NIT (Ninja in Training) looking for guidance.

[dninja at gmail.com (Robin Wood)]

2009/5/13 Mike Patterson <mike.patterson at unb.ca>:
> Jack Daniel wrote on 5/13/09 12:55 PM:
> > Effective communication skills will occasionally be more valuable to
> > you than any technical skill you may have.
>
> Disagree. ?Effective communication skills will always be at least as
> valuable as your technical skill, and will frequently be the more
> valuable of the two. ?I don't even draw a distinction.
>
> You may be the smartest person in the world, but if you can't prove it
> to me in a way I and others I work for and with can understand, I still
> won't hire you. ?Yeah, you broke into my DC - great, how did you do it?
> ?Jibberyjabberybleebloo, I see, thank you - do you have a dictionary?
>
> We (security pros) have enough of a bad rep that nobody wants somebody
> on their team that'll just make them look worse.
>
> In other words, practise your writing. ?Try to explain the latest
> vulnerability in your own words. ?Get your wife and kids and dog and cat
> and next door neighbour and boss and co-workers and everybody else to
> read it, and see if it makes sense. ?Try writing some documentation on
> how to lock down that AP. ?*Give references.* ?Hell, try different
> writing tools - not everybody needs to be a Word drone! ?I write my
> documentation in LaTeX.

I think it depends on where you are wanting to work, if you want to be
a techie sitting in a backroom working on tools and doing research
then you need to communicate with your team mates but maybe not with
the outside world. If you want to be client facing then you will need
to be able to communicate well.

Robin