One point I try to make to my students is the importance of being a translator in our job as a Systems Engineer. You're a translator between the customer and the technical specialist. You have to understand the customer domain and needs enough to convey those needs to the techno-geeks, all the while speaking their techno-bable. And you have to understand the technology capabilities and limitations enough in order to explain them to lay people using lay terms. That's the challenge.
And it doesn't help when each technical domain has its own phraseology. Take IT with its bewildering array of terms and buzzwords. Here's an article that highlights the difficulty we System Engineers face as Techno-Translators.
Buzzwords: Making Sense of the IT World by Mary K. Pratt, October 09, 2006 (Computerworld)
