Effective Communication for Engineers

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Your communication skills affect your career prospects, the value you bring to your company, and the likelihood of your promotion. This session helps you communicate better in a variety of professional situations, including meetings, email messages, pitches, and presentations.

FAQ

The four building blocks of communication discussed are people, the message, the context, and effective listening. These elements are crucial in every communication interaction, whether in presentations or casual conversations at work.

The 'think, feel, and do' model helps by focusing on what you want your colleagues to think, feel, and do in response to your communication. This approach ensures messages are respectful, considerate, and effective, fostering better teamwork and collaboration.

Before sending an email, consider the timing of the email, whether the content is appropriate for an email, or if a quick in-person chat might be more effective. These considerations help in making mindful communication choices.

Choosing the right communication channel is crucial because it ensures that the message is delivered and received as intended. Different channels can be more appropriate depending on the urgency, formality, and type of information being communicated.

Synchronous communication channels involve real-time interaction, such as meetings or phone calls, ideal for immediate feedback and rapid decisions. Asynchronous channels, like emails or memos, do not require real-time interaction and are suitable for complex information that needs consideration.

Using an organizational pattern helps in structuring the message clearly and effectively. Whether it's aligning the message with the communication's purpose or choosing between informing or persuading, a well-organized message enhances understanding and engagement.

Nonverbal communication, including body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions, plays a significant role in conveying emotions and intentions. It can reinforce or contradict what is said verbally, thus impacting the message's clarity and reception.

Minimizing misunderstandings in the workplace can be achieved by considering the perspectives and perceptions of others, choosing appropriate communication channels, and applying models like 'think, feel, and do' to ensure messages are clear and considerate.

Naz Delam
Naz Delam
36 min
09 Mar, 2023

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Video Summary and Transcription

Today's Talk covers the four building blocks of communication: people, message, context, and effective listening. It emphasizes the importance of considering the perspective of others and tailoring messages to the recipient. The Talk discusses different types and channels of communication, and the need to align them with the intended message. It also highlights the significance of soft skills in communication and provides techniques for effective communication and assessing soft skills in tech interviews. Cross-cultural communication and the impact of bluntness are explored as well.

1. Introduction to Communication Building Blocks

Short description:

Today, we're going to talk about the four building blocks of communication: people, message, context, and effective listening. These elements are present in everyday communication interactions, whether it's a presentation or a small talk. Strong communication is crucial for business success, a healthy life, and career advancement. Consider these building blocks when communicating and be mindful of your choices.

Hello, everyone. And I am so glad to be here with you all at TechLeague Conf 2023. Today, we're going to talk about everything communications. I always wanted to learn about communication way earlier in my career. I wish it was something that taught to me when I was in college or even high school.

When I entered Workforce, I realized learning about communications has tremendous impact on how I show up every day to work. Even legendary businessman Warren Buffett always told group of his MBA students that communication was the one skill he wished he had learned when he was in college. Today, we're going to talk about the four building blocks of communication that we all need to know when dealing with people every day at work or even in our life. We will talk about people, the message, the context, and effective listening.

These four elements are present in everyday communication interaction we have, whether it's a presentation we are having, or a small talk in the hallway, somewhere at work, or in the office. Well, research shows that strong communication is the cornerstone for thriving business, a healthy life, and even your career success. So don't leave all of that to chance. Before communicating, consider each of these four building blocks. As you walk to your next meeting, think about who will be there, what do I need to know about the people who are in this meeting, what kind of listener do I want to be? Before you hit send on your next email, ask yourself, how's the timing of this email? Is this email appropriate? Should I pop in for a quick chat instead? You are making communication choices all the time. So let's be mindful of those choices.

2. Building Blocks of Communication: People

Short description:

When communicating with others, it's crucial to consider their perspective and the impact of your message. The think, feel, and do model can help guide your communication. For example, when dividing work with a colleague, avoid sounding bossy or overbearing. Instead, focus on making them feel respected and treated fairly. Encourage them to start the project and emphasize their role as a valuable team player. By using this model, you can ensure your message is effective and considerate.

Let's talk about the first building block. The people, whether you are a sender or receiver of a message, it's important to think about others' perspective. People have their own perceptions. Think about the actual impact and also what perception the person you're talking to have about this message.

We will talk about something called the think, feel and do model when dealing with people. So let's dig into it. Let's look at an example. I have a friend at work, or my colleague, and we have to do some project together. So we want to divide up the work. So I'll send her an email saying, Hey, you edited all chapters, and I will edit the even ones. And I'll finish by end of next week. That's simple, right? Well, what could possibly go wrong? It's a great sentence.

Well, if you don't manage your colleague perception, the whole project and even your relationship could blow up. If your colleague takes this message as very strong, and if she thinks or he thinks you're actually telling her or him what to do, that person may get offended. Or even they have not given any choice to pick the chapters that they want to edit and you are actually telling them what to do. Who am I to tell which chapters she or he has to edit? This message might sound very bossy or even overbearing depends on your relationship and your colleague perception. Although my intent has been helpful, but what is the actual impact of this message going to be?

When deciding on what and how to communicate with another person, we can consider the think, feel and do model. For the example that we had, let's think about the think, feel and do model. We will ask ourselves three main questions. With this message that we are sending to our colleague, what do we want our colleague to think? We want our colleague to think it's time to start the project. Let's start editing. We want them to think that they are considered to be a great team player and they're helping and they're creating impact and they're actually part of this project. What do we want them to feel? It is important because people not only think, but most importantly, they feel things. We want our colleagues to feel respected and also treated fairly. And what do we want our colleague to do? Well, we want our colleague to get started. If you are in a leadership role at your job or you are doing a tech leading at your job, there's a lot of times that you have to assign things to people. And this is a great model to ask yourself these three questions to make sure the message that you're sending is not overbearing. Now, let's think about the example that we had and try to rephrase it a little bit with the think, feel and do model. So instead of, hey, you edit the odd chapters, I'll do the even ones, let's finish by end of the week, it will change it to something softer. Like to get the ball rolling, I suggest you edit the odd chapters and I'll do the even ones.

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My team always has Fika, a traditional Swedish coffee break, scheduled every afternoon. Every couple of Fridays, we have team games planned to release some stress. 
Also, I tend to have a lot of free time to focus, which is nice but makes for a boring answer to this question!
Do you have some rituals or tools that keep you focused and goal-oriented?
I'll admit that I've been struggling with staying motivated in the time of remote work. I've been remote with Spotify since onboarding a year ago, but my team is wonderful, and they help me when I'm down.
Apart from that, I use Todoist to keep track of my tasks, and, naturally, I listen to Spotify while working. But other than that, not really. Maybe I should adopt some new tools to keep me on track!
My current favorite Spotify playlist is Brand New Chill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX6uQnoHESB3u?si=380263b3c853442e
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I wanted to give the community a manual of the essentials of computer science knowledge to ace the technical interviews. The book covers data structures like stacks, queues, or linked lists, tackles algorithms, and deals with systems design. You'll also learn about the interview process from start to finish, get tips on how to submit an amazing take-home project, or understand how to problem solve. You'll also gain knowledge on the frontend coding skills needed to excel at a frontend interview.

If you could stress one piece of advice on surviving a technical interview, which would it be?
Do not lie your way through an interview. If you don't know the answer to something, just admit it. There's no shame in admitting you don't know the answer to something. There is shame in faking it and pretending like you do know the answer.
What's the single best practice everyone who writes code should follow?
Remember that while you are technically writing code for computers, you're also writing it for humans. Your code should be readable and have as little complexity as possible without sacrificing accessibility or performance.
In addition to the book, you co-host the Ladybug Podcast. What inspired you to enter this field, and what are the podcast's main topics?
We talk about everything tech and career on the podcast, from Java and GraphQL to how to start a business and cross-cultural communication. The podcast is a way for me and my co-hosts to share our experiences in tech, having taken different paths. And I'm really glad for doing it — it has allowed me to meet so many incredible people, learn many new things, and support my dream of teaching.
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***
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What would be your three tips for engineers to level up their career? 
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Second, it's just as important to decide what you are not going to learn as it is to decide what you are going to learn. You could jump into countless things — and there are successful people who are polyglot programmers, but I can't speak to that a whole lot. All I can tell you is that in my experience, focusing on specific things that I want to be truly good at has worked out great for my career. That doesn't mean that I closed myself off to other things. With my website rewrite, I have been doing a lot of dev ops-related work and a lot of back-end stuff that I've typically not been involved in. You want to keep your head up on what's going on outside of what you're doing so that you know what direction to go in when you come across problems you need to solve. However, finding a focus on what you want to be good at has helped me a lot. That way, you feel a little less stressed.
And the third one? 
Learn how to learn effectively. It's a three-step process: you consume, build, and teach. The consumption of newsletters and Twitter and whatever inspires you, but you don't want to spend too much time doing that — implementing it into actually building something matters. This happens naturally if you work at a company, but maybe you're not making the things you want to learn, so you may want to start a side project. The building phase is where you get experience, but you also want to solidify that experience. How? You start teaching. You don't necessarily have to teach it to people, it could be stuffed animals. The goal of the teaching is to retain in your mind what you've learned through the building process.
What are you working on right now? 
The big thing I'm working on right now is a rewrite of my website. It'll be much more than just a developer portfolio — I'll have user accounts, and there'll be fun things that you can do with it. And because it's more than just a website, I'm using Remix, a new cool framework in the React ecosystem. I'm also working on updating my material on TestingJavaScript.com and a TypeScript course as well. 
So, whatever I'm working on, it ends up resulting in lots of opportunities for content.


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I also am a firm believer in inbox zero. I have my work inbox and my personal inbox, and I keep them both at zero. And I kind of use that as a to-do list. 
And if I'm not feeling excited about working for some reason, I will often hop on my Onewheel, which is an electric skateboard that only has one giant wheel in the middle. It's just a total blast, and I'll hop on that with my backpack and a charger, and I'll go to a Starbucks or a park just to declutter my mind.
What things in the React universe are you excited about right now?
React version 18 is coming out soon. The experimental version is out there, and it's fun to play with. I'm just really thrilled that it's no longer a concurrent mode but concurrent features that you can opt into. Cool things like that will enable React server components in the future. 
But the biggest thing I'm excited about is Remix. That's huge. It eliminates a lot of problems that are solved well other tools, but when I'm using Remix, I don't have those problems, so I don't need those clusters.
You already said that teaching is an integral part of the learning process, and you stand your word since you're also a full-time educator. What inspired you to enter this field?
I have been a teacher for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a church where you talk in front of your peers from a very young age, and my mom was an elementary school teacher, so teaching has just always been a part of me. 
I really just enjoy sharing what I'm learning with others. As far as teaching technical topics, I gave my first workshop when I was still a student at Brigham Young University. With my fellow, we taught how to use AngularJS, and I got Firebase to sponsor pizza so they would show up, and that was pretty fun.
Then I started teaching on the side at egghead.io right after I'd graduated. That was when I first got a paycheck for teaching. And I realized that teaching could be quite lucrative and support my family and me as a full-time endeavor. So I did it — I quit my job. I'm a very risk-averse person, so I'd done teaching as a side hustle for four years just to verify that I could make this work.
When TestingJavaScript was released, and I got that paycheck, I realized that I didn't need my PayPal salary anymore. I could just focus my daytime on teaching and give my evenings back to my family, which was a nice trait.


Apart from that, how has teaching impacted your career? 
Earlier I mentioned that pretty much all of my jobs came because I was perceived as an expert. After the first job, where I was an intern and then converted into full-time, I never applied to another. I worked for four different companies, and they wouldn't have recruited me if they didn't know who I was and what I was doing. My content is how they knew who I was — I just made it easy for them to find me. Teaching made that impact. It made my career. 
We talked about React and Remix. Are there any other open-source projects that you'd recommend keeping an eye on or contributing to?
I have some myself. React Testing Library is probably the biggest one that people are familiar with. And if React isn't your jam, then other framework versions of the testing library. 
React Query is also really popular. If you're using Remix, you don't need it, but if you're not, I strongly advise using React Query cause it's a stellar, fantastic library, and Tanner Linsley, the creator, is a stellar and fantastic person. 
What pieces of your work are you most proud of? 
Probably the biggest thing I've ever done is EpicReact.Dev. It has helped tens of thousands of people get really good at React, improve their careers and make the world a better place with the skills that they develop. My whole mission is to make the world a better place through quality software, and I feel like I've done that best with Epic React. 
There are things that I've built at other companies that are still in use, and I'm proud of those cause they've stood the test of time, at least these last few years. But of everything, I think Epic React has made the biggest impact.
***
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What led you to software engineering?My background is in digital marketing, so I started my career as a project manager in advertising agencies. After a couple of years of doing that, I realized that I wasn't learning and growing as much as I wanted to. I was interested in learning more about building websites, so I quit my job and signed up for an intensive coding boot camp called General Assembly. I absolutely loved it and started my career in tech from there.
 What is the most impactful thing you ever did to boost your career?I think it might be public speaking. Going on stage to share knowledge about things I learned while building my side projects gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of people in the industry, learn a ton from watching other people's talks and, for lack of better words, build a personal brand.
 What would be your three tips for engineers to level up their career?Practice your communication skills. I can't stress enough how important it is to be able to explain things in a way anyone can understand, but also communicate in a way that's inclusive and creates an environment where team members feel safe and welcome to contribute ideas, ask questions, and give feedback. In addition, build some expertise in a specific area. I'm a huge fan of learning and experimenting with lots of technologies but as you grow in your career, there comes a time where you need to pick an area to focus on to build more profound knowledge. This could be in a specific language like JavaScript or Python or in a practice like accessibility or web performance. It doesn't mean you shouldn't keep in touch with anything else that's going on in the industry, but it means that you focus on an area you want to have more expertise in. If you could be the "go-to" person for something, what would you want it to be? 
 And lastly, be intentional about how you spend your time and effort. Saying yes to everything isn't always helpful if it doesn't serve your goals. No matter the job, there are always projects and tasks that will help you reach your goals and some that won't. If you can, try to focus on the tasks that will grow the skills you want to grow or help you get the next job you'd like to have.
 What are you working on right now?Recently I've taken a pretty big break from side projects, but the next one I'd like to work on is a prototype of a tool that would allow hands-free coding using gaze detection. 
 Do you have some rituals that keep you focused and goal-oriented?Usually, when I come up with a side project idea I'm really excited about, that excitement is enough to keep me motivated. That's why I tend to avoid spending time on things I'm not genuinely interested in. Otherwise, breaking down projects into smaller chunks allows me to fit them better in my schedule. I make sure to take enough breaks, so I maintain a certain level of energy and motivation to finish what I have in mind.
 You wrote a book called Practical Machine Learning in JavaScript. What got you so excited about the connection between JavaScript and ML?The release of TensorFlow.js opened up the world of ML to frontend devs, and this is what really got me excited. I had machine learning on my list of things I wanted to learn for a few years, but I didn't start looking into it before because I knew I'd have to learn another language as well, like Python, for example. As soon as I realized it was now available in JS, that removed a big barrier and made it a lot more approachable. Considering that you can use JavaScript to build lots of different applications, including augmented reality, virtual reality, and IoT, and combine them with machine learning as well as some fun web APIs felt super exciting to me.


Where do you see the fields going together in the future, near or far? I'd love to see more AI-powered web applications in the future, especially as machine learning models get smaller and more performant. However, it seems like the adoption of ML in JS is still rather low. Considering the amount of content we post online, there could be great opportunities to build tools that assist you in writing blog posts or that can automatically edit podcasts and videos. There are lots of tasks we do that feel cumbersome that could be made a bit easier with the help of machine learning.
 You are a frequent conference speaker. You have your own blog and even a newsletter. What made you start with content creation?I realized that I love learning new things because I love teaching. I think that if I kept what I know to myself, it would be pretty boring. If I'm excited about something, I want to share the knowledge I gained, and I'd like other people to feel the same excitement I feel. That's definitely what motivated me to start creating content.
 How has content affected your career?I don't track any metrics on my blog or likes and follows on Twitter, so I don't know what created different opportunities. Creating content to share something you built improves the chances of people stumbling upon it and learning more about you and what you like to do, but this is not something that's guaranteed. I think over time, I accumulated enough projects, blog posts, and conference talks that some conferences now invite me, so I don't always apply anymore. I sometimes get invited on podcasts and asked if I want to create video content and things like that. Having a backlog of content helps people better understand who you are and quickly decide if you're the right person for an opportunity.What pieces of your work are you most proud of?It is probably that I've managed to develop a mindset where I set myself hard challenges on my side project, and I'm not scared to fail and push the boundaries of what I think is possible. I don't prefer a particular project, it's more around the creative thinking I've developed over the years that I believe has become a big strength of mine.***Follow Charlie on Twitter

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Rodrigo Donini
2 authors
Would you like to pursue your passions and have more control over your career? Would you like schedule and location flexibility and project variety? Would you like the stability of working full-time and getting paid consistently? Thousands of companies have embraced remote work and realize that they have access to a global talent pool. This is advantageous for anyone who has considered or is currently considering freelance work.>> Submit your interest on becoming a freelance engineer with Toptal and get a call with Talent Acquisition specialist <<

Freelancing is no longer an unstable career choice.

This workshop will help you design a sustainable and profitable full-time (or part-time) freelancing career. We will give you tools, tips, best practices, and help you avoid common pitfalls.
Table of contents

Module 1: Dispelling common myths about freelancing
Module 2: What does freelancing look like in 2021 and beyond
Module 3: Freelancing choices and what to look for (and what to avoid)
Module 4: Benefits of freelancing from a freelancer + case study
BREAK
Module 6: How to get started freelancing (experience, resume, preparation)
Module 7: Common paths to full-time freelancing
Module 8: Essentials: setting your rate and getting work
Module 9: Next steps: networking with peers, upskilling, changing the world
Module 10: Freelancer AMA
Landing Your Next Developer Job
React Summit Remote Edition 2021React Summit Remote Edition 2021
121 min
Landing Your Next Developer Job
WorkshopFree
Sadek Drobi
Nouha Chhih
Francois Bohyn
3 authors
Renaud Bressant (Head of Product), Nathanael Lamellière (Head of Customer Success and Solution Engineer), Nouha Chhih (Developer Experience Manager) will be looking at the different developer jobs that you can accounter when looking for your next developer role. We'll be explaining the specifics of each role, to help you identify which one could be your next move. We'll also be sharing tips to help you navigate the recruitment process, based on the different roles we interviewed for as recruiters, but also as candidates. This will be more of an Ask Us Anything session, so don't hesitate to share your thoughts and questions during the session.