Our teammate Leana recently hosted our latest Soft Skills Forum on the topic “Why Writing Should Matter to a Tech Professional.” As someone with 20+ years of experience in writing different forms of content, she approaches the subject from a unique perspective and it turns out writing plays a much bigger role in our industry than most people realise. Curious why? Keep reading to find out.
Leana’s words
Have you ever had a brilliant idea, but struggled to put it into words? Personally, I have always been a writer: slogans, ads, song lyrics, blog posts in various industries, and all of these in more than one language. But the mutual aspect of these is: having a concise and clear idea of what you want to communicate.
A Thinking Tool
Writing could be used as a thinking tool that can reduce cognitive overload: it offers clarity. Because once you start putting it on paper you will have to find a shorter and simpler way of explaining it. You’ll have to truly understand a topic to be able to write about it.
When ideas stay in your head, they take up space. Writing offloads memory and forces structure — reducing mental clutter.
A Career-Advancing Tool
Writing more often can help you become a subject matter expert. To advance your career and grow as a professional, sometimes having all the knowledge just won’t do. It’s not just about what you know – but how well you can communicate it to others.
Writing is not just for people who are born writers. It’s a thinking tool, something that could help you advance your career, and provide you with a way to reduce cognitive overload — especially in technical work.
Take this example:
“The system is having some issues with the new deployment and users maybe can’t log in sometimes because of the token not refreshing correctly, so we should check that before more problems happen.”
Vs.
“After the latest deployment, some users cannot log in because authentication tokens are not refreshing. We need to investigate the token refresh mechanism before the issue spreads further.”
This second sentence answers the most important questions as a professional press release does in journalism. It answers the 5 w’s: WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY.
Gets straight to the WHO and WHAT → “some users cannot log in”
Names the cause, WHY → “authentication tokens not refreshing”
Suggests next step → “investigate the token refresh mechanism”
Example: Bug Report
Without 5 W’s (bad):
“The API is broken.”
With 5 W’s (better):
- Who: Affects all mobile users
- What: API returns a 500 error on login
- When: Started after last night’s deployment (v2.3)
- Where: /auth/login endpoint
- Why: Suspected mismatch in database schema
A Few Writing Exercises
As with most things in life, writing too takes practice to improve. Below are a few tips on what do
- Write for your future self: Document decisions as if you’ll forget them in six months (because you will). Future-you will thank you.
- Keep it simple: Aim for clarity, not cleverness. Short sentences beat jargon-filled paragraphs.
- Practice in small doses: Your next email, ticket description, or commit message is a chance to practice clear writing.
- Read more than you write: Well-written articles, books, or even blogs give you patterns to mirror in your own work.
- Ask for feedback: Share your documentation or reports with a teammate and ask, “Is this clear?” The answer is usually eye-opening.
- Write like you speak (then tidy up): Start by getting thoughts out conversationally, then edit for structure and brevity.
Conclusion
Writing isn’t separate from technical work. Instead, it could be the multiplier that makes your expertise spread and matter. Make every upcoming opportunity your practice field, and don’t forget the 5 W’s.