Even in Tech: No Soft Skills, No Career
Are you a great coder? Good for you! Unfortunately that alone won't get you very far. Even in our industry, people are making business with - guess who - other people. These people, by the way, pay us to create software that addresses their problems. Without this need, there would be no reason to write code at all. As you can see, it's ultimately about business, money and interaction with people. Software is not an end in itself; it's simply a tool to solve real-life problems. Therefore, focusing too much on technology is too narrow and reduces you to merely a service provider in a tech business, where complex human problems need to be understood and solved collaboratively. In this article, I want to show you how important soft skills are if you want to have a successful and enjoyable career in the tech industry.
I have been in the tech industry for more than 20 years. I studied computer science, old school, theory and mathematical proofs, hated it but pulled it through. Then I chose the classic career path as a software developer, eventually becoming a senior and then specializing as a software architect. I switched camps and went into management; first as a Product Owner, then as a Product Manager and later I found my way into the C-level. I don't think I'm the most talented computer scientist in the world, to be honest. But one thing was always easy for me: making a career. And I often didn't understand why exactly? Because other people who were much more talented than me had great difficulty developing their careers and finding joy. It fascinated me to get to the bottom of this mystery. So I did my own research and conducted hundreds of interviews with seasoned and successful experts from all areas of our industry: Engineers, CTOs, managers, architects… I asked them about their tips, secrets and career hacks. About their best advice they would have given themselves at the start of their careers. It has become a beautiful collection of wisdom!
Interestingly, all the experts agreed that excellent coding skills are necessary, but also very common and therefore nothing special and not nearly enough. They have reported how shocking it sometimes is to see how far young professionals and even many supposed “seniors” are from even being considered for leadership roles or at least roles with a say due to a lack of soft skills and a certain skill set beyond code in general. In fact, the really relevant aspects that set you apart are things like process know-how, business acumen, the right attitude and, most importantly, communication and soft skills in how you manage interactions with teammates, managers, other departments and customers.
And this lack actually makes sense! These are all things you don't learn in traditional training programs. Universities and training programs make you fit in theoretical or technical basics and they obviously set their focus on coding skills. Even in "leading" tech conferences the number of talks that do not exclusively deal with code and technology is less than 10% (and that is mostly about agile stuff).
Among software engineers, the need for further skills apart from coding skills is still not particularly recognized. This is evident in CVs, in job interviews, in promotion applications and also in the under-representation at conferences mentioned earlier.
In the world of team leaders and HR experts, however, the need is more topical than ever, as the following statistics show:
Think about it and do the math: If you can demonstrate soft-skills, you have an advantage over three quarters of your competitors on the job market. Can you name a bigger lever for career success than that? I dare you!
A study by Reclaim.ai claims that on average, IT-professionals now spend more than half of their workweek (53%) in meetings. Doing what? Right, interacting with other people, where coding genius won't help much! Does 53% sound like too much? Well, think about all the different types of meetings you attend: Dailies, plannings, reviews, retros, refinements, team organization, emergency, performance reviews, one-on-one, client meetings, corporate meetings, onboarding…and so on. That all adds up in the end and is a lot of time and nerves (especially for an introvert) if you lack people skills.
In fact, the term "soft-skills" is not entirely accurate, which is why we refer to "skills beyond code". It is about much more than knowledge of human nature and empathy. The IT-business is a very complex world and therefore skills beyond code comprise topics like self-organization, professional responsibility, communication and especially communicating tech to non-technical people, IT-processes, collaboration, mentoring, leadership and business acumen.
We analyzed our expert interviews and identified recurring themes that go beyond mere patterns; they are definitive rules. These guidelines encapsulate the key areas where you should showcase your skills. We refer to them as "The 7 Rules Of IT Career Success Beyond Code" and use them as the basis for our "Tech Career Playbook". Explaining them would go beyond the scope of this article, but in case you are interested: Details and explanations of the rules and the playbook can be found here.
We intend to close a gap in our rather one-dimensional technical education system and make these important topics palatable and accessible to IT experts. We know from our own experience that many recurring problems in everyday IT could be avoided with more competence in the area of skills beyond code.
I'm actually a fan of the "learning by doing" method. The best way to learn programming, for example, is to do a lot of practical work. You are constantly learning new things and can get a sense of achievement. It's different with soft skills or skills beyond code, because mistakes feel more painful here. For example, if you "dabble" in interpersonal skills or dealing with customers without receiving important advice, then many first impressions are recorded as painful experiences. Trust me, I can tell you a thing or two about this! I would have been so happy if someone had prepared me better for that part of worklife. If I may give you a tip: save yourself the trouble and take care of it yourself by improving your skills beyond code. The practical side effect of this is that you can simply walk past three quarters of the applicants in the queue for your desired job, because these skills are still in short supply in our industry. If you're serious about your career, there's no way around it and it's fair to say: no soft skills, no career.
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