This content originally appeared on Level Up Coding - Medium and was authored by Aleksandr Kozhenkov
Some people are naturally sociable and do not see the problem of making contact with other people. While for the rest, it is challenging.
Many software engineers are introverts and live by the principle “don’t touch me, let me write the code.” An introvert cannot become an extrovert. It is impossible. But this is only an indicator of what a person draws energy from — from communicating with other people or spending time with himself. Nevertheless, nothing prevents an introvert from pumping a God-level with soft skills.
Does the lack of soft skills hinder career advancement? Can you limit yourself to pumping only hard skills?
There is a concept of toxic rock stars. These are guys who are good at algorithms but difficult to communicate. As a rule, such people do not know how to constructively argue, accept someone else’s point of view and make compromises. Usually, this kind of person is already a stop factor in hiring, and such people do not pass cultural fit. This is because when such a person is in a team, the whole atmosphere in the team deteriorates, and people no longer want to discuss something once again, knowing how this discussion will go.
Of course, toxic people are an extreme form of behavior. There are just quiet introverts who rarely express their opinion. The problem with such people is that even with a cool performance, visibility remains rather weak. And it can go up only if the management praises this person to other people outside of the team.
How far can you go without soft skills? I guess the Senior position is the limit. And even for this role, it is necessary to be part of architectural disputes or solve client problems. It is unlikely that you will be delighted with participating in the 5th call with clients when everything could be solved in a single call with properly built communication.
All the positions above, in one way or another, imply some kind of management of people. This means you need to find a common language with different types of people, get the root of the problem and offer trade-offs. The higher our position, the more cross-team interactions you have as well as the total amount of communications.
At the same time, even if you are just breaking into the tech industry, your progress will go much faster if you are not afraid to ask colleagues for advice and proactively express interest in what is important for the project. And when you reach a higher position, pumping soft skills is much more important. At this stage, communicating well will clearly help much better than deep expertise in some narrow areas. Fortunately, there is a huge amount of resources available to help you level up your soft skills.
Soft skills influence at CS career was originally published in Level Up Coding on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
This content originally appeared on Level Up Coding - Medium and was authored by Aleksandr Kozhenkov
Aleksandr Kozhenkov | Sciencx (2021-09-17T16:13:48+00:00) Soft skills influence at CS career. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2021/09/17/soft-skills-influence-at-cs-career/
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