I recently started a series of posts on growing at work: how to build a bigger impact inside a company, and how to reflect on yourself and develop the areas where you are strongest. Today I want to share my thoughts on the many kinds of communication at work.

As we grow as software engineers, we take on larger projects and more cross-org communication and collaboration. Many projects start with conversations across teams that surface pain points nobody has addressed yet. Many high-impact projects start this way, when cross-team conversations spark an idea and someone turns it into a project.

Start by Assuming Everyone Has Good Intentions

Sooner or later, we all run into friction and frustration at work. It may come from partner teams prioritizing projects differently, disagreeing on timelines or on how responsibilities are divided, or understanding leadership’s goals differently. In my experience, start by assuming good intent and that we are all working toward the best interests of the larger organization and the company. Start there, then dig into what is causing the friction.

Game Theory: Different Conclusions Usually Mean Different Information

Game theory offers a useful intuition here: if we all share the same information and reason logically, we should reach the same conclusion. So when things do not go smoothly at work, and assuming everyone is acting rationally, differing information and assumptions usually explain the different conclusions. That is when we need communication: to close the gaps between what each person knows and believes, so we can work from a shared picture and gradually reach consensus.

Closing the Gap: Keep an Open Mind

When communicating about these differences, do not start from an entrenched position. Put what you know and how you see it on the table, hear the other side’s version, and use that shared understanding to bring your conclusions closer and make future collaboration smoother.

The Same Applies to Your Own Career Goals

The same kind of communication applies to your own career development goals. For example, with both my current and past direct managers, I have discussed wanting to try engineering management when the right opportunity comes up in the future. So in my current work, I hope to get more practice in the relevant skills, and I would like to look for relevant training, with the goal of getting there in two years. If I never brought it up, my manager would not assume I had this goal. But once we communicated this clearly, they could give much more specific guidance: suggesting I hold regular 1:1s with my teammates, try more cross-team collaboration and project ownership, and, when a leadership opportunity came up on the team, asking whether I wanted to take it on as practice.

Closing: When the Assumption Breaks Down

Communication is central to working life. Done well or badly, it can make a world of difference in how a person experiences their job. I expect rational colleagues who share the same information to reach the same conclusion. But if you have tried all of the above, communicated rationally and step by step, and still cannot reach the same conclusion, perhaps the assumption that “everyone is rational” is what broke down. At that point, it may be time to ask whether you should keep working together at all.

What are your own lessons about communication at work? Feel free to share in the comments.

This post was originally published on my former blog, 「半路出家軟體工程師在矽谷」, on December 27, 2020. The blog is now offline, and the text is preserved via the Wayback Machine. It has been lightly edited for this site.