Gaining technical literacy: how to grasp complex technical terms?
I am a person who is passionate about Tech as an industry. I don’t have a technical background. My training is in economics and business administration, i.e., not in mechanical, electrical, or software engineering.
If you’re in Tech doing strategy, business operations, or any other support function, it is vital to be at least technically literate, to know “just enough to be dangerous.” No one expects you to be technical — no need to write code when you’re analyzing business processes. Still, you are expected to have a decent understanding of what the company you’re working for does and how it works. Also, understanding “the cool stuff” about your company’s products makes your work a whole lot more interesting!
I’ve recently been asked this question on a job interview: what do you do when you need to understand a complex technical term?
Say, you are helping an R&D team that works on integrating a “SmartNIC” into the next generation of servers. They need to get the business plan for the next executive review. Your job is to get their story and numbers straight, definitely not to help them with their research. Nonetheless, when you get a solid understanding of what SmartNICs do, it’ll build trust and make it easier to communicate with the technical team, especially when you’re asking the right questions.
When I need to learn a new technical term, I use this 4-step routine that worked time and again:
1) Get a high-level understanding of what it is
At first, it’s just you and DuckDuckGo/Google/Bing. Search for the term, read a couple of articles. Best-case scenario: you find a paid report in your company’s subscriptions — IDC, Gartner, Forrester, etc.
In our SmartNICs example, I see that it stands for “Smart Network Interface Controller,” some plug-in hardware “card” that accelerates server performance.
2) Ask a friend for help
Try to identify someone in your network who you could occasionally “torture” with tech questions. Someone who wouldn’t mind moderately stupid questions… If you keep your inquiry short and specific, this step will help you fine-tune your view of the world.
It always helps to start with closed, probing questions, e.g.: I’ve been reading about SmartNICs, and my current understanding is that these are hardware accelerators that offload network tasks from the server’s processor — is that a good way to think about it?
Once you have your confirmation, go for more open-ended questions: What makes this technology so great? What are the hurdles of getting it to work? What are the alternative ways of achieving the same result?
3) Refine your view of the term
In your own words, write down what this term is and what it does. No need for using fancy vocabulary. Try simplifying it so that a 5-year-old would get the basic idea.
See if you can start asking related questions and check if you can answer them. For example, when this technology got invented and when it gained popularity? Which companies are taking it to the market?
If you’re having trouble simplifying a complex technical term, I’ve found that the car analogy could be beneficial. This of what your term could be in a car and how it would benefit the whole.
In our example, let’s think of a server as a racing car. It has an engine that helps spin the wheels really fast. There’s also a radio unit on this car to communicate to other racing cars. Originally, we’ve used the main engine to power up the radio unit, but that consumed some of the “horses” that would otherwise spin the wheels. Why not have a secondary engine that would only work on keeping the radio comms going? That secondary engine is a SmartNIC :-).
4) Verify that you mostly got it right
Spent some time with your tech counterpart, share what you understood, and calibrate your view of the world. You might not be 100% accurate in your understanding of the term — remember, you need to get it mostly right. Combine your high-level definition with some analogies you’ve come up with — demonstrate that you’ve done your homework. Important note: don’t oversell it. Don’t pretend to be more technical than you really are.
Conclusion
Once you get through these 4 steps, you’ll notice how that once vague technical term starts feeling less abstract and more concrete. The effort you took would demonstrate your seriousness and honest interest.
That should set you up for productive communication with the tech team.
Please share your thoughts on what worked for you on your tech journey!