Why Public Speaking Skills Are Worth Investing In
This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Parsity and delivered to your inbox for free!You want to become a senior developer. A CTO, maybe. Start your own company, perhaps. Or maybe you just want to land your first role in tech.You will not get there from raw engineering skill alone.There’s a skill that’s quietly essential to technical leadership and yet consistently overlooked: public speaking.If you’re anything like I used to be, you’re already listing reasons not to. “I got into this to code, not to give presentations.” “I don’t want to lead.” “I’m too junior to speak about anything.” No, no, and no again. There’s a ceiling on the return from technical skill alone.I was terrified of public speaking for the first three years of my career. I wanted to hide behind code, and for the most part it worked. I did my job and did it well.Then I joined a startup where hiding wasn’t an option. The whole company was five people. I was one of two developers. I had to form opinions on our technical direction and defend them, and the CTO told me directly that I needed to speak up more.A few things happened once I did. I took more pride in my work. I said some cringe-worthy stuff, lived through the mini-anxiety attacks, and got better. To my own disbelief, I’m now an engineering manager whose job is largely speaking to groups of developers and leading presentations, online and in person.Here’s why this is worth your time:Leadership. Communicating ideas clearly, influencing decisions, and aligning your team are core leadership functions, and they matter more the further you climb.Visibility. Speaking lets you show your expertise, build a reputation, and connect with people who open doors to better roles.Durability. As automation absorbs more routine technical work, skills rooted in human interaction and judgment are far ha