The typical software engineer at large tech companies tends to be great at solving problems, analyzing solutions, writing code, and testing it. However, they tend to be not so good at selling their own contributions. To develop self-marketing skills, this course focuses on communication as a “soft” skill to develop and nurture. We provide concrete tips and guidelines on topics of communication that actually matter for engineers. This course was developed by engineers with multiple decades of experience being an engineer in large corporations. We outline tricks for software engineers to make them more effective self-marketeers and as a result increase their impact in a corporate setting, get more opportunities for growth, and enjoy their job and life more.

My interests are in the design and implementation of programming languages, compilers, IDEs, toolkits, run-times, APIs, and life cycle development tools. Examples are tools to monitor and analyze performance, support agile development workflows, or to visualize internal execution. I have worked on various complex software projects, such as Eclipse, and I can understand them quickly, improve their performance and/or effectiveness, and make them more accessible to others by writing books or training materials. I organized the first (?) Doctoral Symposium at ECOOP’92 in Utrecht and I am in the organizing committee for CurryOn this year. I have worked as a software engineer at places such as IBM, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Google, and Uber. Check out chrislaffra.com for links to my hobby project: algorithm visualization.