Discussion on "Did you ever need Business English and Communication Skills in your business life as a software developer? If yes, where and why?"

Every single day, in all of my work, with the devs on my team, members of other teams, my boss, customers, clients and anyone else I do business with.

Thank you for your reply Trent. So, How did you improve your communication skills or do you still need to improve?

I try to be thoughtful in my approach. By this I mean that I consider the nature of the communication, the urgency, the audience and the value. I will spend more time on something that has more value. I will tailor my approach based on the audience, urgency and nature of the communication.

I volunteer for work that involves writing (documentation, emailing someone outside our team, communicating with stakeholders, etc).

I get someone I trust to review my writing if it is more substantial than a simple email, or any communication that will potentially be read by a customer/client/stakeholder or similar.

If I don't have someone to review, I use a fairly common "write-review-edit" approach - where I write, then put it aside. I return to review, make notes, set it aside. I then come back to edit after another break. I repeat this until I'm satisfied.

I've taken courses and workshops on writing that contributed to what I have learned as well. These were all taken many, many years ago but I have retained valuable lessons from them.

In addition to PhiGuy's comment, communicating with your team - both devs and business side - is super important. I wouldn't say you'd need to be an English major or minor or anything, but being able to communicate effectively with the people you work with is at least as important as communicating with end users. Maybe moreso, because I know I've had plenty of jobs where I don't deal with the end user in any fashion, but I talk with team members constantly.

I second this, enhancing the point that I've made. Depending on your role, you may not need to talk to the end user, but its very rare you won't need to talk to your team. It is important to have good team cohesion. Increasing your communication skills will certainly help with this.

Is English your native language? If not, how did you learn or improve your Business English?

In addition, when did you realized that you need to improve your Business English and Communication Skills first time?

Thankfully, English is my first language - I've heard how difficult it is to learn as a second language and I have a hard enough time with it as it is :)

For me personally, I've always liked writing (and reading, which definitely helps), so I've never really put intentional effort into improving it for the sake of business use. In high school and the couple of years of college I attended, I enjoyed my English classes, so it was easy enough to work on it. Your mileage may vary of course.

All the time.

Your job as a software developer is to build software that people can use.

In order to build something that people can use, you need to understand the end user.

In order to understand the end user, it really helps to be able to speak the native language of your end user. The better you understand them, and the better you are able to articulate yourself, the better you will be gathering requirements for the thing that you are building.

Whether your end user is a business, or a group of individuals, knowing how to speak the language, is going to be crucial for the quality of your application.

Thank you for your reply. You are awesome :) So how did you figure it out? How did you improve your Business English and Communication Skills?

Biggest Contributing Factor to my communication skills: Listening

Listen to what your team is saying, listen to your end user.

Don't just try to fill the conversation with something to say. Listen with the intent to understand, not with the intent to respond.

If you understand what the other person is saying, then the response will be the easiest part of your conversation.

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Did you ever need Business English and Communication Skills in your business life as a software developer? If yes, where and why?

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Did you ever need Business English and Communication Skills in your business life as a software developer? If yes, where and why?

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