Let’s imagine some guy working as a developer in an IT company. He started his job after graduating the University. He managed to succeed at the interview and impress the employee with his knowledge received during the study. But time flies, and his KPI doesn’t grow up. What keeps him from moving up the career ladder?
Our guy is a typical developer in the imagination of many people. Sitting silently on his laptop, sticking endlessly to one task and not telling other team members about the problems. But now it’s not that popular to be this kind of developer. Now you should have more than the basic knowledge necessary to fulfill your work responsibilities. It’s important to have a wide range of skills and personal qualities.
What are Soft Skills?
Soft skills are the set of personal knowledge that goes beyond the scope of technical skills. Of course, a developer must have skills in programming, logic, and maths. But if you want to work in a healthy company, you should have also communicative, strategic, and creative skills.
All soft skills in IT can be divided into 3 categories. Let’s view each of them and see what their development can give to you.
1. Personal skills
As there are 3 levels of programming skills (junior, middle, senior), we suggest viewing soft skills according to them. So, if you want to start developing your career, you should think first about the personal qualities that you have to cultivate.
- Be flexible. Mental flexibility is necessary if you want to increase your creativity and learn to find new ways to solve problems. For this purpose, you may use various exercises. For example, Fantastic Binomial. It was created by famous Gianni Rodari, the Italian writer for kids. You should take two words with different meanings and makeup 5–10 sentences. This task just seems to be simple: after 2–3 sentences you will feel that your imagination is blown over. Or you can use one of the methods by V.N. Kelasyev. Try to change in mind the common time connections or imagine different order of common things. For example, at first, it thunders and then lightens. Or try to imagine the dialog between two people of different epochs.
- Google the problem. (Important for any specialist nowadays). If you face a problem you can’t solve for several hours, stop torturing yourself and google the problem. But if the decision doesn’t come, ask your colleague for help.
- Show self-discipline. Punctuality and the ability to organize your work help to restrain yourself and bring the result within the given period of time.
- Be self-confident. Without the motivation to work and career improvement, an employer wouldn’t believe in himself and would be afraid to start any task.
- Adapt. Know how to integrate with your co-workers and show the same professional level in any situation.
- Be creative. In projects where feedback and advice from developers are highly appreciated, don’t hesitate to provide your opinion. Develop your creativity during brainstorms, read books, and communicate with creative people.
2. Communicative
By gaining the middle level, the developer should distinguish himself from other developers and start communicating better with the project team.
- Communicate with your co-workers. Simple, but true. It is one of the most important soft skills that can help you to work successfully in any company. You should communicate with PM, QA, other developers, and clients. And the image you present of yourself depends on the ability to hold a dialog.
- Show empathy. Stay objective when you assess your colleagues’ work. Try to find the right words that will create a comfortable atmosphere in your team. Empathy will help you to understand the feelings and emotions of other workers. One more side of empathy is the ability to understand what a client needs.
- Be tolerant. Always remember, that all people can make mistakes and it’s useless to go mad because of that. Let down easily and explain their mistakes.
- Be open to the ideas of your co-workers, theories, and suggestions.
- Solve conflicts. It's not only a PM’s task, but you're as a developer as well. The better understanding you can gain with your co-worker, the more successful performance you will be able to provide.
3. Mentorship
After achieving the senior level you’re required to do more than write the code. Now you lead projects and mentor other developers.
- Train others. You will need to train the beginners and team members, so find the best way to render your ideas in a simple and clear way.
- Show leadership. If you want to be heard, your opinion and experience should be convincing enough.
- Be thankful. Give something in return for using free software. Report about problems, send pull requests, create your open-source products.
We in Joy Dev are always aimed at helping every employee in developing soft skills. It significantly increases the quality of our work. So if you are looking for a team of developers who can release a high-quality and successful project, write to us!
