Congratulations!
Congratulations on your third year in software development and getting your 5th app into production. You know your programming language, framework, and tools well, which might make you feel like a senior software engineer now. However, moving from junior to senior requires more than just technical skills. If you've been wondering why the title of senior engineer eludes you despite your technical proficiency, you might be experiencing what's known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
It's a common scenario, especially in the software engineering field, to feel like a master early on. Remembering the challenges faced while building my third system, my initial confidence faded when I realized how much more there was to learn. The tech scene is ever-evolving with trends and tools changing every six months, making the chase for technical skills seem endless. However, it's crucial to pause and think about what truly matters for advancing in your career.
The Underestimated Skill: Communication
Good communication is essential, regardless of your tech stack or the number of years you've been programming. It shapes how you interact with colleagues, managers, clients, and users. More than just talking, it encompasses sharing information, giving status updates, writing PR descriptions, discussing issues, risks, and estimations, whether verbally or in writing.
In the Indonesian tech scene, the communication dilemma is glaring. It's not hard to find a developer with a few years of experience in Laravel, WordPress, or NodeJS. However, many struggle to express their thoughts or questions clearly at work. This struggle extends beyond language barriers. Despite better English comprehension thanks to the internet, articulating thoughts professionally, even in our native Bahasa Indonesia, remains a challenge. This struggle manifests in various professional interactions, including describing an issue, writing a PR, or drafting technical documentation.
Even simple tasks like composing a git commit message become a part of team communication and should be taken seriously. The way junior engineers express themselves, especially in the Indonesian tech scene, often lacks clarity. This lack of clarity is evident in online forums, where junior engineers struggle to formulate clear questions, making it difficult for others to provide helpful answers. It's not about politeness but about the ability to convey one's intent or inquiry effectively. This difficulty in communication is not confined to online interactions but is a reflection of the challenges faced in real-world work settings. Senior engineers often find it hard to understand the juniors' intent or questions, which could hinder teamwork and project progress.
The challenges
IMO, the communication skill issue in the Indonesian tech scene stems from various challenges:
Preference for Visual Learning: Many Indonesians prefer watching demos or tutorials rather than reading. The tendency is to seek straight-to-the-point instructions on the "how" while often overlooking the "why" and the "what."
Language Barriers: Though Bahasa Indonesia is our national language, local languages reign supreme in daily communication. This preference can hinder understanding when discussing technical matters, as nuances may get lost in translation.
Disinclination Towards Writing: Many prefer direct verbal communication over writing. The act of composing sentences is seen as cumbersome and less productive compared to coding. There's a prevailing notion that producing working code is paramount, often at the expense of documenting the rationale (RFC or issue ticket/card), expected output (DOD), and the methodology (PR's description, code comments, git commit) behind the code.
Time Constraints: The tight deadlines common in Indonesian tech projects leave little room for pause and reflection, which are often wrongly perceived as unproductive. Yet, understanding and visualizing a problem, followed by finding the right solution, is as crucial as implementing it.
Proposing Solutions
Enhancing communication skills within the Indonesian tech community requires a concerted effort:
Cultivate Reading and Writing Habits: Engage in daily reading and frequent technical writing. Explore issues in open-source GitHub repositories and scrutinize senior engineers' PRs—not just the code, but also how they structure their PR and draft their commit messages.
Be the Change: Good communication should start with you. While you can't control others, demonstrating effective communication in your work can influence your peers to follow suit.
Learn from Seniors: Listen to senior engineers delivering technical explanations in tech talks available on platforms like YouTube. Analyze how they convey complex information clearly and effectively.
Broaden Your Perspective: Don't confine your growth to mastering coding and frameworks alone. Embracing a holistic approach towards being a well-rounded senior engineer is vital.
Leverage AI: LLM (Language Models) can be a great help! We are living in the future, guys. There's no need to fear embarrassment or muster the courage to ask something that might seem silly. Just type your question as a prompt to, say, ChatGPT, and ask it to compose a proper sentence for that question. Bam! You have your proofreading assistant and learn how to frame a better question along the way.
Bridging the Communication Gap
Addressing the communication gap is crucial for a smooth transition from a junior to a senior role in software engineering, especially in Indonesia. Balancing technical expertise with enhanced communication skills not only fosters personal growth but significantly contributes to elevating the professionalism and competitiveness of the Indonesian tech scene.
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