[BeetleB]

> But if you can't do the middle-class job because you can't write, the piece of paper will only get you so far. It may get you an entry-level job, but you probably won't get much in the way of promotions. So even from that perspective, plagiarism isn't helpful.

Where do these mythical jobs exist where being able to write well is a requirement for career growth? Certainly not at engineering companies.

I wish what you said were true, but in my experience, "being able to write and communicate well is critical in the workplace" is one of the top lies taught to me when I was at university. We had to take a regular writing class, and a technical writing class to graduate with an engineering degree. And when I get to industry, I see no signs of people practicing what they're taught, and it doesn't hold anyone back.

Edit: I should say my experience is more about writing than communicating as a whole. People do need to be good speakers/presenters. But writing? Not really.

[brobdingnagians]

Yes, writing is important. I have coworkers who struggle at writing, and it takes mental overhead to try to understand them. It hurts their ability to communicate clearly, think clearly, and to be taken seriously. I have clients who struggle to write well; I was just barely looking at a legally binding document that is incomprehensible in places and would have serious repercussions on those using it. That is bad. Society is better when we are truly educated to think and to communicate. We can be enriched by each other when we understand each other. Writing coherently helps us think coherently. That improves our lives more than a degree certificate ever will.

[azinman2]

Writing and communication skills are absolutely necessary for career growth. The power of persuasion is directly linked to the ability to communicate your ideas well.

[usrusr]

Careers can be grown in many ways. In terms of career advancement, good writing will be outperformed by ruthless opportunism nine out of ten times. Cheating in education is identifying a metric and optimizing for that instead of the quality themetric is intended to measure and that strategy won't stop being effective upon getting a degree. Implication: no, "they are only hurting themselves" isn't a valid excuse.

[BeetleB]

> Writing and communication skills are absolutely necessary for career growth. The power of persuasion is directly linked to the ability to communicate your ideas well.

I've updated my original comment to reflect that I was referring to writing and not general communications in general (although I wrote it more broadly).

I've seen people really value presentation skills and PPT. Persuasion on 1:1 and via presentations is definitely valued.

But via writing? No. They're atrocious when writing emails. And they rarely write docs/briefs. If they do the latter, it's really meant to be a teaser to get someone interested, and then that person will go talk 1:1 to get the details or ask for a presentation.

My experience at work: Writing anything longer than 1-2 pages is a good way to ensure no one will read it. And again, if I have a good enough "lead", what will happen is the senior person will read the lead, stop reading, and schedule something to talk to me in person so he can understand in detail. At some level, I understand why he would do that - it can be an interactive conversation where he can interrupt, ask for clarification, etc. Whereas if he read the thing, he would have to write up a response, or even worse, make notes to ask me the next time he sees me.

I almost never get anything as well written as a typical HN comment. Even (internal) documentation/manuals/Wikis are poorly written.

[novok]

At large tech co that pays well, writing is very important for career progression:

1. You often have to write design docs to communicate what you are making and gather feedback. These documents if badly written won't be as well received.

2. At many companies, you have a million things to work on, so in a way, you get to choose who you work with at some level. If someone communicates badly to the point of annoyance, it will take something special for you to decide to work with them or not.

3. To convince execs and managers to approve your project ideas, you often have to write a document explaining your idea. If it's badly written, the exec isn't going to be as interested in it.

4. To get fame as an engineer, you often should write compelling blog articles. Badly written blogs tend not to be read.

5. Good docs make popular libraries, popular libraries get attention.

Which leads to:

6. Promotion is often done by a committee of people who don't know your work, and all they are going to do is review what you wrote. And promo is often based on leadership of projects. And how do you become the leader of projects? You write compelling documents.

Bad writing is not a good sign. It's like saying, at my company, we don't write tests and we don't have alerting & monitoring on our servers.

[zoomablemind]

> And promo is often based on leadership of projects. And how do you become the leader of projects? You write compelling documents.

This sounds somewhat idealized. As much as writing well is an asset, the understanding and ability to navigate office politics is what increases one's chances at career advancement. In the simplest form, just doing what the boss wants/expects one to do, not doing the unwanted things. No matter big or small company, a lot of subtle things that are said and done matter more, than the ways things are put in writing.

[novok]

What do you think navigating office politics is? A lot of it is communication, and a lot of that communication is written down, especially in the remote work world we are going to. :)

Also how do you become the well paid boss that tells people what to do? You get promoted. You often have to communicate to your subordinates on what to do through writing and so on. Otherwise your known as a bad boss and the best might not want to work with you.

[zoomablemind]

> You often have to communicate to your subordinates on what to do through writing and so on.

There're many different ways how the communications end up being. Some ways/bosses are better at writing, others are not as much. If anything to notice is that some well-writing bosses scale down to very short one-paragraph emails, almost slack-style. Even more, these already short messages may have typos (how?? the spell check is ftee!!). Well, that's the busy-boss style, as writing long replies or bothering with minor corrections just takes the time away from the tons of emails in the queue.

Which brings this to the next point, that, perhaps, a _comprehension_ skill is of equal importance for success in any kind of team. And that goes beyond what's written.

Some people/bosses won't read long texts, others want details, yet others want structure; many prefer visual depictions (hello, white board), some would rather write the whole thing in their own words.

As it's said - write for your audience. I'd add, that one needs to communicate to the audience's comprehension level, and you'd stand a better chance to be understood.

[BeetleB]

> What do you think navigating office politics is? A lot of it is communication, and a lot of that communication is written down, especially in the remote work world we are going to. :)

I think you and GP have quite different understandings of office politics. I know the GP's perspective: Most office politics is done over coffee/lunch. Then the followup is "Can you present your stuff in our next meeting?" And if not that, then "Do you have a PPT with your proposal?"

People in my company like looking at PPTs. Reading a few pages? Not as much. Just today a senior exec sent out a 4 page whitepaper on the key initiative our department is working on. I probably should do a survey in a week's time to see how many people bothered to read it.

And once again, I think your perspective is biased a bit towards certain SW companies. Most engineering companies don't have remote work (although there's talk in my company to continue allowing it once COVID blows over). It's a well known tech company, but definitely a very traditional one.

> Also how do you become the well paid boss that tells people what to do? You get promoted.

As I pointed out earlier, most companies don't require a formal writeup for promotion beyond the annual review. When I got my last promotion, my manager told me "Both I and my manager are quite familiar with your work, so this paper you're writing is merely to fulfill an HR requirement, and I'm here only to make sure you don't claim something you didn't do," We don't "apply" for promotion. It is granted based on the manager/committee's opinion on how well you're doing. I didn't know I was getting one till it was granted.

Oh, and those annual writeups are a thing of the past. So now your bonus/promotion is entirely based on your manager's opinion. People did protest this change, but I actually welcomed it - I knew the act of writing things up in the past was viewed by most teams as a mere formality, so why waste time on it?

Our company has lots of mentors who do 1:1 or group presentations on career growth. What I write here is reflective of what they say. Not once did they advocate "writing well". Networking, getting to know your manager's needs (or his/her manager's needs), etc are the usual ways to do well. And presenting in front of audiences (for networking, not for promoting your idea - that is secondary).

> You often have to communicate to your subordinates on what to do through writing and so on. Otherwise your known as a bad boss and the best might not want to work with you.

There are plenty of bad bosses in my company. And that's where office politics come into play - "good" engineers in our culture are those who navigate around such bosses via politics (and don't spend time complaining). "Bad" engineers complain or leave.

(I don't agree with the sentiment, but that is the perspective here).

Probably a lot of this has to do with the fact that we have very few competitors. For most of the "best" engineers, going to a competitor is a step down. And from what I've heard from those who left, the culture isn't any better there.

Based on the responses to my initial comment, I'll concede that not every company is like mine - and that's refreshing. It is also clear that my company is not by any means an outlier.

[ThrowawayR2]

Nope, he's talking about actual tech companies. Competition is fierce there and "just doing what the boss wants/expects one to do" is the bare minimum or even underperforming. Being able to articulate your ideas and persuade others that your're right and follow your lead is crucial to rising through the ranks.

[watwut]

> 4. To get fame as an engineer, you often should write compelling blog articles. Badly written blogs tend not to be read.

I could go step by step, but really? This sounds to be so far out of reality. There is reason engineers dont write blogs - they dont matter.

[michaelt]

The proviso there is "to get fame"

Technical accomplishments only make you famous if people know about them - if you want to become Joel Spolsky or Bruce Schneier or John Carmack or Donald Knuth then either you're going to have to publicise the evidence of your brilliance, or someone else is.

Plenty of people don't particularly pursue fame - you can make plenty of money and get plenty done without it. But if fame is your goal and you hope to achieve it through code alone, I challenge you to name the maintainer of grep or openssl or the linux kernel bluetooth subsystem without looking it up :)

There are other routes to getting your accomplishments known, of course. Sid Meier and Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds aren't famous for blogging.

[watwut]

Neither John Carmack nor Donald Knuth nor Bruce Schneier became famous because of blogging. The only one who became famous for blogging was Joel Spolsky who blogged more as technical manager or entrepreneur then engineer. Joel Spolsky also blogged when light management blogs were rare and would show up high in google search. It was something new back then, it is not something new now.

[kubanczyk]

As they say, if you are trying to get rich and famous, instead try to just get rich. Chances are it will suit you pefectly.

[BeetleB]

I am at "large tech co"

> 1. You often have to write design docs to communicate what you are making and gather feedback. These documents if badly written won't be as well received.

In my company this is entirely up to the culture of the org. Some parts of the company will require it. Other parts treat it as a formality (i.e. few will read it). And other parts don't require it at all.

> At many companies, you have a million things to work on, so in a way, you get to choose who you work with at some level. If someone communicates badly to the point of annoyance, it will take something special for you to decide to work with them or not.

The key phrase is "to the point of annoyance". If most people are poor writers, they are not annoyed at the fact that their peers are poor writers. Even worse, being a good writer is not an advantage.

If your culture doesn't value it, then it is not of value.

> 3. To convince execs and managers to approve your project ideas, you often have to write a document explaining your idea. If it's badly written, the exec isn't going to be as interested in it.

I addressed this in my comment and won't repeat what I've said.

> 4. To get fame as an engineer, you often should write compelling blog articles. Badly written blogs tend not to be read.

I suspect this is reflective of the SW point of view. My company is an engineering one. It is a giant, and is usually the top company in its discipline. I've worked with engineers who are likely the best in their discipline globally, and often way ahead of academia.

Not one of them has a blog - internal or external.[1] Very senior leaders tend to have them, and they usually are not technical, but corporate speak.

Keep in mind: Most of the engineering world is very different from your typical SW company.

> 6. Promotion is often done by a committee of people who don't know your work, and all they are going to do is review what you wrote. And promo is often based on leadership of projects. And how do you become the leader of projects? You write compelling documents.

In your whole comment, this most reflects how unreflective your perspective is in the engineering (and even SW) world. Yes, I do know some companies that do promotions via a committee of people who don't know your work (Google, etc). For the rest of the tech world, this is rare. People get promoted because they have a manger who will root for them in front of the committee. The committee is typically the next level manager, and he/she likely is aware of your work. There's no "promotion packet" that one writes. There's the annual review (under 2 pages), and the committee only scrutinizes it if your manager is pushing for a good bonus or promotion. And as long as its readable, it's good enough. Of course, this means that spelling errors and poor grammar are OK.

When you want to get to a really senior role (usually takes 15+ years in the company - less than 1% of employees reach that level), only then does a wider committee get involved and will scrutinize your work. Do you have patents? Do you have external publications? And this is only for a technical role. You're not subjected to this scrutiny to get into senior management. Which is why surprise, surprise, we have a larger number of senior managers than senior engineers.

> And how do you become the leader of projects? You write compelling documents.

Oh heck no. You get an idea and pitch it verbally to management.

Trust me - a very consistent feedback I've gotten from management at work is "You write too much. No one will read what you wrote" - almost always delivered after I write an email that has 4+ paragraphs. I'm not claiming I'm a great writer, but they don't give up because they find my writing hard to read. They give up after seeing that the email doesn't fit on their screen. If I have a "tldr" they'll read that and talk to me in person (only a tiny minority will read the actual email).

Culture is king. Writing well will serve your career only if you are in a company that values it. Let's not pretend that writing well will take you places in organizations that don't value it.

[1] I should say that they do not openly have a blog. Some may have ones they don't publicize. Having a technical blog you spend a lot of time on would not be viewed positively, and the more senior you are, the more people will be concerned you'll leak IP. The company is pointlessly secretive and senior management doesn't want to allocate resources to vet your blog's content for IP violations.

[novok]

Sounds like a great, healthy company to work for. /s

> You write too much. No one will read what you wrote" - almost always delivered after I write an email that has 4+ paragraphs.

Writing well does not mean writing a lot. Often it can mean the opposite. The same thing written plainly in fewer words is often better than the opposite. Apply Occam's razor to your writing and shave away the extraneous.

Also 15 years isn't that long of a career time, and eventually, you want to get to the staff engineer level where the promotion committee dynamic applies. Also at big tech co similar promo packet stuff happens for sr. management too.

[BeetleB]

> Writing well does not mean writing a lot.

4 paragraphs is "writing a lot"? Seriously? Since this whole thread was about writing classes in university, I don't think anything I wrote there was less than 4 paragraphs, and my grade would have been poor if I had.

How many whitepapers or technical docs have you read that were less than 4 paragraphs? Manuals? Changes explaining a product pivot?

Honestly, some of the responses to my comments fit in the category of "I'm unquestionably right. So if it's not working for him, he must be doing something wrong! Let me try to guess at what that is."

Not the most fruitful way of having a conversation.

[cosmodisk]

I work for a small(about 50) company. The ability to write well is absolutely huge.I've seen people being refused salary increases(indirectly),not given more important tasks,and simply struggle on daily basis when they can't put in writing what they need.I wouldn't be able to count how many times I had calls from partner level supplies telling me they can't understand what the email they received from my colleague means. It's so bad sometimes I'm honestly thinking of introducing writing test for the next hires.

[topkai22]

I'm generally against pre-employment tests, but a short writing test is quite possibly the best I've heard of. The biggest problem I can think of is that making it non-discriminatory might be difficult.

[rockinghigh]

I’ve seen many engineers stuck in their careers in part because their writing skills were lacking. Articulating your ideas in a written form is a very effective way to influence others and share your vision. It shows others how you approach a problem and what you value.

[mavhc]

Now imagine how bad it would be if we let in the people who are worse at writing than the current set of people.

[chrisweekly]

"longer than 1-2 pages"

^ not to be confused with strong writing skills!

Brevity is crucial. Learning to compress ideas, eg limiting emails to 5 clear sentences, is part of this rare and important skill. Sorry you haven't (yet?) experienced a work env where there's good writing. Such places do exist!

[jimmaswell]

> "being able to write and communicate well is critical in the workplace" is one of the top lies taught to me when I was at university

Definitely. Communication full of casual txtspeak and/or broken English all over. I suspected my first job's recruitment emails to possibly be some kind of scam at first because they were made in 3 different fonts in the same email with random words capitalized or colored various colors for emphasis, of course full of broken English - and I'm not talking about just terms like "do the needful" which are valid Indian English, that's fine, but even evaluating as that language so much of the communication is just terrible and nobody seems to care. I guess it works out fine and ultimately doesn't matter much but it still feels unprofessional.

[chrisweekly]

I strongly disagree.

Communication skills -- especially in writing -- are increasingly important, rare, and valuable.

I've been doing software-related work for a living since 1998. The trend toward remote and async collab -- which has only ever increased in that 22-year span -- strengthens my conviction.

[jonfw]

You are seriously limited in your ability to move past being an individual contributor if you aren't able to write well. Especially in this industry where remote work, even across time zones, is so common.

I see some really brilliant problem solvers in my company, for instance, that are definitely being held back by their inability to communicate well. Communication allows you to scale your impact several times over.

[nopinsight]

Which field(s) of engineering do you talk about? What are the highest level(s) of promotion the persons who don't write well reach and continue to work in?

I would think that writing well is at least a requirement for promotion into a technical leadership role (above senior individual contributors).

By writing well, I don't mean in the style of journalists or novelists. Rather, writing clearly and concisely to effectively convey one's points and reasoning should be very valuable in engineering.

[BeetleB]

> Which field(s) of engineering do you talk about? What are the highest level(s) of promotion the persons who don't write well reach and continue to work in?

Electrical, computer, and SW.

I'm not saying communicating well is not needed. I'm saying writing well is not needed. What I've seen: A good presentation (including PPT skills) is much more valued than writing. Decisions are usually made because of them, not because someone wrote a good brief outlining positives/negatives. Emails longer than a few lines tend not to be read, so people don't focus on it. Documents are usually not read by many except those beneath them, etc. I almost never see a senior management write anything of substance unless it is required by Legal/HR - they'll always get an underling to write them (and no, writing them is not how underlings become senior management).

I'm not saying I like the state of affairs, but it is how I've seen it.

[jabits]

You must be joking, or else work with very low caliber people. I don’t consider people for positions who cannot write well, and certainly know that most successful people do write well. Really, can you take a poorly written engineering spec or RFP seriously?

Just in case you are serious, counterpoint for others who may not know, all forms of communication are very important to succeed and move up.

[BeetleB]

> You must be joking, or else work with very low caliber people.

They're only low caliber people when it comes to writing. Otherwise they're exceptional engineers. The company historically and currently is a market leader. We're not talking about a small shop.

> I don’t consider people for positions who cannot write well

And this is exactly what I'm talking about. If you're in a setting that values it, and set up filters for it, then of course writing is important. If you're in my company where it isn't valued, then not only is it not important, it has little benefit. No point in writing well if people aren't going to read it.

> Really, can you take a poorly written engineering spec or RFP seriously?

In the case of my company, yes - if you want to keep your job. Unless it's inscrutable, I can't go to my manager and refuse to work on something because the spec is poorly written. He'll immediately tell me to go contact the author and sort it out. Occasionally the author will be nice enough to fix the spec and release a new document. But it's hit and miss. The reason many don't fix the formal spec in these cases? Their managers don't value it.

Specs are for major efforts. At the intermediate level: "What the heck is a spec? We just communicate requirements via PPT."

(No, I'm not kidding).

[watwut]

> I don’t consider people for positions who cannot write well

But that is your personal preference enforced only where you personally can enforce it. That is not imply your decision making is typical for industry.

[jimmaswell]

I've gotten lots of emails from bosses and bosses' bosses like "i semt the file,pls confirm." Few seem to care about writing well in the workplace. With psychological things like how talking like someone makes them like you more, I wouldn't be surprised if "proper" writing was a hinderance to career advancement in such a scenario.

[blacksmith_tb]

That may not be a counter-argument, it's quite possible that upper-level management doesn't feel the need to impress 'the little people', and only sweats over documents that will be read by their peers.

[TedDoesntTalk]

I can only believe you are trolling.

[jerry1979]

You write well. Maybe you have a blind spot because of that.