10 ms·

It is 44 years ago, that I worked on a program in FORTRAN and it is 43 years ago that I learned LISP. It is about 36 years that I am writing software for a livi

It is 44 years ago, that I worked on a program in FORTRAN and it is 43 years ago that I learned LISP. It is about 36 years that I am writing software for a living. The longer I am a software engineer the longer I begin to understand that the soft skills are much more important than all the technical skills. For me software engineering is much about dealing with my insecurities and coming to term with my weaknesses. I also feel that it is a lot about dealing with your ego and a lot with cooperating with colleagues and bosses. The longer I am a software engineer, the more I understand that developing software is not about writing code but communicating with people.

MexicanJoe 4y ago
100% - you also have the other group ( at least in my company ) that basically does not care about the user. That is a real problem, but hopefully, they see the light someday.
- xwdv 4y ago
  Having every engineering care about the user is inefficient. I don’t care about users, I care about inputs and outputs. By the time new stories reach me, the user should be entirely abstracted out. It is more accurate to say every software engineer should care about interfaces. Not user interfaces, just interfaces. Code you write will be consumed by something or someone. That is who you care about, the end user is not always something within your horizon. I work deep in the backend, the consumers of my work are other machines or developers. I don’t give a damn about the people at the very end clicking on pixels. My only interaction with them is when I look at their PII data in the database.
  - elcomet 4y ago
    So you do care about your users. They are just not the "end" users, but I don't believe that you disagree with the parent post.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      Yes, in a way we agree.
jiveturkey 4y ago
yep. it’s sad that the interview process is so broken
- dgfitz 4y ago
  Sometimes I wonder if soft skills are filtered out intentionally so as not to shake up the upper echelons of a company.
  - dryjer6tj 4y ago
  - largepeepee 4y ago
    I won't say they are doing it maliciously but rather most interviews are for finding good workers. Higher leadership positions rarely rely on interviews and those that have them tend to use them as a formality.
    - endtime 4y ago
      > Higher leadership positions rarely rely on interviews and those that have them tend to use them as a formality. How high are you talking about? My employer definitely has real interviews for 7-figure total comp positions.
  - novok 4y ago
    No, many interview loops have sections basically about 'how well do you work well with others / not a jerk'. Someone with social skills, leadership skills and software skills is definitely valued.
- glouwbug 4y ago
  But by outright saying the interview process is broken one sorta kinda fails the soft skill test, no?
  - jiveturkey 4y ago
ironmagma 4y ago
> developing software is not about writing code but communicating with people. You often hear this from people who claim it's a revelation. I would say it's a bit overstating the case. Developing software is definitely still about writing code; you can't do it otherwise. But being able to communicate with people well makes your code maybe 100x more useful.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jtmarmon 4y ago
  You usually hear it in the context of someone who's had a long enough career to forget how hard "just writing code" is when you're a noob ;)
  - bitexploder 4y ago
    Also, software is ultimately written by humans, for humans. A very overlooked thing in many circles. It seems so simple, but folks off in the deeply technical universe of engineering should remember it.
    - scythe 4y ago
      In short, writing code is communicating with people! Often, the listener is future you.
    - ehnto 4y ago
      Maybe this is why infrastructure as code feels so obtuse to me, there isn't many opportunities to explain yourself in the code and so most of the communication is done in the docs. Perhaps there is an opportunity for a more natural language approach to infrastructure as code, but I am not sure how far you can take that since the reality is still a lot of arbitrary delcarations.
      - tempay 4y ago
        I think a lot of the infrastructure-as-code motivation comes from struggling with documentation. At least it provides a unambiguous source of truth which is going to be correct. Understanding it and it’s quirks can be tedious but it’s better than port scanning and guessing hostnames to figure out what infrastructure exists.
atleta 4y ago
The goal when developing software is to solve problems for people, so yes, being good at communicating with people is key. (You also have to know how to develop software, of course, but we usually take that as a given, since we're talking about software development, after all :) ) I would also say, that it's a special kind of communication. At least the part when someone talks to the users/clients/stakeholders. You have to be able to understand them and help them tell you what they need to tell, but what most of the time they wouldn't be able to tell by themselves. Because they don't have the analytical skills and, of course, also don't know what you need to know because they don't know the internals of the software being worked on. Besides this, it's also a bit of educating them about the software development process.
_8j50 4y ago
You can say that about almost any job but at the end of the day shit needs to get done right. Also, your specific role matters a lot when it comes to any skills including soft skills required from you.
samstave 4y ago
You sound like you may have been a BOFH? Or not? I like you
- fjfaase 4y ago
  Thanks for liking me. One thing that motivates me when developing software is helping other people. That is why I am quite happy with my current job at Bond3D.com where I contribute to a dedicated slicer in close cooperation with it users, my colleagues as Process development and Application. An important part of my work is understanding their problems and thinking about ways to solve them in cooperation with my other colleagues at software development.
  - samstave 4y ago
    WOW Seriously, I need to speak with you. How contact? I am in love with what you are doing, and have a very specific thing I want to build with you.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> The longer I am a software engineer the longer I begin to understand that the soft skills are much more important than all the technical skills believe it or not,this is not a revelation. In our field survival bias is very strong and it's easy to draw conclusions from "these are the books that successful CEO read" I have been programming since 35 years ago and professionally for 26 years, soft skills come up a lot when talking with people with a background similar to mine. I have worked on the technical skills more than the soft skills at young age and once I've reached competence I realized that improving soft skills could be of some help, given I was confident enough with the core business of my job. The reality is IMO that a lot of people lack both the competence and the soft skills, but those with the soft skills, being more likeable, are more easily remembered, also because they usually are able to understand on their own if they aren't proficient enough for the job and leave on good terms. But you need those technical skills if you wanna climb up the ladder, even a little bit, because the more you learn, the more you understand how much you don't know and how much things are intertwined with each other and that there's no wall between a set of skills and another. Sometimes philosophy can help solve a software problem or applying rigorous logic can help with social issues.
mettamage 4y ago
Writing code is the foundational layer. When I graduated, my soft skills were better than the average computer science grad. It helped me to get out gnarly situations, but the truth of the matter was, my code sucked and without mentorship, it would continue to suck.
denton-scratch 4y ago
> The longer I am a software engineer, the more I understand that developing software is not about writing code but communicating with people. I have experienced the same dawning of understanding. But I don't think it's because of how long I've been a SE; it's because the work has changed. Spotty kids just out of school pick up quickly that soft skills are important.

MexicanJoe 4y ago

100% - you also have the other group ( at least in my company ) that basically does not care about the user. That is a real problem, but hopefully, they see the light someday.

xwdv 4y ago
Having every engineering care about the user is inefficient. I don’t care about users, I care about inputs and outputs. By the time new stories reach me, the user should be entirely abstracted out. It is more accurate to say every software engineer should care about interfaces. Not user interfaces, just interfaces. Code you write will be consumed by something or someone. That is who you care about, the end user is not always something within your horizon. I work deep in the backend, the consumers of my work are other machines or developers. I don’t give a damn about the people at the very end clicking on pixels. My only interaction with them is when I look at their PII data in the database.
- elcomet 4y ago
  So you do care about your users. They are just not the "end" users, but I don't believe that you disagree with the parent post.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    Yes, in a way we agree.

jiveturkey 4y ago

yep. it’s sad that the interview process is so broken

dgfitz 4y ago
Sometimes I wonder if soft skills are filtered out intentionally so as not to shake up the upper echelons of a company.
- dryjer6tj 4y ago
- largepeepee 4y ago
  I won't say they are doing it maliciously but rather most interviews are for finding good workers. Higher leadership positions rarely rely on interviews and those that have them tend to use them as a formality.
  - endtime 4y ago
    > Higher leadership positions rarely rely on interviews and those that have them tend to use them as a formality. How high are you talking about? My employer definitely has real interviews for 7-figure total comp positions.
- novok 4y ago
  No, many interview loops have sections basically about 'how well do you work well with others / not a jerk'. Someone with social skills, leadership skills and software skills is definitely valued.
glouwbug 4y ago
But by outright saying the interview process is broken one sorta kinda fails the soft skill test, no?
- jiveturkey 4y ago

ironmagma 4y ago

> developing software is not about writing code but communicating with people. You often hear this from people who claim it's a revelation. I would say it's a bit overstating the case. Developing software is definitely still about writing code; you can't do it otherwise. But being able to communicate with people well makes your code maybe 100x more useful.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jtmarmon 4y ago
You usually hear it in the context of someone who's had a long enough career to forget how hard "just writing code" is when you're a noob ;)
- bitexploder 4y ago
  Also, software is ultimately written by humans, for humans. A very overlooked thing in many circles. It seems so simple, but folks off in the deeply technical universe of engineering should remember it.
  - scythe 4y ago
    In short, writing code is communicating with people! Often, the listener is future you.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    Maybe this is why infrastructure as code feels so obtuse to me, there isn't many opportunities to explain yourself in the code and so most of the communication is done in the docs. Perhaps there is an opportunity for a more natural language approach to infrastructure as code, but I am not sure how far you can take that since the reality is still a lot of arbitrary delcarations.
    - tempay 4y ago
      I think a lot of the infrastructure-as-code motivation comes from struggling with documentation. At least it provides a unambiguous source of truth which is going to be correct. Understanding it and it’s quirks can be tedious but it’s better than port scanning and guessing hostnames to figure out what infrastructure exists.

atleta 4y ago

The goal when developing software is to solve problems for people, so yes, being good at communicating with people is key. (You also have to know how to develop software, of course, but we usually take that as a given, since we're talking about software development, after all :) ) I would also say, that it's a special kind of communication. At least the part when someone talks to the users/clients/stakeholders. You have to be able to understand them and help them tell you what they need to tell, but what most of the time they wouldn't be able to tell by themselves. Because they don't have the analytical skills and, of course, also don't know what you need to know because they don't know the internals of the software being worked on. Besides this, it's also a bit of educating them about the software development process.

_8j50 4y ago

You can say that about almost any job but at the end of the day shit needs to get done right. Also, your specific role matters a lot when it comes to any skills including soft skills required from you.

samstave 4y ago

You sound like you may have been a BOFH? Or not? I like you

fjfaase 4y ago
Thanks for liking me. One thing that motivates me when developing software is helping other people. That is why I am quite happy with my current job at Bond3D.com where I contribute to a dedicated slicer in close cooperation with it users, my colleagues as Process development and Application. An important part of my work is understanding their problems and thinking about ways to solve them in cooperation with my other colleagues at software development.
- samstave 4y ago
  WOW Seriously, I need to speak with you. How contact? I am in love with what you are doing, and have a very specific thing I want to build with you.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

> The longer I am a software engineer the longer I begin to understand that the soft skills are much more important than all the technical skills believe it or not,this is not a revelation. In our field survival bias is very strong and it's easy to draw conclusions from "these are the books that successful CEO read" I have been programming since 35 years ago and professionally for 26 years, soft skills come up a lot when talking with people with a background similar to mine. I have worked on the technical skills more than the soft skills at young age and once I've reached competence I realized that improving soft skills could be of some help, given I was confident enough with the core business of my job. The reality is IMO that a lot of people lack both the competence and the soft skills, but those with the soft skills, being more likeable, are more easily remembered, also because they usually are able to understand on their own if they aren't proficient enough for the job and leave on good terms. But you need those technical skills if you wanna climb up the ladder, even a little bit, because the more you learn, the more you understand how much you don't know and how much things are intertwined with each other and that there's no wall between a set of skills and another. Sometimes philosophy can help solve a software problem or applying rigorous logic can help with social issues.

mettamage 4y ago

Writing code is the foundational layer. When I graduated, my soft skills were better than the average computer science grad. It helped me to get out gnarly situations, but the truth of the matter was, my code sucked and without mentorship, it would continue to suck.

denton-scratch 4y ago

> The longer I am a software engineer, the more I understand that developing software is not about writing code but communicating with people. I have experienced the same dawning of understanding. But I don't think it's because of how long I've been a SE; it's because the work has changed. Spotty kids just out of school pick up quickly that soft skills are important.