How Are Some Engineers So Good At Communicating Their Work?
How Are Some Engineers So Good At Communicating Their Work?
Today we’ll cover:
Insights to level up your communication as an engineer
Two upcoming events this week
Estimated reading time: 4.1 minutes 🔖
The Comms Plan
In my 4.5 years at Meta, I was consistently recognized for my ability to collaborate and build consensus. This skill becomes especially important as a Senior/Staff individual contributor, where your impact is defined by your ability to have influence without authority. Clear, consistent communication is the bedrock of influence.
In the last Taro Premium Session, I talked about 3 pillars of effective communication:
Start with the audience. Understand how much context your audience has, and connect the dots for them. Bad news should never be a surprise. Everything you say/write should be as short as possible.
Choose the right medium. Is your goal to build relationships, or to efficiently communicate info? Synchronous (verbal) is better for the former, asynchronous (written) is better for the former. Spend time evaluating the different means of communication available to you: standups, team meetings, email updates, cross-org communication. (See image below)
Be consistent. You should have a regular drumbeat of posts for your work. If you feel like nothing happened, you should explain why nothing happened. For long-running processes like brainstorms or architecture reviews, you should consistently message the timeline and milestones.
You can find the full recording of this session, along with examples, for Taro Premium members here.
Two upcoming sessions
Friday Aug 26: Alex will do a deep dive on effective mentorship (Taro Premium)
Saturday Aug 27: How To Be An Amazing Interviewer
Finally, here are some great recent Q&A on Taro:
Entry-Level Engineer [SDE 1] at Amazon asks “How many years of experience should I rack up at Amazon / in Big Tech before moving to a startup?”
Mid-Level Engineer [E4] at Meta asks “How can I pick up other tech stacks more quickly at Meta?”
Entry-Level Engineer [L3] at Google asks “Started my 1st FTE SWE job and been on my team for just a few weeks - What should I do?” (Taro Premium)
See you soon!
Also this helps too :) https://theaihelper.substack.com/p/maximizing-your-chances-how-to-position