When it comes to a successful career in tech, it's not just about technical skills. Non-technical skills are just as important, if not more so! Some examples of non-technical skills that can help you succeed in tech include:
- Communication
- Leadership
- Time management
- Collaboration
- Critical thinking
What other, maybe less obvious. non-technical skills do you think are important for a career in tech? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Oldest comments (25)
Does English count as a non-technical skill? It definitely aids in the furtherment ov one's career.
Linguistics, as a whole set ov concept and terminology, is vastly important and can help bridge gaps in communication, but that is more than technical, so it doesn't count.
May I not sound rude when I ask this, Do you know English?
Yes. Of course I do, I'm an English (US) native.
May I ask why you ask or what prompted you to ask?
I think it definitely counts. It's important in several ways.
Coming from a non-English speaking country I think it's very important to learn to search for information in English. There is much more information available, and often much better sources of information. Just take wikipedia as an example. Any article in English will have way more information than the same article in my native language (unless the article is specifically about something related to my country/language, but most technical articles aren't).
I see programming as an English-first job. There may be exceptions, but it certainly helps.
That's why I wanna diversify the languages programming can be accessible in.
Specifically, I've been practicing Swedish, which I will make programming articles in. (You can see a, not yet implemented, preview of that on my GitHub profile.)
Thank you for your engaging response,
Well, support u.
When i started, it was difficult to communicate with colleagues. I had to upgrade english from the "speaking" one to professional. There are always many apps to improve the language. For example, Grammarly.
Btw, my friends developed an extension for Google Chrome (i don
t know if i can post here links, but lets try) Natively.ai. It can rephrase and correct your texts online. They are searching for first users (it`s definetely free) for testsFor communication some people think it is "How to speak" but the first part is listening: even people we don't agree with / even people who attack you. You have to stay calm, extract primary idea from oral sentence, put it in your memory-queue and wait your turn (silence is a requirement to a respectful communication). Being impulsive is something to fix.
I love to see diagram in documentation (UML or not), I think it's a good tools to explain something: tracing a HTTP call inside network, explain a debug process. So the ability to resume complex idea into a simple thing is very helpful for communication
Writing emails, or in general, communication.
Estimating the amount of time a task will take (I am terrible at this). I feel like I always say "a day or two most likely" and never anticipate weird things that make tasks take longer than expected.
I've heard always pad things with extra time. Now how you do that? I couldn't tell you. Just heard it as sound advice.
Listening and paying attention to what others do an say will help you boost many soft skills at once. I talked about it on this article (Sorry for the self promotion)
3 things:
1) communication;
2) communication; and
3) communication
All the rest (including collaboration) follows from that.
Something that isn't noted here but i think it is important.
For various reasons: frustration tolerance
Some things will be hard to understand and require you to try it multiple times until you get it.
Documentation will be bad or even non-existent.
Higher ups will want you to do things you think are a bad idea.
etc.
I've been told there's many times when you moralistically and individually will have to place yourself aside for the greater good of the companies you work for. I know this from non-technical standpoints, but imagine it doesn't change much in the technical field. Especially if you're a er...peppery person =P!
Self confidence
Endurance
Open-mindedness
Salesmanship
( not sure if that counts as skills or if it’s just personality traits that are good to possess )
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