Best Non-Technical Skill

SimonTemplar

I'm a Java / .net developer and I'll be teaching myself Ruby on Rails next year.

I'm wondering what is the best non-technical skill to compliment by technical abilities. In a previous career, I worked in 5 star service so I'm pretty good at talking to clients and management, and come across very professional yet accessible.

PM / Business Analysts seem like the obvious options.

I also like some parts of digital marketing (SEO optimisation), but I dislike the more blatantly marketing aspects to it (social media posts, etc)

Finally, my maths skills haven't really been stretched since I did lower level leaving cert about 10 years ago. I'm thinking of focusing on that but does anyone has any other suggestions from a career development viewpoint. (maths can come in handly during development but not so much for career development)

rat_race

Hard question to answer. I doubt there is any one "best" skill the complement your tech abilities.

But in my experience, the "best" engineers in a business environment, are those that are:

- clear thinkers
- approachable
- able to see the bigger picture / longer-term plan
- down to earth
- high personal standard
- interested in making others' lives easier rather than just their own (i.e., document your cryptic f**king code)
- able to find the perfect medium between doing things right and getting things done

I've worked with very "smart" people in the past, who lacked the above and were quite frankly a pain in the ass and more of a hindrance than a help, overall.

The Corinthian

SimonTemplar wrote: »

PM / Business Analysts seem like the obvious options.

Those are not really skills, but roles. And different roles at that. In theory the should also be technical (although how technical, especially for PMs, varies greatly), but I suppose where they differ from pure developers is that they are customer facing. In theory both, especially the BA, are the bridge between the technical and the business side of things.

How you might break customer facing roles down into a skillset might look something like this:

• Sociability and Networking. Many developers simply are not and there's even a culture of not being sociable in development. Same with networking - developer networking is often quite different to business networking.
• Real World Humility. Developers develop and are good at it. But they are not soldiers, sailors, candlestick makers or whatever the client is. Yet many intelligent developers can fall into the trap of 'knowing better' than the client what they need, simply because the know the technical stuff better. Guess again.
• Real World Compromise. In a perfect World all solutions would have all the time and budget in the World to build and would be perfect. Accepting and dealing with the fact that this is not the case is an important skill.
• Sales. Whether selling something new to a new client or upselling to an existing client this is a very valuable skill to have.
• Negotiation. Like sales, but it generally comes after. Part of it is social and psychological, but it also involves being able to do on-the-fly number crunching so that you don't end up giving away the farm or buying a pig in a poke. Seriously useful skill personally too, especially when dealing with salary reviews or signing employment contracts.
• HR. Even if you never go into HR, you'll need to learn HR skills if you ever want to manage anyone. Orginizing people, keeping them motivated, dealing with trouble makers or problems, and, if in middle management, 'managing' upper management who will seek to use you to squeeze those below you.

Anyhow, that's off the top of my head. HTH.

Caimchad93

I know a person, well known developer. I'll ask from him. Definitely he will give you good appropriate answer.

ChRoMe

To be able to write clearly and concisely in emails,wiki or whatever.

moycullen14

Nothing to do with IT specifically but the most successful people I know have these two qualities in spades:

1: The ability to get things done.
2: The ability to get others to do things.

Ludo

Caimchad93 wrote: »

I know a person, well known developer. I'll ask from him. Definitely he will give you good appropriate answer.

I'm sorry....what? What is a well known developer?

kippy

I think someone has said it already but I've found in almost any professional area the ability to clearly and coherently express what you want/need/mean to a group of mixed ability individuals is a great skill to have.
That usually involves having a very good grasp of written and spoken English.

What's even more apparent as I go through life is that the majority of technically poor and useless people who end up in well paid and senior roles tend to have a great grasp of said skills. They can make a pile of poop sound like a jar of caviar and can often be hard to see through, often times not being a great manager or leader but coming across as if they are.

Caimchad93

Ludo wrote: »

I'm sorry....what? What is a well known developer?

A person , my colleague, He is now a days inn vacations, When he come, I'll ask from him.

omen80

I read an article recently on LinkedIn which said that the number one attribute a person can have to further their career is the ability to sell. Now, obviously this doesn't mean selling cars. But you should be able to sell yourself in an interview, or sell your new idea to your manager etc.
This requires the ability to build a rapport with people and being able to judge their needs. You also need to have good communication skills, both written and verbal. It requires a different kind of intelligence than being able to code well. A lot of developers out there probably wonder why they never progress and maybe this is one of the reasons.

jmcc

Cultivate the ability to switch off thinking about coding and to think about other things. Once you can do that, other options become apparent. If you don't, then you'll just be a coder who is trying other things rather than doing them. Apart from that, The Corinthian's post above nailed it.

Regards...jmcc

tayto lover

Good mannered.
Good natured.
Keen.

Berserker

ChRoMe wrote: »

To be able to write clearly and concisely in emails,wiki or whatever.

I would also add verbal communication skills to the above.

srsly78

Caimchad93 wrote: »

A person , my colleague, He is now a days inn vacations, When he come, I'll ask from him.

Come on... we have been waiting ages!

Ludo

srsly78 wrote: »

Come on... we have been waiting ages!

I'm still trying to figure out what a well known developer is. Is it like a celebrity chef? Does he have his own TV show?

yes there

Ludo wrote: »

I'm still trying to figure out what a well known developer is. Is it like a celebrity chef? Does he have his own TV show?

I'd hazard a guess that its probably a developer who is well known. Reminds of the question what is a computer network. Well its a network of computers.

beauf

I'd suggest the inference is who is this well known developer. Considering no here knows him...

doubie

I believe that the best non-technical skills a developer should have is .. the ability to communicate with non-developers. I have often seen to many developers speaking using jargons to non-developers and the latter looks completely lost.

bpmurray

This "well-known developer" has really piqued my interest! Is he so well-known that he's e.g. a technical executive or Fellow in one of the major multi-nationals? Or does it mean that he talks about JavaScript down the pub?

Merrion

SimonTemplar wrote: »

Finally, my maths skills haven't really been stretched since I did lower level leaving cert about 10 years ago. I'm thinking of focusing on that but does anyone has any other suggestions from a career development viewpoint. (maths can come in handly during development but not so much for career development)

IMHO - The stats and machine learning side of things is well worth investing in. Now that deep neural networks are moving out from purely academic areas there is a huge opportunity there. (For example deep learning for natural language processing)

croo

Merrion wrote: »

IMHO - The stats and machine learning side of things is well worth investing in. Now that deep neural networks are moving out from purely academic areas there is a huge opportunity there. (For example deep learning for natural language processing)

I was just watching a ted talk on the very subject and I have to say I'm amazed at how far this has come ... this looks like it will have huge implications in the not so distant future.

Caimchad93

srsly78 wrote: »

Come on... we have been waiting ages!

I'm sorry, he didn't reply me yet.. I think he is busy in his new project..

Synode

Who is he though and why is he well known

Saipanne

The ability to articulate your technical work to a lay audience effectively.

This applies to all technical positions.