In this episode, Ian, Laura, and Wesley talk about the importance of communication skills, specifically writing, for people in technical roles. Ian calls writing the single most important meta skill you can have. And the good news is that you can get better at it, with deliberate practice!
Ian and Wesley both come from engineering backgrounds but have moved into more writing-intensive roles as their careers have progressed. Laura is an instructional designer with experience across many industries. They all agree that writing plays several different important roles for people, whether it's to educate, persuade, or even mark a decision.
So if writing is such a critical part of what you're doing from an engineering perspective, how can you get better at it? Laura offers a handful of practices, including providing context, supplying the appropriate level of detail for the audience, using stories or analogies, incorporating repetition, and finding a good editor (even if it's yourself coming back to a piece with fresh eyes).
The guests close the episode by sharing some of their favorite resources for improving communication skills, which are listed below.
Links from this episode99. The Technical Side of Deep Fakes
98. The Ethical Side of Deep Fakes
Special Episode: Health Metrics at Scale
97. The Challenges of Bespoke Solutions in a Regulated World
I Was There: Stories of Production Incidents
96. Incubating a Startup
95. Intelligence Through Logging
94. Engineering Management
93. Conferences in a Virtual World
92. Strategies for Improving Your Mental Health
91. Destigmatizing Mental Health
90. Saving Lives at Scale: Part Two
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89. Saving Lives at Scale: Part One
88. Monitoring Productivity through IoT
87. Living with Landing
86. Innovations in Business Modeling
85. The New Definition of Frontend Development
84. Salesforce for Heroku Developers
83. SEO and Accessibility
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