these institutions are also kept intact by those who relish memories of their own survival story — so much so that introducing improvements, or making the path less steep and more efficient threatens their personal worth in some significant way, even if it benefits the greater good.

This is a false dichotomy because communication is a technical skill. The ability to articulate complex ideas is a hallmark of deep understanding. ​ In other words, they are commended for having to deal with the debris of leftover chaos they usually didn’t create, nor had very much control over. ​ Communication skills allow an individual to understand and be understood. They combine self-awareness, empathy, active listening, speaking, and observing into a cocktail of abilities that grease the wheels of every interaction, but often go undetected. Dissociating communication and technical skills, while seemingly innocuous and even pragmatic, can create a harmful dichotomy, one that stunts corners of the industry. ​ Lexical double-booking ​ let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do. ​ but it also allows incompetence to hide behind unnecessarily intellectualized terminology. ​ Those with strong communication skills are capable of using domain-specific language appropriately while also being capable of context-switching to adapt their message to their audience. ​ Being clear is not about being dumb, but, as Eugenia Cheng said, about identifying a problem with the precision and clarity that is appropriate for the context. ​ The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.