I'm working as a product owner. 90% of my business is preparing presentations, giving presentations or documenting stuff. Although the role of a software engineer is clearly different, you need to know how to do this as well. Here is why.
There are actually two main reasons. The first one is to be more productive, and the second one is for your career.
I think it is total okay to say that nearly 80% of what we are saying gets either misunderstood or not completely understood. One reason is that the listener has never the knowledge or understanding of a topic as we expect. It doesn't matter if is more or less knowledge. This means the listener will take what we are presenting, adds his own knowledge and experience, and generates complete new information. This information never matches what we intended to say. A good presenter tries to come as close as possible. But why is it important for a software engineer? Because a software engineer typically also needs to explain and document things. Did you ever try to explain a technical concept? If it is not understood, you will have to explain it over and over again. It could even happen that people don't understand you at all. Then they are blocked and you need all this extra time to provide the right information. So, wouldn't it be nice if you can save all this time by giving a good presentation at the first place?
Good presentation skills will also boost your career. Senior and Principal roles include also a lot of presentations and meetings. You need to convince people and your management for your ideas. And only if you are allowed to get your ideas to reality, you can shine. This will only happen if you can convince decision makers in the first place. And successful projects will of course boost your career.
You can see, good presentation skills are not only needed for management people. Everybody can benefit from it. So it is good to take your time to learn and practice this. Trust me; it will pay our very quick.
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