Episode 442: Improving communication skills and how to break my job hopping habit

Episode Overview

• The hosts discuss strategies for improving general communication skills, including the importance of practice and understanding your audience.
• They explore the phenomenon of "grass is greener" syndrome, especially for engineers who frequently change jobs.
• The episode covers the pros and cons of job hopping versus staying at a company long-term to see the full impact of one's work.
• The hosts offer practical advice for staying engaged and finding new challenges within a large company to combat the urge to leave.

Key Concepts

• Effective Communication: The core of good communication is not just about what you say, but ensuring your intended message is accurately received and understood by the other person. This involves being clear, avoiding ambiguous language, and checking for understanding.
• Job Hopping vs. Longevity: Frequent job hopping can accelerate career and salary growth early on, but staying in a role for an extended period allows an engineer to experience the long-term consequences of their technical decisions, which is a valuable form of learning.
• "Grass is Greener" Syndrome: This is the feeling that another job or company will be better than one's current situation. It can lead to a cycle of dissatisfaction and frequent job changes. Strategies to manage this include finding new challenges within the current role, such as internal transfers in a large company.
• Communication as a User Interface: A useful framework for engineers is to think of their communication (both written and verbal) as a user interface for their ideas. This mindset encourages designing communication for clarity, usability, and the specific needs of the audience.

Quotes

• At 00:07 - "It takes more than a new year's resolution to not write any bugs to be a great software engineer." - The episode's opening line, humorously highlighting that software engineering excellence involves more than just perfect code.
• At 01:09 - "You need a taxidermied codebase." - A comedic suggestion for how to achieve the goal of writing no bugs, by working on a codebase that is essentially "dead" and unchangeable.
• At 06:53 - "I'm giving this to your team to prioritize." - Host Dave Smith shares a personal story where his intended meaning ("you choose the priority") was misinterpreted by half his managers as ("this is your top priority now"), demonstrating how simple phrases can be ambiguous.
• At 09:07 - "Good communication is like Inception. It's where the message you intend to communicate is understood by the other person." - Host Jameson Dance explains that the true measure of successful communication is whether the recipient's understanding matches the sender's intent.
• At 18:13 - "Consider all communication as a form of user interface." - Host Dave Smith offers a framework for software engineers to improve communication by applying UI design principles like clarity and user-centricity to their interactions.

Takeaways

• To improve your communication skills, focus on clarity and actively check if your audience has understood your intended message.
• Practice public speaking by giving talks at local meetups; it forces you to structure your thoughts clearly and is a great way to practice one-to-many communication.
• If you're at a large company and feel bored or that the "grass is greener" elsewhere, explore internal transfer opportunities to find new challenges without leaving the company.
• Staying at a job long enough to see the long-term consequences of your technical decisions provides a unique and valuable learning experience that job hopping can't offer.
• Be mindful of ambiguous words and phrases in your communication. What is clear to you may have a completely different meaning to someone else.