Technical Communication For Engineers - By An Engineer

You, or your staff, are technical people, perhaps engineers. Me too. For the last 20 years, I've been a software engineer and architect with scores of employees and co-workers.

What's the one thing I wish all my co-workers and employees would learn next after getting to the base level to do the technical job. Another programming language. Publish a new research paper.

Get another degree. No. After 2 decades of working with technical people, the thing I always care most about is how are their soft skills, specifically how are their communication skills.

I have worked with engineers who are "twice" the engineer of anyone else on my team. They prototyped quickly, they knew the answer to almost every problem, they could carry the heavy load. and yet I wanted them on another team, or I was thrilled to hear they were looking for another job.