[wdewind]

Sure, people don't need to explain RDBMS frequently, but that code you wrote last week? Or that reason you can't do exactly what the PM wants? YMMV but I spend a LOT of time communicating difficult concepts to other engineers (not only mentoring juniors, but also just doing hand-offs and stuff to others), to product managers, sales people etc.

Some engineers really do sit in a quiet room all day writing code, but my experience has been that it is an extremely communication-centric job.

Either way: if you do work in the kind of environment where you need to work with other engs and teams frequently you do need to test communication skills, and simply coding is not always sufficient.

[FLUX-YOU]

>YMMV but I spend a LOT of time communicating difficult concepts to other engineers (not only mentoring juniors, but also just doing hand-offs and stuff to others), to product managers, sales people etc.

This is a good use of time though. You won't find this on wikipedia, obviously, and is not considered basic technical information.

This is what I want to spend my time explaining.