The Essential Soft Skills in Tech

Chapter I: Small Talk

Small Talk

Cook. Gamer. Software Developer.

Corona lockdown Work-From-Home be like...

50% CTO + 50% engineer

Small Talk

Chapter II: Essential Soft Skills

🔪 Being Evil 🔪

Anecdote Time

Resources

Recap

Tech solutions are worthless
if they get blocked.

Be prepared!

🔪 Undercover 🔪

Advice

Skip your next technical tutorial!

Do one of these instead:

• Do a Product Owner Training
• Go to a non-tech conference or meetup
• Learn the fundamentals of Figma or Adobe XD
• Read "The Non-Designer's Design Book"
• Read "The Infinite Game", or "Sprint", or similar

Realize:

There is never a logical time
to go off the beaten path.

🔪 Inbox Management 🔪

Resources

With caveats...

Resources

⚠️ Bit "American".
⚠️ Religious undertone.

⚠️ Second-hand advice.
 

⚠️ From my "to read" list.
 

🔪 Persuasion 🔪

Resources

Public Speaking course.

🔪 2D List Making 🔪

Confession Time!

The Scenario

The Process

1. Get stuck.
2. Pick two dimensions
3. List options exhaustively
4. Create cross table
5. Check cells off exhaustively

Resources

(ChatGPT: Morphological Analysis, Decision Matrix Analysis)

Resources

(ChatGPT says: Morphological Analysis, Decision Matrix Analysis)

🔪 Stress Management 🔪

Exercise time!

Let's see how we work under stress...

Stress kills productivity.

Stress management is a skill.

Bad news...

🔪 Mentorship and Teaching 🔪

Mentoring and Teaching some thing are effective ways to improve at that thing.

Resources

Suggestions welcome!

🔪 Empathy 🔪

Resources

1. Outward Empathy

No amount of coding effort is worth it if you don't empathize with stakeholders.

2. Inward Empathy

Or: empathy towards colleagues and partners.

Resources

And then, one final soft skill...

Small Talk

The fix...

Self-taught, so practice!

"Ga je nog op vakantie?"

Disclosure, AI Prompt: shocked hair dresser with an excited client.

Small talk creates small gems of inspiration and knowledge!

Essential Soft Skills (recap)

• 🔪 Being Evil 🔪
• 🔪 Undercover 🔪
• 🔪 Inbox Management 🔪
• 🔪 Persuasion 🔪
• 🔪 2D List Making 🔪
• 🔪 Stress Management 🔪
• 🔪 Mentorship and Teaching 🔪
• 🔪 Empathy 🔪
• 🔪 Small Talk 🔪

Chapter III: But... why?!

Presentation Abstract

Improving essential non-tech skills is the most effective way to improve at your tech job.

An example task

Rewrite the Data Transform service using a monadic approach.

BaseChance = 1.0 // Assumption: base chance of success with core skills

Evilness = 0.7, Persuasion = 0.9, Empathy = 0.8 // Assumption: lower secondary chances

ChanceofSuccess = 1.0 x 0.7 x 0.9 x 0.8 // = 0.504 = 50.4% 😭

VariantCore = 1.02 x 0.7 x 0.9 x 0.8 // = 0.51408 = 51.4% 😢

VariantBetter = 1.0 x 0.96 x 0.9 x 0.8 // = 0.6912 = 69.1% 😁🎉

Wobbly Statistics, Sound Idea!

Conclusions

Core skills face diminishing returns.

Thanks for listening <3

Any questions or suggestions?

All book recommendations

Appendix: cross-functional

These skills and character traits are "cross functional". They are "multipliers" for core- and secondary skills alike. Improving at them is a great idea, but should be seen separately at training more specific core- and secondary skills.

• writing
• talking
• listening
• patience
• curiosity
• creativity
• improvisation
• focus
• discipline
• intuition
• positivity
• attention to detail
• collaboration
• problem-solving
• ethics
• AI usage

Appendix: honorable mentions

These skills and character traits are "cross functional". They are "multipliers" for core- and secondary skills alike. Improving at them is a great idea, but should be seen separately at training more specific core- and secondary skills.

• "waltzing"
• ownership
• bifurcation
• politics
• networking
• leadership
• self-defense
• sales
• negotiation
• spreadsheets

Appendix: Sketch Notes