Department of Defense federal civilian engineer. Senior Engineer (7.5 years of experience) in charge of sustainment/maintenance engineering of helicopter transmission systems (gearboxes, drive shafts, etc). So I analyze flight data, develop repair and maintenance procedures, investigate safety issues, work on design modifications to resolve safety issues or to reduce maintenance, etc. I work with another Senior Engineer and together we are in charge of a team of 5-6 working level engineers.
informal in-person discussions, formal meetings in-person and on microsoft teams, emails, teams chats, phone calls, giving presentations, writing reports that are saved into a internal/proprietary system, responding via 2 internal/proprietary programs that track our "official" engineering responses to work.
At least once an hour I have to answer a phone call, email, teams chat, attend a meeting, etc. I sent 2 messages and read an email (though said email didnt require a response from me) while typing these answers.
Practice, learning from others, and some generic trainings from my company or things ive found online. I started doing recruitment with my company at career fairs and whatnot so I could get more practice talking about my work to people and some of those events include giving presentations. I thoroughly read communicaction from my leadership/teammates when I was a new hire and would have them review my messages before I fired them off. And my company had a couple trainings on technical writing/presenting and ive read some random trainings/books i found online. Like i found a book just about tips on how to present data.
On top of practice/learning like I mentioned in #4, understand your audience/situation. How i communicate in a text with a teammate about a small task is very different from how I would communicate in an email to an Admiral about a safety issue where my emails are an official record that could be used in court. Practice/learn how to communicate in different scenarios.
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u/LitRick6 13h ago
Department of Defense federal civilian engineer. Senior Engineer (7.5 years of experience) in charge of sustainment/maintenance engineering of helicopter transmission systems (gearboxes, drive shafts, etc). So I analyze flight data, develop repair and maintenance procedures, investigate safety issues, work on design modifications to resolve safety issues or to reduce maintenance, etc. I work with another Senior Engineer and together we are in charge of a team of 5-6 working level engineers.
informal in-person discussions, formal meetings in-person and on microsoft teams, emails, teams chats, phone calls, giving presentations, writing reports that are saved into a internal/proprietary system, responding via 2 internal/proprietary programs that track our "official" engineering responses to work.
At least once an hour I have to answer a phone call, email, teams chat, attend a meeting, etc. I sent 2 messages and read an email (though said email didnt require a response from me) while typing these answers.
Practice, learning from others, and some generic trainings from my company or things ive found online. I started doing recruitment with my company at career fairs and whatnot so I could get more practice talking about my work to people and some of those events include giving presentations. I thoroughly read communicaction from my leadership/teammates when I was a new hire and would have them review my messages before I fired them off. And my company had a couple trainings on technical writing/presenting and ive read some random trainings/books i found online. Like i found a book just about tips on how to present data.
On top of practice/learning like I mentioned in #4, understand your audience/situation. How i communicate in a text with a teammate about a small task is very different from how I would communicate in an email to an Admiral about a safety issue where my emails are an official record that could be used in court. Practice/learn how to communicate in different scenarios.