In both cases, sitting there and watching was excruciating in that "holy crap this is awful, just make it stop for the sake of the poor guy" kind of way.
But you know what? Some of us got better at it - the ones who made an effort. This made me realize that we do not force enough liberal arts on engineers in school. In fact, I was prohibited from taking many art classes - I got no credit towards my degree for them because they were perceived as "soft". That is crazy.
I also think that reading and posting on places with high quality discussion like HN and reddit circa 2008 can really improve your communication skills.
Especially true if the business ever needs to write a technical proposal to win a contract. Very important to have engineers who can read and write then.
There are a couple of questionable assumptions baked into that statement, IMO. First, that a "liberal arts education" (by which I assume you mean earning a 4 year degree from a liberal arts university) definitely means you will come out able to read and write to a superior degree. Maybe if you major in English or Philosophy, otherwise, I wouldn't take that as a given.
Also, there seems to be an implicit assumption that the only way to gain a solid grasp of reading and writing well is through a liberal arts education (again, I'm assuming you mean a formal liberal arts education). I'm not sure I buy that. The best way to learn to write, IMO, is to write a lot, read a lot, and solicit feedback on your writing. None of that requires a formal liberal arts education.
Now if you aren't necessarily referring to formal / university education, then we probably don't disagree. I certainly agree with the point that having solid reading and writing skills is a valuable thing!
Very easily identified early in school as the ones who say "I don't want to know all this history shit" or "I don't want to know all this writing shit"