flâneur

Communicate like a Senior: Use clear deltas

substack.com · 521 words · saved by 1 readers

Thank you so much for helping to make this happen. In true High Growth Engineer fashion, I have a little celebration video at the end (not axe throwing this time) 😄. I’m experimenting with a new series: Communicate like a Senior. Each article will feature 1 essential tip for communicating more like a Senior+ engineer. Each tip will highlight 3+ use cases where you can apply it immediately. Let’s get into it! You’re likely familiar with the term “code smell”—like a 4-level deep if-statement. But I’m inventing a new term called “communication smell.” A communication smell is the same idea, except it’s when you notice a bad pattern in your communication. One communication smell I see looks like this: ❌ We can improve the load time by caching images on a CDN. “Improve” is vague. Would it improve by .0001 seconds, 1 second, 3 seconds? Sure, it will improve the load time. That’s great! But what about the 20 other things that improve the load time? Why should we do this over those? Here’s an

You’re likely familiar with the term “code smell”—like a 4-level deep if-statement. But I’m inventing a new term called “communication smell.” A communication smell is the same idea, except it’s when you notice a bad pattern in your communication. One communication smell I see looks like this: ❌ We can improve the load time by caching images on a CDN. “Improve” is vague. Would it improve by .0001 seconds, 1 second, 3 seconds? Sure, it will improve the load time. That’s great! But what about the 20 other things that improve the load time? Why should we do this over those? Here’s an…

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