Improve Engineering Communication by Translating Technical Detail

This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Parsity and delivered to your inbox for free!Engineers Aren’t Bad at Communication. They’re Just Speaking to the Wrong Audience.There’s a persistent myth that engineers are bad communicators. In my experience, that’s not true.Engineers are often excellent communicators—inside their domain. We’re precise. We’re logical. We structure arguments clearly. We define terms. We reason from constraints.The breakdown happens when the audience changes.We’re used to speaking in highly technical language, surrounded by people who share our vocabulary. In that environment, shorthand and jargon are efficient. But outside that bubble, when talking to executives, product managers, marketing teams, or customers, that same precision can be confusing.The problem isn’t that we can’t c