What Are Soft Skills?
First of all, we need to define hard skills. Hard skills are, mainly, the (tangible) technical skills of your role. Software developers must know how to code, and that’s a hard skill.
In the other hand, soft skills are attributes related mostly to the social area. Every soft skill is related to one of the hard skills of your job in some way. These are a web developer soft skills:
- Communication: the most important soft skill for a developer. You must know how to express yourself and have communication skills to talk to your team with ease.
- Critical thinking: in a code review, this is the skill you look for. Question everything and go after the answers.
- Adaptability: technology changes every day. New frameworks, new products, new team workers… new! You have to readapt yourself by studying new languages, libraries and be ready for changes.
So, I’m Not Paid To Write Code?
Definitely no. You are paid to solve problems. Coding is just the tool you use to solve them.
Programmers’ soft skills are becoming more important every day. As a software developer, I’ve learned I have to know what I’m coding, what I’m delivering and what is the value proposition of the product I’m writing.
You were hired to solve a business problem using your expertise. Business problems are product problems. The only responsibility of the product is to deliver value, so is your job.
-Vinicius Brasil, LinkedIn and Medium
This article originally appeared on Hackernoon.
Interested in reading more? Check out Advocating for Why Your Idea Matters and Improving Your Small Talk Skills.