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Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

That cannot be over-stated enough

That cannot be over-stated enough. I learned my communication skills in the military while building my software career. Those worlds are so incredibly different that I have spent most of my professional life lost. On one hand my expectations for excellence in software are alien to my peers who just want to complete a JIRA task by any means possible. Yes, it is possible to deliver superior results for an entire day's effort in about 2 hours provided you aren't framed by all kinds of institutional roadblocks and unnecessary abstractions. I am scared to death to actually communicate my opinions regarding software because people tend to whine about how hard life is. For this reason I have abandoned my JavaScript career. Then on the military side I have to unlearn the high agreeableness that is so necessary for not getting fired in software. By high agreeableness I mean keeping your opinions to yourself, not voicing concerns, treating everything with kid gloves, and making everything as easy as possible. The military side is a much safer environment that expects brutal honesty. …

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BS

> It’s not complicated but it requires not being terrified of assertiveness and confrontation from the top down. It requires the professional communication skills that are not taught in a STEM education. That's why this is all so difficult: we are not taught how to communicate effectively with one another, and the entire tech landscape has poor communicators misinforming and misleading one another.

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BS

Although I do not have military experience, I've spent some time writing software deployed to military security clients, and my interactions with technical armed forces staff has had remarkably good communications. To the degree it changed my attitude about the armed forces in a significant positive direction, and not just the tech side.

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GE

> The military side is a much safer environment that expects brutal honesty. sounds refreshing but debatable whether an environment of honest brutality can be considered safe

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