A lot of technical people don't care to be good at writing.
Not that they actively want to be bad at it, but they do not see it as a priority, they hate doing it, and they are unwilling to put effort into being decent at it.
In more extreme cases, they will even make somewhat absurd excuses to justify it. My favorite is, "We shouldn't write documentation. It's harmful because it just goes out of date." True, documentation gets out of date, but you can plan to maintain it, or you can just mark it as out of date so people aren't misled.
Many are bad at communicating in general, e.g. selectively ignoring/missing parts of an email, incomplete sentences, typos. Some also have the nasty habit of skimming stuff and replying to what they thought they read.
I've seen this from interns to CTOs and remain baffled by its prevalence.
> Many are bad at communicating in general, e.g. selectively ignoring/missing parts of an email, incomplete sentences, typos. Some also have the nasty habit of skimming stuff and replying to what they thought they read.
I've seen this as well. It really makes one wonder how they're able to code properly since programming is, in a sense, also the expression of ideas as text.
Well, it's human nature to try and efficiently summarize. You may have to adjust your communication methods to account for that. For example, I almost always try to write emails that contain one central point.
Not that they actively want to be bad at it, but they do not see it as a priority, they hate doing it, and they are unwilling to put effort into being decent at it.
In more extreme cases, they will even make somewhat absurd excuses to justify it. My favorite is, "We shouldn't write documentation. It's harmful because it just goes out of date." True, documentation gets out of date, but you can plan to maintain it, or you can just mark it as out of date so people aren't misled.