Writing for Engineers

Why Writing Matters for Engineers

Writing is often treated as a soft skill—something for product and marketing. But engineers write constantly: commit messages, documentation, RFCs, postmortems, Slack threads, and design docs. Poor writing wastes time, creates ambiguity, and erodes trust. Good writing amplifies your impact.

When you write clearly, you reduce back-and-forth. Your documentation gets used. Your proposals get approved. Your ideas spread. Writing is force multiplication: one well-written doc can influence dozens of people. In remote and distributed teams, it's often the primary medium of communication. Invest in it.

Writing Clear Technical Documentation

Technical documentation serves future readers—including future you. Write for someone who doesn't have your context. Assume they'll read your doc at 2 AM during an incident or six months later when they've forgotten the original design.

Start with the goal. What will the reader accomplish? "This guide walks you through setting up local development for the checkout service." State it up front.

Use a consistent structure. Overview, prerequisites, step-by-step instructions, troubleshooting, references. Readers learn the pattern and can jump to what they need.

Include examples. Code snippets, screenshots, before/after comparisons. One working example beats three paragraphs of explanation.

Keep it current. Stale docs are worse than no docs—they send people down wrong paths. Treat documentation as a living artifact. When you change code, update the docs. Add "last updated" dates if your tooling supports it.

Effective Slack and Email Communication

Async communication demands clarity and brevity. People skim; make your point fast.

Lead with the ask. "Need your review on the auth RFC by Friday" is better than three paragraphs of context followed by the request. Put the action or decision at the top.

Use formatting. Bullets, bold, and structure break up walls of text. A short summary line followed by details helps scanners.

Know when to switch channels. Complex topics deserve a doc or a call. Slack is great for quick coordination; it's terrible for nuanced design discussions. "Let's discuss this in a doc—I'll share the link" is a valid response.

Be mindful of tone. Written message lacks tone and body language. What you intend as direct can read as curt. Re-read before sending. When in doubt, add a sentence of context or soften the ask.

Writing Good Bug Reports and Incident Postmortems

Bug reports and postmortems are high-stakes writing. They drive debugging and prevent repeat incidents. Done well, they're invaluable. Done poorly, they frustrate everyone.

Bug reports: Include steps to reproduce, expected vs. actual behavior, environment (browser, OS, version), and relevant logs or screenshots. A minimal reproduction is gold. "It breaks sometimes" is useless; "I can reproduce by doing X, Y, Z in Chrome 120" is actionable.

Postmortems: Follow a standard format: summary, timeline, root cause, impact, what went well, what went wrong, action items. Focus on learning, not blame. "The deployment pipeline didn't catch the regression" is a process observation. "John pushed bad code" is blame. Action items should be specific, assigned, and tracked.

Blog Writing and Building a Professional Presence

Technical blogging builds your professional brand. It demonstrates expertise, helps others, and creates opportunities. You don't need to be a natural writer—you need to share what you know in a useful way.

Pick topics you know deeply. Write about problems you've solved, patterns you've adopted, or lessons from failures. Authenticity beats polish. A practical tutorial on a real problem you faced is more valuable than a surface-level overview.

Structure matters. Use headers, code blocks, and clear sections. Most readers skim; make it easy. A strong title and intro pull people in; a clear conclusion or call-to-action gives them something to do next.

Publish where your audience is. Dev.to, your company blog, Medium, or your own site—choose based on where your peers and potential employers read. Consistency matters more than platform: publishing monthly beats publishing once.

Editing Your Own Writing: Clarity, Conciseness, Structure

First drafts are for you; edited drafts are for readers. Always edit before sharing.

Clarity. Replace jargon with plain language when your audience may not know the term. Break long sentences into shorter ones. Read aloud—if it's hard to say, it's hard to read.

Conciseness. Cut filler: "in order to" → "to"; "due to the fact that" → "because"; "at this point in time" → "now." Every word should earn its place. If a sentence adds nothing, delete it.

Structure. Does the order make sense? Does each paragraph have one idea? Does the document flow from problem to solution to next steps? Reorder if needed. Add a summary or table of contents for longer pieces.

Get feedback. A colleague's fresh eyes catch what you miss. "Can you tell me what you understood from this?" reveals gaps. Writing is iterative; treat feedback as part of the process.