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Communicating and Working with Engineers - Bridging the Gap (Udemy.com)

Learn effective communication with technical teams, to keep engineers productive and building the right thing.

Created by: Sundog Education by Frank Kane

Last updated August 2026

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What you will learn

  • Maximize your engineering team's productivity by choosing the right communication techniques.
  • Get more accurate estimates for project timeframes and dependencies
  • Empathize with the ways engineers think differently than non-engineers
  • Avoid common sources of frustration from engineers
  • Create environments where introverts and extraverts can both thrive

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Course Description

Why do our technical projects keep slipping? Why are the engineers I work with annoyed when I try to talk to them? Why are they resistant to coming back into the office? Why can't they appreciate the strategic importance of what we're building?


If you've ever asked yourself any of those questions - consider that the problem might not be with your engineers, but with how you communicate with them. Managers, project managers, or anyone who depends on technical teams need to understand how engineers think differently - and how to communicate with engineers to maximize their productivity and their morale.


This course is taught by Frank Kane, who brings his experience as both a senior manager and as a senior engineer at Amazon headquarters. Frank's seen the challenges of communication between engineers and non-engineers from both sides of the table, and shares his insights on how to empathize with engineers to communicate more effectively. You'll join 700,000 learners who have gained technical and managerial skills from Frank.


Better communication with engineering leads to more realistic project schedules, a more productive team, and an assurance your team is building the right thing. Some specific topics we'll cover include:


  • Introversion vs. extraversion, and how to create an environment conducive to both

  • Communication challenges arising from a focus on the big picture vs. a focus on technical details

  • Optimizing your communication style to keep engineers productive

  • Soft skills vs. hard skills, and the communication challenges that arise

  • Navigating cultural, language, and geographic barriers


You'll also get four hands-on activities, including a role-playing exercise of a difficult meeting with a lead engineer. You'll get to practice and apply what you learn.


This course is aimed at non-technical staff that depends on engineering teams to deliver results - managers, project managers, or anyone else on the business side. Understanding what makes engineers tick goes a long way in building a more productive working relationship with them. Hope to see your enrollment!

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Instructor Details

Sundog Education by Frank Kane

Sundog Education's mission is to make highly valuable career skills in data engineering, data science, generative AI, AWS, and machine learning accessible to everyone in the world. Our consortium of expert instructors shares our knowledge in these emerging fields with you, at prices anyone can afford. 

As a senior manager at Amazon during its early years, Frank Kane led large technical teams, managed multi-year projects, and served as a "bar-raiser" - interviewing thousands and hiring hundreds across the company.

Frank holds 26 issued patents in machine learning and personalization. After 9 years at Amazon and IMDb, he founded Sundog Education and has since taught over 1.1 million people in AI, ML, AWS, system design, and tech leadership. Frank has been teaching full-time for over 10 years - but is always building projects on the side with the latest emerging technologies, to better explain them to you!

Our teaching style is to simplify complex concepts - once you cut through all the notation and jargon, most of AI and machine learning is pretty easy to understand. We make these advanced topics accessible to anyone with a modest technical background, always using plain English and examples to drive it home. We make learning easy, hands-on, and fun.

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Reviews

4.6

439 ratings on Udemy

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By ryanh@opentext.com Holmes on 8/29/2025

I took this course as part of a learning path setup by my company. The overall learning path was more technical focused, and this course seemed out of place. However, I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the course and I would definitely recommend it to both engineers and engineer managers. The presentation was good, the advice in the content was good, and speaking as an engineer myself, the emphasis on being thoughtful, time efficient, and empathetic was appreciated.

By Brian Burbank on 1/16/2025

This instructor is one of the better ones I've been exposed to on Udemy. While other courses pick a couple of vignettes and stick with them throughout the course, he focuses on more realistic and doesn't waste your time with repetitive examples. I also prefer his instruction style to other courses. Overall a good course.

By Jessica Ennis on 11/21/2024

I'm a scientist working with engineers. There may not be a huge difference in how we think, but there are subtle differences. For instance, scientists tend to be more social. But I will say I was hoping this course would help me with the jargon that engineers use as well. Perhaps it will.

By David Read on 10/25/2024

Excellent, great perception to engineers and management, interactions. I think more people, groups, should watch this

By Reza Pakdel on 5/5/2024

Valuable insights into communication challenges in managing software development teams even for those of us who used to be programmers. Frank suggests ways to work with engineers while minimizing their focus zone distractions.

By Logan Laflotte on 2/28/2024

Solid course. I thought the role play exchange at the end was especially insightful and illustrative. Having one of those at the end of each section would add a lot of value, I think. I do wish they spent more time and gave some more recommendations around how to improve communication around technical terms

By Mykola Popov on 8/7/2023

The course is well structured and supplemented by PDF material. The material is well presented and understandable even without additional materials, so after watching the course it can be re-listened to as a podcast.

By Anonymized User on 6/27/2023

The personality information is interesting. The focus on engineers as coders may be too narrow (my team is largely mechanical engineers - not coders)

By Anonymized User on 4/13/2023

The distinguishing factors between shyness/anti-social behavior and introversion is important, and something that extraverts have a hard time recognizing.

By John Coffman on 4/3/2023

Worthwhile course for APM (Agile Product Manager) role. This will definitely help me to keep my annoyance to a min with my engineers. Explains some of the interactions I've had with engineering teams. Good presentation and style.

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Overall Score : 92 / 100