Communcation | Leadership | Self

What Does “Communication Skill” Mean to Programmers

However, since I am a programmer, my opinion is from the software shop side

Companies worldwide are looking for “employees with communication skills,’’ and that’s exactly what we’re looking for in engineering.

The term “communication ability” is so ambiguous that there would probably be 5 to 6 different interpretations if there were ten people. In this article, I would like to discuss the basics of the communication skills required of “engineers working in engineering fields,” including software stores.

Let’s take a closer look at communication ability, assuming it is the ability to communicate perceptions, emotions, and thoughts between people living in society.

The first step to acquiring communication skills is to verbalize your experiences. Generally, humans communicate information using a standard frame called words. If you cannot verbalize your experience, you will not be able to convey your experience to the other person, nor will you be able to understand the other person’s words.

Generally, it seems that the verbalization of experiences begins during early childhood through conversations with specific people close to us, such as family members.

However, in the case of developmental disorders (particularly autism ), it seems that developing these abilities through conversation tends to be challenging (there seems to be a lot of research into how to do this).

Assuming that we can verbalize our experiences, the next point to discuss is what developmental psychology calls temporary language and secondary language.

Temporary language is the language used when communicating one-on-one with someone close to you who has the same context. Because the verbalization of experiences is cultivated during childhood through conversations with specific people close to us, such as family members, temporary language assumes that we “share knowledge and experiences about each other.’’ Therefore, even if the expression is incomplete, the other person can complement and understand it from the shared knowledge and experience.

Secondary language is used when communicating with an unspecified number of people, including unknown people.

In this case, the assumption that “knowledge and experience about each other are shared” does not hold. Therefore, those transmitting information need to verbalize all the information necessary to understand the information being transmitted, organize it, and then express it.

At the same time, the person receiving the information needs to understand the content by extracting all the information necessary to understand the content from the context of the words and linking each piece of information.

Secondary language is used not only when speaking to an unspecified number of people, such as in a speech, but also when speaking to an unspecified number of people, such as when giving a progress report at a team meeting or creating a work procedure manual.

It is also used to communicate information with a few people who do not share as much knowledge and experience as with close friends.

Since the knowledge and experience shared by each other is limited, when transmitting information, it is necessary to provide enough information for the other party to understand the content correctly.

The communication ability required of working adults is the ability to convey information using secondary language smoothly. In other words, it means being able to convey the correct information even when the other party has little knowledge or experience regarding the content you want to convey, and conversely, being able to understand the correct information from just the words spoken or written when the other party is transmitting it.

In other words, even if a person is highly rated for having interesting stories or having lively conversations, if this is limited to “temporary communication of information between relatives using words,’’ he or she is not considered a working adult. It does not mean that you have the required communication skills.

In communication using secondary language, it is necessary to understand all information from words. To achieve this, it is necessary to accurately understand the words contained in the language and the grammar that connects the words. Also, if you are the sender, you must use words accurately and the grammar for connecting words correctly.

The words used in communication in the working world (or, instead, in the workplace) include not only words used in daily life but also specialized and industry terms that are appropriate for the environment.

Engineers tend to use many technical terms in their communication, so it is necessary to understand the meaning of each term accurately before using it.

Why are technical terms used so often? Suppose you try to communicate with each other on the assumption that the other person doesn’t know the technical terminology. In that case, the content will become too wordy and take too long to convey everything.

Therefore, after defining the meaning strictly as a technical term, information is communicated on the assumption that both parties understand the defined meaning.

For example, it’s like telling someone who doesn’t know what Marufuku (a Restaurant in NY) is that the Marufuku at that ramen shop is too soft and not Marufuku without using the word Marufuku.

People who have never eaten Marufuku ramen may not understand the hardness of Marufuku even if it is explained to them by replacing Marufuku with “noodles that are much harder than normal.’’ It is difficult to guess how hard the famous “noodles softer than Marufuku’’ are.

Therefore, it is not enough to replace the noodles with “ramen that is much harder than usual.’’ Instead, among the foods that the other person remembers the texture of, “those with a hardness similar to barikata’’ and “the noodles from that ramen shop called barikata’’ are not good.

We must find and offer noodles that are softer than Marufuku and have a hardness similar to that of noodles. However, if you are someone who knows Marufuku first-hand, you can communicate well with Marufuku.

That’s why sometimes it’s practical to say, “Before we talk, let’s go and compare “Really Marufuku Ramen’’ and “Ramen called Marufuku, which has softer noodles than Marufuku!’’ It will probably be faster than explaining it in words. However, it takes extra time to compare the foods, so in the end, information can be communicated more quickly between people who know Marufuku.

Engineers' technical terminology is not unique to their workplace or team environment. It also includes technical terminology used as a common language in a broader range of environments (for example, industry), including engineers in other environments.

For example, in the case of software engineers, the terms that appear in the Basic Information Technology Engineer Examination are widely used among technical terms (I’m sure many software shops understand the word thread).

An engineer’s communication ability also includes how well they can correctly understand and use such well-known technical terms.

However, since knowledge of technical terminology differs from person to person, those transmitting information must switch whether or not to use technical terminology depending on the context. For example, when talking with a new employee and a fellow employee, you’ll probably use more technical terms in the latter than in the former.

Furthermore, engineers’ communication often deals with highly abstract phenomena or phenomena too large to be understood simultaneously.

Therefore, to be able to refer to the same information over and over again later, there is a tendency to use not only conversation but also “secondary verbal communication using sentences.’’

In written communication, it is impossible to “supplement incomplete expressions with the nuances of the moment,’’ which is possible in conversational communication. Hence, the content of words and the grammar for connecting words are more important than in conversation. It must be used accurately.

On top of that, it is sometimes necessary to use appropriate diagrams, as it may not be possible to accurately convey highly abstract phenomena using text alone.

Some events may be expressed using mathematical formulas. In the case of software companies, they sometimes communicate with other engineers using an artificial language called source code.

In short, there are two points: accurately transmitting information using text and diagrams and reading information from text and diagrams accurately.

In this area, I think that you should improve your sending side when writing reports and papers in university education and your reading side when conducting literature research when writing reports and papers. Is it okay to write that reading and writing skills are learned in compulsory education?

In summary, the “communication skills” required of engineers include the following:

1. Able to smoothly convey information accurately through secondary language.
2. Able to smoothly convey accurate information using text and diagrams.
3. Able to understand and use technical terminology correctly.

When communicating between engineers, the emphasis is on providing accurate information smoothly. Most of the phenomena that engineers deal with are complex, such as those with a high level of abstraction or too large to be understood all at once.

Accurate information is necessary to handle complex matters, and concentrating on them requires extra costs (such as wasted time “re-verifying information because it may be inaccurate’’).

In particular, these days, as the problems handled in engineering fields have become more sophisticated due to the accumulation of simple problems solved in the past, teams often tackle complex problems.

As mentioned in Brooks’ Law in “The Myth of Man-Month,” when mutual communication is required within a team, the effort of communication is “n(n — 1) / 2 when the number of people is n” “is proportional to.

In a situation with such fundamental problems, if incidental problems arise, such as “the information is inaccurate’’ or “the information is accurate but difficult to decipher,’’ no progress will be made. Therefore, engineers tend to emphasize providing accurate information smoothly.

Therefore, even if you have a communication disorder (a person who is not good at or finds small talk difficult), as long as you can accurately and smoothly convey the information necessary for work, there is usually no problem.

However, suppose you are unaccustomed to building interpersonal relationships due to a communication disorder. In that case, you may be unable to accurately estimate the information the other person has when conveying information necessary for work.

You may find yourself thinking, “How much information do I need to give to make sure the other person understands?’’ It is possible to misjudge the extent to which you can omit something for the other person to understand.

Well, there are likely to be few new graduate employees who acquire all the above three items at a high level from the beginning, so they train at least through new employee training and OJT. Companies also have an upper limit on their “acceptable education costs’’. That’s why we look for people with communication skills when hiring new graduates.