What soft skills are critical for developers and why?

rabiarahi

Yes, yes, everyone has known about soft skills for a long time, or rather, they remembered that hard skills are technical skills, and software is something that does not relate to the main specialization, but it would be nice to have them in order to socialize normally at work. Otherwise, they make TV series about geeky programmers, but we are not all like that, right?

Let's figure out what is included in soft skills: is washing yourself in the morning considered sufficient additional skills for a successful developer or not?

We google and... oh my god, why so many?

There are already enough studies, analyses, defended dissertations and articles about soft skills. It's as if the authors are competing with each other to see who can name more skills. We chose a longer list, look what it includes: communication, critical thinking, customer focus, team management, mentoring, decision-making skills, emotional intelligence, non-violent communication, independent work in uncertainty, reflection. Such good skills, useful fo social media marketing servicer everyone. Which of these is necessary specifically for developers, we decided to ask Alexey Khovbok, Front End Team Lead at Itransition, who has 7+ years of commercial development experience under his belt.

- In my current position, I can highlight several soft skills for a lead, - says Alexey. — These are: independence (the ability to solve assigned tasks and make correct strategic decisions), communication skills (this is not just sociability in the general sense, but the ability to build harmonious communication within the team, with clients, the ability to convey your thoughts in simple words, ask the right questions, resolve conflicts within the team. I also include here the ability to protect the team from external irritants. Another important soft skill is initiative — this is proactivity on the project, analysis and implementation of new practices, improvement of development processes, the ability to propose and implement new ideas. An important part, with which I once had difficulties, is delegation. It is not so easy to distribute roles within the team, transfer knowledge, and not try to solve all the complex problems yourself.

Alexey also mentioned that at first he personally had difficulties communicating with clients due to the level of English and cultural differences. The problem was solved by corporate English courses.

- In the IT sphere, attention is paid to the development of employees, — says Alexey. — Companies not only conduct English courses, but also teach many soft skills: they teach how to resolve conflicts, build teamwork, “awaken” creative thinking, protect your own and others’ boundaries, take responsibility, and pump up emotional intelligence. It was difficult for me to learn to delegate tasks because I thought that others would not cope or would not do it as well as I did. And here the situation helped: at some point in time I simply did not have time to physically do everything, so I had to accept it and learn to delegate some tasks to the team.
TOP 4 soft skills from the developer: independence, communication skills, proactivity and delegation

What do recruiters think? How much attention is paid to soft skills at the stage of that tough selection that HR managers arrange with their stress interviews?

Let's listen to Valeria Zheganova, Lead Recruiter at ITechArt:

- If we compare the requirements for specialists when the IT sphere was just beginning to develop in Belarus, then over the years there have been dramatic changes. Previously, recruitment consisted only of the required technical knowledge: they were looking for conscientious performers. Now even the average developer has a lot of communication: with the team, the manager, with customers (depending on the project). Thus, communication skills have moved to the top of the priorities, although they were not required at all before. And if every second person is more or less OK with this indicator, a person knows how to build a constructive dialogue at an interview, can show himself from the best side, then another very important competence may suffer.
Without proactivity, you can fail an interview
What a proactive person does: there is a task — he thinks about how best to solve it, analyzes the process as a whole, suggests new approaches, takes responsibility for its implementation, and can evaluate how effective the proposal was.