For the last three months I have been working for the Ministry of Transportation as a web developer. Going into this experience, I thought I would learn about the web development process. I figured I’d learn the various technologies and technicality’s of running and maintaining a website. Instead I learned something more important.

I discovered that programming is a small part of web development. Another important part is communicating with team members and non-technical co-workers. Sure, I always knew ‘communication skills’ were important. That was because other people told me they were important. Now, I finally understand why communication skills matter.

Communication skills are important because you use them all the time. In fact, you’ll probably use them more than your programming skills.

Most people think communicating is just talking about deadlines and timelines. That’s why most people list communication skills on their resume without a second thought. But communication skills are used in ways that are rarely considered. For example:

• How will your team communicate with people in non-technical positions? While IT personnel might understand technical jargon, people outside the tech sphere do not. So you have to be able to communicate in a clear manner without using fancy technical words. For example, when I was asked to help someone put a rotating banner on a SharePoint site, I thought it would be easy. I wrote up the code and passed it along, assuming the person on the other end would understand it. As it turns out, we had different levels of technical knowledge. What I thought as easy ended up confusing the other person rather then helping them!

• Can you articulate you idea’s in a report? You will need to write reports about the work you do. This means you need to be able to share your idea’s in a clear and concise manner. I think computer science students often write great programs but slack on the report section of the assignment. Reports are not as exciting as code, so why bother? This is not acceptable because a large part of the day to day requires one to write clear reports. The idea that science and math students don’t need to have good communication skills needs to die.

• Can you speak clearly? When you talk you need to be clear. You can’t tell a someone you have a great idea but “you just don’t know how to put it into words”. Often, my peers and I will write great code, but when it comes to explaining what it does, we stumble over our words. We end up giving a line by line summary rather than explaining the purpose of the code. In the workplace, no one cares about the summary. Not only do you need to know how to code but you need to be able to explain what you are doing as well.

While these items may seem basic, they account for such a large part of the workday. The stereotype of the solitary programmer is not correct. Everyday, programmers have to speak to teammates, co-workers and clients. Programmers have to write emails and attend meetings. That requires strong communications skills.

So I advise my fellow programmers: take an English class, learn some grammar and practice speaking clearly. Because working in tech isn’t just about coding, it is about communicating.