As a Tech Lead for many years, I believe communication skill is extremely important for a software developer (all levels). Why? Good communication skills can save time and reduce errors.
How to improve your communication skills:
- Put Yourself in Other People’s Shoes
- Ask questions
- Understand the requirements (or the big picture)
I worked with contractors from all over the world. Recently we hired a few resources from Brazil and Idia. I found they are Pros and Cons.
Indian contractors: Overall they can communicate well. but sometimes they just pretend they understand everything. LOL which leads to poor code quality and more time to fix their errors.
their technical skill is also a bit overrated. Senior level = Jr/Intermediate level in US
Brazil contractors: I think on average they have better communication skills and technical skills than their Indian counterparts.
Why communication skill is important for a developer and how to improve it?
In my opinion, communication skills are very important. These are the reasons.
First, good communication skills help people understand the requirements better. When a product manager announces product requirements, if there is something unclear, it is easier for people with good communication skills to ask appropriate questions, making it easier for both parties to understand each other better and making communication more effective.
Second, good communication skills help people avoid conflict. When people discuss different viewpoints and solutions, it's human nature to feel unhappy when another person expresses the opposite opinion. People with good communication skills make other people feel better and more easily accept their viewpoints.
To improve your communication skills, I think we can do the following:
Be a good listener. When other people are talking, we should concentrate on what they say and take notes if necessary.
Try to be kind and more friendly when expressing your opinion. That makes other people feel respected.
In my opinion, communication is like a information transfer, that means our final product’s quality is partially relying on the transfer rate, and even the most important element!
How to improve it?
This is very important for an effective developer. He/she must be clear about the priorities of tasks between milestones. Therefore, he/she should do enough communication and research, and remain responsive to change!
Beside above opinions, I think it's also very important to understand the background of different cultures, especially your co-workers. Sometime, it's very hard to understand when people make jokes if you don't know their cultures. It may not impact the work, but it's hard to you to be part of the team.
I totally agree with you. But this takes time. Learning a language is like opening a door for learning a new culture. if you learned a language without knowing the culture it's like a human without a soul. But again this takes time and watching a couple of Netflix shows doesn't help.
I need to watch thousands of Netflix shows days and nights. LOL
I'd recommend watching "The Simpsons". There is a reason for being the longest sitcom in history.
Communication skills must be taken seriously, especially in remote workstyle.
In my opinion, the communication skill is very important, when your work is cooperating with more than 5 people especially for product manager assistant.
For example, if one project will be online on tomorrow, the guests have some new demands, but there isn't enough time for our developers to complete it on time, we have to tell the guests, as soon as possible.
Secondly, communicate with your cooperation more aften, you can get more information timely.
In my opinion, the remote developer needs to have even better communication skills than a full-time employee. the majority of work is short term ranging from 6mo - 1 yr. So the developer needs to pick the requirements fast and start producing measurable works in a very short period of time.
I would say, the reason why it’s important is that developers are the bridge between business world and programming world, and communication skills play a big role when developers connect to other people, especially to the team members you’re working with. Like u need to talk to PM, designer to clarify and adjust requirements.
As for improvement, except for what you guys have said, me myself find it very useful to follow these steps during work:
And most important, these are likely document-driven, which can reduce a lot of misunderstanding about terms and words that have separate meanings in both sides.
Just some of my thoughts here. :)
I find it commucation skill is some kind of soft skills, if you are good commucation skiller,you may be have more chooses and it also can aovid misundestanding during the works,expecially if your are remotely worker.
What I think if you want improve your communication skills , there are ways on the list,