x programmers who think "code is self-documenting" and don't even add comments.
- abustamam 7mo agoHaha. I always say that I'm only a good IC not because of my technical skills but because of my communication skills and my willingness to, as Steven Covey says, seek first to understand.
- theshrike79 7mo agoI literally got a transfer to a more exciting position and most likely a raise (discussing it on Tuesday =P) just because I communicated things related to the new position proactively and more than other people who, after the fact, expressed interest in the position.
- abustamam 7mo agoNice, congrats! A former boss once told me that over communication never hurt anyone. Of course there are ways to fine-tune and get the point across more succinctly but I think the point still stands - err on the side of over than under communication.
- jasomill 7mo agoRTFM and being able to quickly reduce problems to the simplest possible test case are my superpowers. To be fair, LLMs can be quite useful for quickly finding the correct place in TFM to look when you don't necessarily have a function or feature name to go on.