Dec 25, 2025, 1:51 PMI know I'm wasting time on Christmas day posting on fedi, but as someone whose job is to teach systems design AND communication skills (for, like, presentations/briefings), let me tell ya, communicating is hard for a lot of engineers, not just CS-adjacent folks! I'm a huuuuge extrovert and there's never a dull day in a social situation in my mind, but to most of my students... the thought of giving a presentation in front of their 25 other students and me terrifies them. the stakes are low, but they're still super scared! and then, when they do get up there, they can't answer easy peasy questions for some reason or stand up there and scratch their butt while wiping drool off his face (true story).
even then, I find myself stuck in a weird position asking the same question over and over to a seemingly-empty audience: how do I teach communications to engineers without scaring them?
don't even get me started on anything related to philosophical ethics, there's a reason I say if I had to choose a handful of world leaders (which is already a problem in itself, of course), I'd rather choose 300 philosophy majors than 300 engineering majors... the engineering major saw "XYZ world-ending technology" in some story whose obvious plot was "don't create the XYZ", and they then proceed to build it/market it as a product!
a teacher I had in high school told me soft skills were more important than anything else in the world. I now see why since I am apparently a member of a species of biped mammal that cannot do much without communicating with others of her species!
oh yeah also bring back forced philosophy education in engineering schools, and fail students on the spot with a 4-credit-hour F if they use an LLM to do the assignment lol
even then, I find myself stuck in a weird position asking the same question over and over to a seemingly-empty audience: how do I teach communications to engineers without scaring them?
don't even get me started on anything related to philosophical ethics, there's a reason I say if I had to choose a handful of world leaders (which is already a problem in itself, of course), I'd rather choose 300 philosophy majors than 300 engineering majors... the engineering major saw "XYZ world-ending technology" in some story whose obvious plot was "don't create the XYZ", and they then proceed to build it/market it as a product!
a teacher I had in high school told me soft skills were more important than anything else in the world. I now see why since I am apparently a member of a species of biped mammal that cannot do much without communicating with others of her species!
oh yeah also bring back forced philosophy education in engineering schools, and fail students on the spot with a 4-credit-hour F if they use an LLM to do the assignment lol