I have had the good fortune of mentoring several mid-level engineers. Almost universally, improving their technical communication resulted in a boost of their value and status.
Why Effective Communication is Key
Think of your workplace as a living organism. There are many moving parts: engineering, finance, management, operations, etc. Each one of these parts serves a vital function.
Many mid-level engineers are tasked with important changes which could affect the larger organization. However, since they don’t message in a way that can be consumed by the rest of the organization, some of that value is lost.
To increase your contribution to the organization, you need to ensure your work can be consumed by the larger organization.
The Example
Your boss comes up to you and gives you an assignment: figure out why the search function on the website is slow and figure out how to fix it.
You spend a week running through the website and you realize it is (unsurprisingly) long running queries in the underlying database. You dig further and come up with some good analysis.
Initial Writeup
I started out with a copy of the Production database so I had a realistic dataset. I started out by profiling the website and saw that it was responding fine and invoking the search query correctly.
The search query is where the problem is. For a search query with a few parameters, it took about 10 seconds and for a complex query it took about 20 seconds.
I then ran the database analyzer and realized that not all the search data was indexed properly. That’s why really simple queries are fast (less than a second) but the complex ones drag on.
I added the index for those fields and the complex queries are now under 2 seconds!
Just to be clear: there is nothing wrong with this write-up. For this person’s boss and their peers, this is perfectly good.
The shortcoming is that its hard for anyone outside your immediate circle to fully appreciated the value of your work!
Improving the Writeup
In order to extract more valuable to the organization, there are two things that need to make it resonate: structure and considering how this change the rest of the organization.
Structure allows different parts of the organization to pick out the pieces relevant for them. Figuring out which parts of the organization will be affected takes experience and guidance. However, its pretty obvious this is a visible change and it could affect the database team, customer support and potentially sales.
By structuring the message and considering the other parts of the organization, you increase the value of you work immensely!
Making the Analysis more Valuable
Problem: There have been customer complaints about how long complex queries have taken. A complex query can take anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds.
Resolution: By re-indexing some of the search fields, we demonstrated that the queries now ran under 2 seconds.
Next Steps: The database team and other technical teams should review the details below. Assuming the resolution is acceptable, we should agree on a rollout plan.
Technical Details:
- The initial step was to confirm the latency was not in the overall website and limited to the database search.
- All tests were performed on duplicate of the PROD database.
- The database analyzer showed the queries spent a lot of time finding results since some of the search items weren’t indexed properly.
- If the are any specific questions about the search queries or analysis, we can setup a review.
With the above message, teams can look at the “Problem” section and decide if they want to read on. Presumably, anyone on the technical and support side of the house would be interested. Its not clear if this is a significant Sales issue and it probably doesn’t directly affect Finance.
Secondly, the more interested they are in the issue, the further they will read. If you are the Customer Support Manager, you now know it will give you significant relief by cutting the search time to 2 seconds. You may, or may not, care too much about the Technical Details.
Structured and concise messaging enables different parts of the organization to pick and choose which pieces are relevant to them.
Summary
There are many factors differentiating in adding value to your organization. By being structured and concise, your work will resonate across the organization.
My personal experience has shown me that mid-level engineers need to refine their messaging. In fact, it is one of the first items I work on when mentoring mid-level engineers!
Finally, the way you communicate is a personal choice. The above example is how I like to communicate. It may not fit your style or organization. Decide what is best for you.
Listen to the feedback you receive and try to accommodate the common themes. Over time, you will develop different formats based on the your role and the target audience.
Nicki’s Tech Blog 