As engineers, we write a lot of code. We also write a lot of other forms of content. There’s a good chance that you spend less time writing code than other forms of content on a daily basis. Other forms of content might include:

  • Emails to colleagues about projects
  • Comments and descriptions in Jira tickets
  • Postmortems
  • Code reviews
  • Meeting summaries

Why should I care?

There’s a good chance you are now thinking: “See! I already create content, this article doesn’t apply to me.”

Well, guess what: it still does. Because being a good writer is one of the most important skills as an engineer. A huge part of our work is getting our ideas in other people’s heads. This allows us to convince our colleague that the functionality that they are requesting, is a terrible idea. Or why that SQL query is most certainly going to drop the wrong tables.

Think of the best engineer you know. They probably are great at writing code. They might also be amazing at designing it in advance, or have brilliant debugging skills. Perhaps they just seem to be able to know exactly what the output of code will be, before it is ran. Whatever it is: you thought of them, because you know about their skills. That is because they are able to communicate their skills in one way or another.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that they are great at giving a presentation about their work, or write perfect project updates. There are a lot of ways to communicate what you are doing, why you are doing it and what the result and impact was. The way that you do that, is different for everyone, depending on their own preferences.

Being able to communicate clearly, makes you better at your craft.

And don’t just listen to me. James Devlin already wrote about this in 2008.

But I’m not a natural communicator!

But you are! We all are. You might just have a different style than you feel is normal. Or you need a little bit of practice. Luckily for you, there are a number of things you can do to improve your communication skills.

Here are a few ideas.

Write weekly updates

This is an idea by the brilliant Will Larson. He calls it the weekly 5-15 updates. Updates that can be written in 15 minutes, and read in 5. This is an excellent way to practice getting your message across. And if you find this scary, there’s good news! People don’t actually have to read this for you to practice. As a matter of fact: you don’t even have to send it out:

As an interesting note, these emails do not need to be widely read to be useful. I often find myself ignoring them initially but then going back to find the latest update from someone to answer a specific question later.

Start a blog

This isn’t such a bad idea anyways. By keeping track of a blog, you slowly build something that allows you to showcase your expertise for whenever you need it. On top of that, it is also a safe way to practice. You make the rules.

Want to write about PHP? Go ahead! Do you prefer writing about your last vacation or the latest episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills? Be my guest!

Write some actual documentation

Writing good documentation is a very valuable skill. Are you missing some documentation somewhere? Step up and write it! And if your company or project does not require additional documentation (which I find hard to believe), there’s a lot of open source projects that would love for you to practice on their project.

As a matter of fact, I think every project could benefit from better documentation. A win-win!

Speak at a local meetup

Here’s a completely other way of creating and sharing content and knowledge: offer to speak at local meetups. If you are a local meetup organiser, you surely know how hard it is to find people who are willing to speak at those places. Most people who eventually do speak there, tell me that they had a great time however. Especially at local meetups, the audience is way nicer than you might imagine. If you are not sure about that, just go to the meetup you are considering speaking at before actually offering to speak.

Being able to speak publically is an extremely valuable skill. Especially amongst engineers. It also helps to showcase your expertise, which is never a bad idea.

Just start.

Whichever way you prefer to start writing: just start. And remember: No one said that you have to publish. Most content I write, never gets published. And that is perfectly fine.

It’s a lot easier when you start writing for yourself, and decide to eventually publish only afterwards.