[charlie0]

>A bit of a cynical take (on Hacker News no less) but after being in the industry for a while, my view is that the best definition of “level” is self-referential: it corresponds to the ability of a person to convince others that they are at that level.

This is right here is one of my biggest concerns at the moment. I know my technical skills are just as good as (if not better than) most of my peers with more YOE on paper, yet my communication skills are below them.

I really enjoy doing the technical stuff, but now I'm not so motivated to keep picking up technical skills because I've hit diminishing returns on it and instead now have to focus on something I don't like, nor have been great at for the longest time, and those are communication skills.

I do wonder if these skills are mutually exclusive to a large degree. ie, the thing that makes my peers better at communicating is exactly the same thing that makes less technical and vice versa. I worry about never being able to level up my comms skills without also taking my technical skills down a notch.

For me, I'm resigned to just looking for a new job to get a salary increase vs doing something I enjoy less, improving comm skills.

[rsanheim]

I think it is a trap to assume that communication skills and technical skills are mutually exclusive. In fact, many of the best engineers I've ever know were _also_ some of the best at communicating their ideas.

Granted, dysfunctional orgs, particularly large ones, will always end up promoting the sort of person I think you have in mind -- those who talk a great game, play politics, but don't really ship. That is an organizational and culture problem, though, and doesn't mean you should ignore your "soft" skills.

[jvanderbot]

It's tempting to tell yourself you would be doing a disservice by learning to be a better communicator. After all, why give up technical skills?

When framed that way, it just seems completely obviously false.

[ozim]

I think what you are looking for is what interests people.

Skills are not mutually exclusive but I suppose you are much more interested in technical stuff and to learn communication you have to become interested in other people.

I am also mostly interested in learning technical details of some software or system and not that much in what someone did with his time last weekend.

So what makes people better communicators is mostly that they are interested about other people and other people opinions and other people mood.

[charlie0]

Yes, this is exactly what I'm getting at. In theory, those two are not mutually exclusive, but in practice they very much are due to personal preferences and that will shape what you become good at.

Of course, there are definitely people who excel at both, but they are outliers. Most will only get/want to excel in one of those two things.

[drumdance]

This encapsulates a hunch I've had lately: that you could probably tell a lot about a potential hire if you could read their emails and slack messages.

The best co-workers are good at communicating without being annoying or a jerk, they have a good sense of what the important issues are, and they don't let ego or trivial concerns get in the way of solving problems.

[szundi]

Fwiw I was the CEO of my startup (obviously?). I could not even get why people are fighting each other, I was so naive and bad at communication.

Now I’m called a supercommunicator at the same company just because I took it seriously and took attention and vigorously checked out results of my communication attempts.

Yeah it was like 10 years, but first 1-2 with this mindset started with almost panicking to despair to be interesting to have more and more success. Now I almost enjoy it when I don’t think about how this is about fighting enthropy and finding out who is silly in what way later to counteract that.

Might be even fun.

Edit: most fun part when you just became quite good and got it and the troublemakers are forgot you on the loser shelf, trying baby level politics stuff on you just because they are lazy. Yeah, then you can root them out and have a nice company.

[charlie0]

I get were you are coming from. Focusing on comm skills is a big branch of a decision tree in terms future paths because it opens up possibility of joining the managerial class (CEO/CTO being potential options).

What convinced me against going down this branch for the time being is a quote from Naval Ravikant.

> No one can compete with you on being you. Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most.

If I really enjoy tech stuff and not comms, I should focus on the tech stuff. Of course, I still need to have a good baseline at comms, but it doesn't have to be great.

[spacephysics]

What are some of the politics stuff you mention?

I’ve been a senior engineer (definition loose) at a company I work at, and owner of a side business start up.

Politics at the startup are a bit easier, less than 10 people and such. But at the large company I’m trying to make sure I’m not caught off guard and be taken advantage of/other toxic politic stuff.