Picture credit: Pivotal Labs office, Sydney.

A few days ago, someone on Twitter asked me this question “What skills do you wish you had as a beginner software developer?” When I saw the tweet notification, it got me thinking. I asked myself, “Celestine, given where you’re now and what you know today, what one skill do you wish you had learned as a beginner software developer?” For the first 10 minutes, I had different things run through my mind — learn CSS better, understand the inner workings of Javascript, focus on learning how to write vanilla Javascript before jumping to a tool like jQuery (make no mistake, jQuery is one solid tool that has saved me and millions of developers around the world unnecessary headache), get a better grip of CS fundamentals.

But the more I spent time pondering over this question, the more I realized that, while all the interesting things I listed above made a lot of sense, none of these things really mattered or still matters in the grand scheme of things. The one skill that I think will make all the difference for any beginner developer is learning how to deal and relate to other humans.

Often times, the mistake we make as developers is thinking we need to learn one more technology or get to the proverbial 10x. But the truth is, soft skills trump’s every other thing. No matter how smart you’re as an engineer, if you have poor people skills, you wouldn’t get too far. This is especially important if you are working in a team and even more important if you’re leading that team. Some of the most amazing teams aren’t teams led by the smartest (tech smart) people. They are teams with leaders that are in sync with their human side.

Your team members will move mountains for you and the team if you lead with empathy. I have seen this happen more than once. People will readily help if they know you’re just a decent human. This is why I think a regular one-on-one between team leads and team members is super important. It’s not just okay to assume you’re doing things right, ask people during one-on-one how you can better serve them and make their work a lot more enjoyable.

We need to flip the concept of daily stand-ups and sprint retrospective. We need to hold another one(we will make up a name for it) and just let people talk, not technical stuff, but just about anything bothering them.

A team is strong and healthy when they have team members and team leads with good people skills

I once led a team where a certain team member wasn’t delivering. I knew he could do a lot more, but for some reason, his head wasn’t just in the game. I pulled him aside and asked what the problem was, it turns out, in addition to work, he was dealing with a sick mum. Not just that, his mum’s hospital bill was also his responsibility. And this was getting to him. I mean, you can’t imagine a person in this state to bring their A-game to the table. It is not just possible.

A team is strong and healthy when they have team members and team leads with good people skills. Bad attitudes are cancerous. They spread very quickly. If you lead a team, be nice to your teammates. Life goes beyond shipping and hitting business goals. Just be a decent HUMAN; that person people want to work with and bounce ideas off.

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Do you want to say hello? Email me - celestineomin@gmail.com

I tweet at @cyberomin