I disagree that writing is undervalued. I think that writing is highly valuable and highly rewarded...but that the path to overcome challenges with writing is bafflingly mysterious. Does anyone know of a therapist who has experience helping people overcome writing anxiety?

I genuinely don’t know how to find one. Therapist-shopping is baffling.

I ask this as a software engineer who can produce pretty solid writing if given enough time but for whom doing so prompts thoughts of severe self harm. I was pushed to resign from my last job as a result of handing in a nearly-blank self-evaluation during my company’s performance review process, so I’m willing to spend... I guess up to $8k, (maybe more? Anything’s better than suicide to be honest. I love life in general and suppose it would be rational to spend half my income to eliminate the risk of it) On getting this finally solved after 2 decades of occasional agony.

I used to help coach college friends in their writing. Often their first drafts would have complicated pretentious sentences that really weren't even parseable as sentences, and first I'd ask them, "What do you mean here?" And then when they'd explain, "Write that down!" Perhaps something like that would work for you, to help take you from a "composing" mindset to a "conversing" mindset. You could even record yourself or use some dictation software. It may even make your writing easier to read.

It might also reassure you that professional writers often say, "There is no writing, only re-writing." The first draft is never the final draft, so you don't have to take it seriously. Just jot down whatever comes into your head. Some people start with an outline, scattered words with arrows connecting them, questions to answer, blank spots, etc., whatever helps to keep you moving forward. Getting started is the hardest part. Keats used to chain himself to his desk to force himself to write something. Sometimes it even helps to set yourself a silly challenge, like randomly open the dictionary ten times to pick ten words you have to include. They don't have to make it into the final draft---but they could. :-)

You might also want to read some books about good writing. Strunk & White is good. Their advice is "keep it simple." Clear and Simple as the Truth is sort of a step past that to a slightly more artful style. Another book I enjoyed was The Artist's Way, which despite the title has a lot about writing.

I don't know anything about professional therapy, and perhaps these suggestions are all way off the mark for you, but I offer them just in case you find them useful. I'm sorry that writing is so painful for you!

> I used to help coach college friends in their writing. Often their first drafts would have complicated pretentious sentences that really weren't even parseable as sentences, and first I'd ask them, "What do you mean here?" And then when they'd explain, "Write that down!" Perhaps something like that would work for you, to help take you from a "composing" mindset to a "conversing" mindset. You could even record yourself or use some dictation software. It may even make your writing easier to read.

Interesting. I often encounter the problem at other the end of the spectrum: People who are used to verbal communication, which often results in rather scarce writing that resembles snippets of a verbal conversation rather than a cohesive thought and therefore lacks to details to properly understand meaning and intention.

Usually that kind of writing requires a lengthy series of follow up questions to learn anything meaningful about the original idea of the author. Conciseness is onyl valuable if it doesn't sacrifice substance and meaningful content.

I don't have that strong of a reaction, but realized fairly recently that I also get a lot of anxiety from writing on demand.

What works for me is not starting from scratch. If I do, I'll either never get it done or procrastinate until the last minute (while building up an incredible amount of anxiety in the interim).

Instead, I try one of two things:

1) Repurpose something else I have. As long as I have a seed to build off of or skeleton to frame against, I'm able to tackle it fine. If I have no frame of reference, I'll try to find one. In your self-evaluation case, I'd ask for an anonymous example from your boss or HR to understand the expectations.

Or, 2) Ask a trusted friend or colleague to check it over. My work context switches from C-level client management to architecture and analytics-related dev work. While I can articulate a matter to any audience, that also means I can completely miss the mark if I misjudge an audience/recipient I haven't addressed before. So I'll brain dump a bunch of stuff, then ask someone who's closer to the target audience or more familiar with them. They'll help act as a sanity check whether I'm on the right page, and I use their feedback to refine things.

I'm not sure if either of those coping strategies will help for you, but I wanted to mention them just in case!

I think the "starting from a frame of reference" is good, I wouldn't necessarily ask HR for what they expect. That's pushing them to commit to something, which they don't want to do either. Instead, look online.

Self-evaluation is just another piece of bullshit process where people's expectations are formed around the bullshit everyone is handing in. Chances are that what these people are handing in is highly informed by whatever the top Google results are.

Ordinary people don't necessarily have qualms about working this way, people with anxiety issues often have this misguided desire to be "original". Being unoriginal is fine though, it hooks into familiarity and it doesn't cause extra work. Nobody is excited about reading the performance reviews, it's just something to get done.

I think any therapist who specializes in anxiety would be a good fit. Some studies show CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) to be as effective as medicine.

www.psychologytoday.com has a search for finding local therapists. I'd start there.

And good luck! Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions.

I'm a naturally bad writer but somehow I managed to become confident in writing documentation, cover letters etc. For cover letters asking friends/family for feedback had helped me a lot, also for this specific topic there are a bizillion great books about the topic - amazon is your friend. Or google: how to write performance review

That said, I think depending on the kind of writing you want to do, there is probably a book/article about it.

Also what is a nice strategy that always works for me: start with brainstorming or random bullet points. Put things in order, like a 1 or 2 level hierarchy. Mark important things, throw out things you are not comfortable with. Add some details.

Then get an example text. In the case of cover letters there's always a standard structure: intro, main part, end. And then replace it with your words. Also in the case of reviews, maybe you can ask your colleagues to see how they structure their writing and even review yours before you hand it in.

Are you terrible at writing in general, or specifically for self-evaluation?

Personally I feel very confident at writing, to the point where I fantasize about a professional writing career. But I can completely imagine freezing up at a self evaluation.

Have you considered that you might have ADHD or some other cause for your writing difficulties besides just anxiety? If so, it may help to work with an occupational therapist to come up with specific strategies to work better (e.g., setting up an environment conducive to writing, scheduling time to write, outlining before beginning).

I can also recommend June Casagrande, who has lots of great recommendations on how to improve your writing skills.

This is one of her books I would recommend: https://www.amazon.com/Was-Best-Sentences-Worst-Crafting/dp/...

In what sense is it under-valued? There is a fabulously popular musical about how the ability to write well can propel you to the heights of leadership of a nation. In my experience, people believe that the ability to write well is key to professional success.

Where are the people who believe that writing is not a valuable skill?

I agree that when people talk about writing, it seems like they value it. But in practice I believe it's undervalued. I essentially don't know anyone that, given the choice of leveling up their writing skills vs their job-specific skills, actually focused on writing.

In the sense I've never seen any interview require a writing sample from a dev.

You have to write at least a few coherent, error-free paragraphs in your resume typically. It's something of a good filter to toss out people that either can't, or can't be bothered to, write clearly for that small sample.

People generally don't read prose in technical resumes, moreover, I'd never hold it against a candidate because they're nudged into writing in a highly summarized, notation style. Unless there were blatant issues with language, and then I'd be super concerned about blowing off an 'english as a second language candidate'. About 1/2 of devs it seems are from 'somewhere else' and we can't expect them to have world class technical chops and perfect fluency.

While almost never seen, some do. I've had to write a few pages narrative of a professional experience for a Lab126 (Amazon) interview.

In my experience developers tend to underemphasize improving their writing or communication skills (related but separate skills) as a part of their professional development. I seldom see managers suggest and send their reports to workshops or classes for professional writing. I have seen it, but only twice ever, and only an executive doing it for an upper level manager.

In reality, I think this should be an almost universal type of job training for developers.

It is undervalued in that a lot of engineers, especially early in their career/before they've worked at a real job, do not take it seriously enough.

Time and time again, I have heard jokes in college about the social ineptitude of engineers, and I have seen people not value basic social skills.

As people get older, these problems go away, but I really feel that we let new engineers down by letting them underappreciate social/writing skills.

I feel like we let new engineers down by not guiding them toward resources where they can improve their social/writing skills.

Where is the brilliant.org for social/emotional/communication skills?

Social skills are presented as an obvious thing and the lack thereof is grounds for ridicule and derision rather than pointers to resources. (Note: How to win Friends and Influence people is a good base, but the Harvard Negotiation Project has many more good books. Also, Charisma on Command is a great youtube resource)

We have them be taught writing by literature majors who insist there’s some meaning to blue curtains but can’t be bothered to explain why or what the principles behind making that judgement are. (Note: a great explanation of how symbolism works can be found by putting “extra credits symbolism” into google)

I think it's important to separate the skills out. Communication, social, and writing skills are three different things, and it's quite possible to learn all three without a literature class. You can thank the middle school and high school curricula for the unfortunate association.

Once you're in college, you can get the writing without the symbolism by taking writing classes, especially creative writing ones. But I amost never saw engineers do it, often out of a "what am I going to do with it? Write short stories for my documentation?" reaction. Their loss.

After college, there are plenty of books and classes you can take, but like programming it often comes down to practicing and getting feedback. There are websites and your local area likely has writer circles. You can get into short story writing and you'll get good feedback from others. Unlike programming, writing is an inherently social activity. In order for your writing to work, it must pass through the lens of another human.

Anecdotal evidence: in large corporations good luck finding leaders who can write anything in a clear and concise way. There are some, but by far and large they are exceptions. So much for "write well can propel you to the heights of leadership of a nation", playing politics is definitely the more important predictor than anything else.

Here, here.

FWIW, "Writing Without Bullshit" by Josh Bernoff (Harper Business, 2016) tackles this truth head-on. I liked what I saw when I took a look at my local bookstore and it's gotten excellent user reviews on AMZN.

It'd make a great gift for the PHB manager/director/CEO in your life <smirk>.

(me: no affiliation, just sharing)

Largely in how companies seem to store and transmit information either verbally or via PowerPoint rather than the written word.

Apparently some engineers who believe writing code is all that matters (myself included at some point in time).

Maybe undervalued is the wrong word, as clearly the economy rewards people who can write well. It’s just that it often seems overlooked. Job ads and CVs sometimes vaguely mention ‘good communication skills’, but I rarely see any specific mention of writing.

Which musical might I ask? Nothing comes directly to mind. A quick search doesn't yield any immediate results.

Hamilton

Thanks for sharing the Tweets. Two more great resources on how to write well:

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction...

https://www.amazon.com/Help-Writers-Solutions-Problems-Write...

me too. writing concisely has helped me throughout my career, but that wasn't always the case. i undervalued writing growing up and slowly fell behind my peers. that finally caught up to me in college where i struggled to distill and express the often conflicting ideas squirming around in my head.

but a love of novel ideas led me to take extra liberal arts courses, accept the resultant mediocre grades, and ultimately improve my writing. becoming a teaching assistant for an engineering writing class was where, in comparison with my younger peers, i could finally see that i'd indeed improved (and hopeful that the poor writing i graded wasn't indicative of future skill!).

I would say communication overall which includes reading, writing and vocal communication.

I'm curious about your experience. How do you think your writing translated into value in the eyes of the VC world? Or was it that you'd built a platform online first through your writing and then they solicited you?

In my experience my ability here has always been valued after the fact; I have the strong impression that few companies value writing, even as a secondary skill, or see it as a differentiator.

A few positive experiences I've had related to writing:

1) I used to write a lot on Quora. Being an engineer who can write made my future VC partners believe that I could do more than engineering. I'm pretty sure that building a decent readership base on Quora is what put me on my partners' radar in the first place.

2) Writing on my blog/Twitter/etc has helped put my name and my fund's name on more people's radars and generated a lot of leads for potential investments. As an introvert, writing has been an excellent solution to not wanting to go to networking events/dinners/etc. :)

On the startup side, writing/content marketing are great ways to get customers, especially for b2b companies. Having a strong product matters, but being able to articulate the product's value and your company's expertise through writing is incredibly helpful.

How did you transition from Engineer to VC if you don't mind me asking?

Do you mean how I got into the industry? How I learned to be a VC once I was in the industry? Something else?

One doesn't always get to meet people, sometimes and tbh quite often it has to be on LinkedIn,via email or even a letter.. Ability to do it well sets you apart and also brings confidence to those you try to communicate with.A well written proposal to a VC is 100 times better than some mish mash of words.

Writing is not a skill asked for but it can help you standout when first approaching vcs.

Those tweets from David Perell are amazing. Thanks for sharing!