The author of the article is right when he says that writing code is often the easy part of the job for many people. The people who hand out promotions don't read your code, but they do read your writing and hear you speak.
I write documentation, do presentations and demos, do code reviews, and even primarily communicate with colleagues through text. The truth is that people who are better writers have an easier time doing this sort of thing. If the author had emphasized the practical benefits to the average non-influencer-wannabe dev, this article would have been a lot more useful.
I think public speaking classes (or at least practice) and even speech/accent coaching would be beneficial for many developers for the same reasons. Your ideas are only as good as your ability to get people to listen to you, and if you go up the ranks as a developer or transition to management, this only becomes more important.
If the author had emphasized the practical benefits to the average non-influencer-wannabe dev, this article would have been a lot more useful.
This! Or how about some humility: Tell a story about where your communication style didn't work, and what you learned and how you changed. Or tell a story about the worst talk that you ever gave. I like listening to those stories from comedians -- their bigest failure -- and what they learned. With 100% certainty, I have learned more from my failures, than my successes. And too many of my successes were luck. To quote Mike Bloomberg (again on HN!), "Work hard, and you might get lucky."
I write documentation, do presentations and demos, do code reviews, and even primarily communicate with colleagues through text. The truth is that people who are better writers have an easier time doing this sort of thing. If the author had emphasized the practical benefits to the average non-influencer-wannabe dev, this article would have been a lot more useful.
I think public speaking classes (or at least practice) and even speech/accent coaching would be beneficial for many developers for the same reasons. Your ideas are only as good as your ability to get people to listen to you, and if you go up the ranks as a developer or transition to management, this only becomes more important.