Soft skills matter
Normal people go out, normal people meet new people.
I am (trying to be) normal too, so I go out and meet new people as well.
And after a while, these new people ask me:
And then they say… “I would never have guessed it. You don’t talk like one.”
And they consider this a compliment! Well I never get flattered!
What do people think of developers?
I think that one picture might suffice:
That’s what people think. That we sit in our cave talking gibberish and scratching our heads while doing stuff with our laptop that no one understands. And when it comes to interacting with other people… well our reputation is not the best in this case…
What is the truth about us?
The truth is that they are right up to a point. Communication usually does not belong to our strengths. Programmers like coding not talking. We put on our favorite music and start coding. It’s a different world of creativity where you do not need to talk.
What happens when we do have to talk?
- We sometimes find it hard to communicate with people in general.
- And when we do, we sometimes have a problem expressing ourselves in plain English.
- We don’t like meetings.
- We speak very technical not able to translate what we want to say to the business or normal language.
Why do soft skills matter?
Professional developers write code for a living, they write code to fulfill requirements created by people in order to solve problems that other people have. Building software is a complex iterative process that requires a lot of human interaction and communication. Poor communication makes this whole process more difficult and makes you less productive.
By being a good communicator you:
- Can back up your proposed solutions to technical problems with convincing arguments.
- Can get your work noticed more.
- Can be the guy that people turn too in case of a problem because you can understand what they need.
- Can make the business people treat you as a business person since you can speak their “language”.
- Can get you promoted since lead positions require such skills.
- Make generally a difference since you can both code and talk!
And don’t forget…
There are many programmers
There are fewer good programmers
There are fewer good programmers that have some kind of soft skills.
There are only a bunch of good programmers that also have good soft skills.
Be one of them and make a difference!
So…
Stop talking Assembly or Java!
Try plain English and be nice to other people!