How to make great presentations as a software engineer

Many of us imagine the job of a software engineer to be mostly about coding, daily meetings, and focused debugging sessions. But at its core (unless you work for a non-profit or the government), this job is about providing value to the business.

You were hired for being a great engineer—and that's what you do most of your time at work. However, just like hard skills, soft skills, communication in particular, are very important. One aspect of communication is the ability to present your work to the team and your management. Since this is not the main day-to-day focus, engineers often struggle with making great presentations (which often turn out to be very important for you). That's what I hope to help you with in this article.

Besides being an engineer, I also have experience being the CEO and a founder of several failed startups, which taught me valuable lessons after making probably over 200 pitches to investors, live audiences, and customers.

Here are the top tips I have outlined when working on and making presentations:

1. Do not read what is already written on the slide. Slides accompany your presentation; they need to be minimal and clear to enhance your message and accompany your story. Do not repeat what's already said there.

2. Keep the content on the slides minimal. Too much text often means a useless slide. There's no value in a presentation if you just read from the slides.

3. The slide design is important but not crucial. As long as points 2 and 3 are covered, black-and-white text with simple design pieces of your choice is okay in most circumstances.

4. Dedicate a Q/A session and keep the structure timely. Plan ahead on how much time you will spend on each slide/topic, and dedicate some time for questions from the audience.

5. Cheer up! Use a positive voice and be a bit of an actor and a salesman. People often get really bored and lose focus listening to a presentation—you need to keep them engaged. Sometimes it's okay to even throw a little joke to keep them interested.

6. Do not read from a pre-written script. Notes and improvisation are always better than reading. People notice and get disinterested when you are not real.

7. Finally, rehearse more to feel less anxious! I love to run the presentation by myself or with someone else. This will get your muscle memory ready for what's coming.

Presentations are not rocket science, but you still need to build this skill to be interesting to the audience—that's when you win. Do it, and you will get better at it!

These are the top lessons I've learned, but there's always more. Feel free to share more insights in the comments!