How to communicate effectively as a developer

I wouldn’t say most developers fit this description, but there are a lot of people out there who embody this isolationist working style.

Some times they can be fit into a team’s structure if you have a constant stream of small tasks that really can fit into a queue of fully-contained tickets and the person is capable of self-managing and delivering good work at a reasonable rate. However, that’s a lot of conditions that many people just don’t meet. Often what ends up happening is that the rest of the team and the manager have to put in extra effort to work around the person’s personality, which slowly drags everyone else down.

That’s why it’s so important to screen for proper match during the interview process. I’ve seen a decent number of candidates who performed great on interviews, but couldn’t even pretend to be friendly during any stage of the interview. Surprisingly, a lot of them even seem to take pride in their demeanor.

I think there’s a romantic idea out there of coding mercenaries who show up, take paychecks in exchange for writing code in isolation until they feel like moving on. This mentality sounds great to people who dislike communicating or working with others, but it’s incompatible with any teamwork or any project that must scale beyond a single person. Most of the work I’ve been involved with has required teams and teamwork, so these people don’t really have a place in the team.

When it's too little, you go back and forth. When it's too much nobody reads your novel. I tend to go into too much detail, so I'm learning go where I feel is adequate and then take a few steps back.

I was always told that any proposal or explanation that is to land on the desk of a VP or higher (most companies, but the one I was in, was General Manager, or higher), needed to be a maximum length of one page, and not dense text.

I have written a lot, over my life, but I tend to write fairly long pieces[0]. This has meant that I go fairly long periods, without writing, as I get involved in a project (like right now).

I've recently started a new series, entitled "shorties"[1], that will hold very brief writings. These seem (to me) to be woefully inadequate, but I'll get it.

A good exercise, for me, was the idea of a "mini-saga."[2]

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/

[1] https://littlegreenviper.com/series/shorties/

[2] https://www.danpink.com/2005/05/mini-sagas-another-approach/

People joke about the programmer in a dark corner plugging away and never talking to others, but that's actually pretty rare. In 20 years I've only worked with a handful of developers who don't want to socialize, collaborate, or solve problems together.

The truth is that people - regardless of discipline - generally all want the same things from their work: to work on something meaningful, to be productive, and to be recognized for that work (both output and input).

That's pretty much it. If - as a leader - you can do those, you're going to generally have rather happy employees.

When it comes to this article, the issue is that there are a lot of people who believe that documentation and effective communication ARE necessary, but that work ISN'T recognized, and (because it isn't recognized) steals time that could be spent being productive doing something that is.

If you want effective communication, documentation, etc. at your workplace, it's incumbent on leadership to create that culture. Nurture it, get better at it themselves, and help those less eloquent to find their [written] voice.