Senior engineering traits: Be specific and clear
Have you been in meetings observing a standout software engineer? What skills or traits do they usually exhibit? Let’s unpack three most important behavioural traits.
A trait that really separates great software engineers from your run of the mill ones is the clarity they have and how they can talk and convey their thoughts and ideas in very specific manner
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” - Mark Twain
The quote captures what clarity is and why it is hard to achieve. It requires deep and clear mental models of the technology you are discussing about, and is often built on top of years of experience and practical intuition that can be developed only by being hands on.
Have you observed below?
Sometimes people go on a monologue during meetings and keep on speaking for 5-10 mins without saying anything of substance? It’s quite easy to ramble or even speak in uncertain terms
Also, often quite visible in poorly written design docs, you’ll often see docs and posts that are extremely long yet sparse in terms of high quality content. You have to really work hard to separate signal from noise in such design docs.
Also, long paragraphs that have tons of words, yet lack any specific new idea or original thought.
If you catch yourself doing this, stop and reflect on whether you actually know what you are talking about?
And, For my impostor syndrome afflicted friends, It’s completely okay if you don’t though, but realising this and trying to learn more so that you can compress your intuition into specific words that are information dense, void of fluff language, is a skill that will really separate you from others around you.
This is also a learned and practiced skill that gets better with time. If you are intentional about improving your verbal and written communication and are generally passionate about your area enough to go deep, chances are you’ll mostly get there.