As an engineer and now an author of a technical book I definitely agree with this. I have seen many places where they have a talented engineering team that cannot communicate what they have created etc. to everybody else. The worse anti-pattern is when they hire technical writers with no knowledge of the domain (or dev skills) to create documentation on how to use API's targeted at developers... The end documentation from that effort, unsurprisingly, is often borderline incomprehensible.
Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
251–260 of 385 posts
Re: Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
#252I think writing doesn't get anywhere near the attention ot should be getting.I've met and I work with some really great people but boy oh boy they struggle to write.I'm not talking about producing the next bestseller but simply communicating simple ideas. I read what some of them write I think: wtf...if you were only able to write better you could be reaching the sky.. Technical capabilities+ ability to communicate well in writing is a killer skill and can literally elevate people to a whole new level..
Re: Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
#253At USC, they had multiple mandatory writing classes and I felt that the people who did well in those classes did well in engineering too. I think there is a high correlation between being able to clearly write something down and explain it and understanding the concepts.
Re: Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
#254Writing well? I've had to read engineering drawings for QC in a precision engineering shop working with critical industries. Screw grammar and style being undervalued. You get told to fuck off if you complain about spelling. edit - there is a pathological aversion to updating a drawing, not because of the work, but because of the process. People will do almost anything to avoid having to get an update signed off.
Assuming QC == quality control, I find that attitude highly ironic.
Measure twice, cut once. Take the time to write carefully up front and proofread, before you submit it to a lengthy process.
Re: Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
#255Writing well is an undervalued skill in life, not just in engineering. When you work on a team of peers with similar skills in your field, whether that field is engineering or something else, being able to write well and communicate well become strong differentiators. FWIW, I'm pretty sure that writing (reasonably) well online is what got me a job in venture capital after ten years as an engineer. David Perell (host…
I'm curious about your experience. How do you think your writing translated into value in the eyes of the VC world? Or was it that you'd built a platform online first through your writing and then they solicited you? In my experience my ability here has always been valued after the fact; I have the strong impression that few companies value writing, even as a secondary skill, or see it as a differentiator.
One doesn't always get to meet people, sometimes and tbh quite often it has to be on LinkedIn,via email or even a letter.. Ability to do it well sets you apart and also brings confidence to those you try to communicate with.A well written proposal to a VC is 100 times better than some mish mash of words.
Re: Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
#256Writing well is an undervalued skill in life, not just in engineering. When you work on a team of peers with similar skills in your field, whether that field is engineering or something else, being able to write well and communicate well become strong differentiators. FWIW, I'm pretty sure that writing (reasonably) well online is what got me a job in venture capital after ten years as an engineer. David Perell (host…
me too. writing concisely has helped me throughout my career, but that wasn't always the case. i undervalued writing growing up and slowly fell behind my peers. that finally caught up to me in college where i struggled to distill and express the often conflicting ideas squirming around in my head.
but a love of novel ideas led me to take extra liberal arts courses, accept the resultant mediocre grades, and ultimately improve my writing. becoming a teaching assistant for an engineering writing class was where, in comparison with my younger peers, i could finally see that i'd indeed improved (and hopeful that the poor writing i graded wasn't indicative of future skill!).
Re: Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Standards like grammer?
That's a pretty asinine response to a point that is substantially correct. Insisting upon a set of rules for otherwise commonly understood words (an RFC defining "MUST") is usually a pedantic waste of time, and will actually reduce the quality of the finished product. No one is here to dispute the usefulness of approximately correct contemporary grammar. I would dispute the usefulness of insisting that design docs co…
> Insisting upon a set of rules for otherwise commonly understood words (an RFC defining "MUST") is usually a pedantic waste of time
I would agree, except the field of programming seems to have a very large number of pedants. Unfortunately, earlier in my career I was in the room many times where the lead or programmers told the PM or stakeholder "well it didn't say that exactly."
Re: Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a pretty asinine response to a point that is substantially correct. Insisting upon a set of rules for otherwise commonly understood words (an RFC defining "MUST") is usually a pedantic waste of time, and will actually reduce the quality of the finished product. No one is here to dispute the usefulness of approximately correct contemporary grammar. I would dispute the usefulness of insisting that design docs co…
You are assuming that everyone working with the document is a native English speaker and / or has worked to a standards based development system. Even so back in the day ICL managed to ignore a counter MUST start from Zero in implementing an X.400 stack - and you wonder why the uk No longer has a mainframe supplier.
I'm not a native English speaker. Half of the team I manage are native English speakers,the rest are not. The recent project they did on communication templates was checked by the French colleague,while I no longer forward some of the files to English native speakers because they can't form sentences thst are clear enough to understand by others. It is not easy for a lot of people.
Re: Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
#259Writing well is an undervalued skill in life, not just in engineering. When you work on a team of peers with similar skills in your field, whether that field is engineering or something else, being able to write well and communicate well become strong differentiators. FWIW, I'm pretty sure that writing (reasonably) well online is what got me a job in venture capital after ten years as an engineer. David Perell (host…
I'm curious about your experience. How do you think your writing translated into value in the eyes of the VC world? Or was it that you'd built a platform online first through your writing and then they solicited you? In my experience my ability here has always been valued after the fact; I have the strong impression that few companies value writing, even as a secondary skill, or see it as a differentiator.
Writing is not a skill asked for but it can help you standout when first approaching vcs.
Re: Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well
#260There are kinda two disciplines here, writing something that tries to convey a complex concept is important, but it's also important to be able to tersely describe a problem, and use correct, agreed upon language to do it.
Compare:
Wrong error message shows on Xm-z pages username input.
Xm-z page, username input, Error message incorrect.
I would argue that having agreed upon naming, and explicit syntax for how to describe issues/improvements in-between your team members is almost more important than being a good writer. The bottom sentence isn't even grammatically correct.