I think the most important skill after the actual engineering is ability to write well (and inclination to do it early and often).

pg and tptacek and patio11 really drove that home to me - they are as well known and well regarded as they are because they tell people about it, well and often.

Even if it’s just on an internal wiki - get the stuff in your head out there.

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jauntywundrkind 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

In principle I strongly agree. But this won't work in all orgs. It's very useful for figuring out yourself, for internally building a plan! But there's lots of orgs out there that work by human influence, that have oral-primary or oral-only systems.

Sometimes there's great good to be had awakening these slumbering cultures, bringing them writing. But it's hard and you need allies that can bring their own enthusiasm for the change, and the old ways die hard.

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8n4vidtmkvmk 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Good writing is helpful for your peers, and I wish people would document more, but I'm not convinced it's useful for getting ahead or demonstrating impact -- only insofar as you're producing artifacts which can be used as evidence.

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marginalia_nu 5 days ago | parent [-]

Communication in general is helpful. Many incredibly skilled technicians are severely held back by the fact that nobody understands what they are doing and how impressive it is.

On the other end of the spectrum, most truly famous people are not just good at what they do, but also good at creating a sort of myth about themselves, or else has had a friend who loved talking them up. Learning to take what you've done or learned and spin a compelling story around it is an amazing life skill that absolutely will get you ahead.

You can absolutely take this too far and become a narcissistic charlatan -- all talk and self esteem -- but this is extremely far away from the personality of many engineers so I don't think that's an immediate concern.

	▲	bsenftner 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'd say being a good communicator, an "effective communicator" has the most impact. Not only writing well, but being able to enter and participate in C-Suite strategy conversations as a peer. Not dominating, not "telling them the truth", but being a peer-wise political player in the political theater that actually runs the company. That is what comes after staff engineer, it's VP of technology, CTO and so forth. That game is all communications, but as a former developer your role is getting them to understand the realities of the tech teams' efforts and successes, and the required maintenance to see it continue.

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linhns 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fully agree, also the ability to concise stuffs. Sometimes you just need to make the wiki shorter, as we humans prefer short reads.

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watwut 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I just dont see it around me. Nobody cares much about how you write or ia inclined to read unless they really have to.