> It sounds simple but I believe this held him back not just in work but in life. I happen to know that he didn't have great communication with his wife and kids either - solving this thing would make him so much better at all parts of his life.
Did he improve? Or do you just think he could improve? Maybe he had already tried to work hard on his communication skills and this was as good as it gets, so to avoid the stress of failing over and over he just stopped trying? There is nothing wrong with that, having a programmer who can write good code is valuable even if you need a technical product manager to talk to him. It might not be as valuable, but at some point life is more important than stressing out about things you can't fix.
Similarly we don't blame all the product managers etc who never improve their technical skills enough to talk with such engineers. People have limits, some have more limits than others, we just have to learn to accept that people are different instead of demanding that they have the same skills as us.
Did he improve? Or do you just think he could improve? Maybe he had already tried to work hard on his communication skills and this was as good as it gets, so to avoid the stress of failing over and over he just stopped trying? There is nothing wrong with that, having a programmer who can write good code is valuable even if you need a technical product manager to talk to him. It might not be as valuable, but at some point life is more important than stressing out about things you can't fix.
Similarly we don't blame all the product managers etc who never improve their technical skills enough to talk with such engineers. People have limits, some have more limits than others, we just have to learn to accept that people are different instead of demanding that they have the same skills as us.