3 Highly Underrated Software Engineering Skills
Vital career skills that developers neglect and interviewers often overlook
Software engineering is a broad field that contains multiple subdisciplines. Naturally, with so many different domains, different skill sets are required depending on the specific area you work in.
For example, having good UI/UX skills is a great bonus if you’re applying for a frontend developer position, but the same may not be the case for a backend role.
I’ve often observed that developers — especially those who are new to the field — tend to focus on their technical skills. Data structures, algorithms, design patterns, database maintenance. The list could go on and on.
When companies hire software engineers today, though, they aren’t just looking for technical skills. You may have come across instances where a person with just OK programming chops got promoted ahead of tech-savvier colleagues.
More often than not, that’s because technical skills are just one part of a software developer’s job. Soft skills are equally important.
Of course, the ability to code is one of the core traits a developer must possess, and it certainly goes a long way toward propelling your career further. However, when it comes to moving up to the next level or landing that dream job, you need plenty more skills.
Whether you’re a developer who’s just starting out, you’re looking to make a move upwards from a mid-level position, or you’re an interviewer seeking that ideal candidate, these are three traits you should prioritize.
1. Having the Skill To Simplify Complex Problems
Often, developers who have just arrived on the programming scene start acquiring multiple programming languages, frameworks, and shiny new tools.
Given the multitude of resources available on the internet, it’s not a new developer’s fault that they want to get their hands on every new technology. And to be fair, knowing the syntax and concepts of various languages does open more job opportunities.
However, this technical focus comes with a downside.
Many aspiring programmers end up spending all their time chasing solutions, be it from Google, Stack Overflow, or elsewhere. Unfortunately, this creates a bunch of good Googlers who aren’t great problem-solvers.
Unsurprisingly, these developers lack analytical skills and strategic thinking, which becomes a roadblock when they encounter a completely foreign problem. That’s why bolstering your skills through tutorials might not be the best use of your time.
At their core, most languages have the same underlying concepts. Each of them has a pseudo-English syntax, conditional statements, and other constructs.
So, switching from one language to another wouldn’t take a huge amount of effort. Besides, languages come and go. Problem-solving is the meta-skill that you need, and it’s way more important than having a bunch of programming languages in your arsenal.
But wait! How do you start working your problem-solving muscle?
For starters, one way to get better at problem-solving is by not rushing to the code when you have an issue to fix. Solve the problem on paper first. Try breaking it down into smaller problems.
There’s a reason interviewers commonly use pseudo-code to assess candidates.
It’s also worth noting that no developer can remember everything. Even the most senior person Googles things from time to time. So, it’s fine to look up answers on Stack Overflow or from other tutorials. But understanding how things really work rather than just copy-pasting stuff is crucial.
The ability to take up complex problems and efficiently simplify them is a highly underrated skill. One sure-fire way to build this skill is by working on your own projects.
A project based-approach teaches you to break a problem down into subunits. This helps you learn the fundamentals of development more deeply while providing the added benefit of training you to identify patterns.
This pattern-recognition ability teaches you to diagnose problems quickly, meaning you know what will work and what won’t as soon as you look at a new problem.
Learning programming languages is to a developer what mastering vocabulary is to a writer. It’s nice enough, but you shouldn’t spend all your time memorizing the dictionary.
You must have foundational knowledge to start communicating. Beyond a certain point, though, what matters is the art of expressing your thoughts rather than flowery language. Such is the case for developers as well — the one who knows how to solve problems offers much more value than someone who just knows a bunch of languages.
2. The Art of Testing and Debugging Code Bases
It’s not a secret that developers hate writing tests for their own code. And they always have a love-hate relationship with software testers.
As a result, testing is one area that developers often overlook. A lot of this has to do with the fact that developers tilt toward being optimistic rather than realistic in nature. Talk to any iOS developer, for instance, and I doubt you’ll hear them mention the XCTest framework. Don’t be surprised if they haven’t used it at all.
Optimism means that plenty of developers have an emotional connection to their code and think it’s bug-free. More often than not, then, the person writing the tests isn’t the one who wrote the code. Nevertheless, testing is an important aspect of the software development cycle.
But how does a developer convince themselves to write tests? For one, testing is the only way to prove that your code works. Secondly, it saves you from testing old features and ensures that the code doesn’t break anything. Finally, another important benefit of writing tests is that they help developers cover the edge cases in their code, thereby making it robust.
Having good testing skills makes a developer stand out. Sharpening your testing skills also helps you think critically, catch bugs, and improve your debugging skills. In fact, that’s another important skill for your toolbox as a developer.
But mistakes do happen, and that’s where debugging comes in.
If testing is like being a policeman for your code base, debugging is being a detective.
Debugging is a methodological approach that requires practice to master. You can start honing this skill by having no preconceived notions or assumptions. Assumptions are the blind spots of coding. I’ve seen countless situations where developers (including me) have wasted hours on debugging all because they assumed a faulty piece of code was correct. To avoid such blunders, question everything until you can prove it’s right.
Besides squashing bugs, debugging also improves the speed at which you can read and navigate through an unfamiliar code base. Honing your debugging skills will make you a better developer overall.
Aside from software developers, interviewers also often overlook debugging. One way they can assess candidates’ skills in this area is by giving hypothetical scenarios. Even better, they can modify their coding tests with a bunch of bugs and see how the candidates handle things.
There’s a good chance that software developers will spend more time debugging software than writing new features.
A person with poor debugging skills can eat up a lot of time and create bottlenecks in release cycles. So, I cannot stress enough how important it is to be good at debugging and to find developers with these skills.
3. The Ability To Communicate Effectively
When you’re working as a developer, there’s a good chance that you’ll be on a team with project managers and designers. You might even be in for some pair programming. This makes communication a highly relevant and underappreciated skill for developers.
I’ve seen so many software engineers solely focus on their technical skills while completely ignoring the natural language through which we communicate every day.
The ability to communicate both verbally and in writing is paramount. Offering demos, giving presentations, and running scrums all require excellent communication skills.
This ability isn’t just limited to explaining your point of view to peers either. Knowing how to put others around you at ease, handling constructive criticism, resolving arguments without getting aggressive, and active listening skills are all crucial parts of being a good team player.
You might also face situations in which you need to collaborate with coworkers who lack highly detailed technical acumen. Being able to talk to non-technical people with clarity matters as well.
The ability to explain your work such that a layperson can understand it will make you more versatile and ultimately more valuable to your company.
Good communication skills will also help when you’re on the job market. Interviewers often treat a taciturn candidate as a red flag.
They may see it as an interviewee’s inability to express their thoughts. So, always make sure to talk and ask questions — especially when you’re stuck on a problem.
Writing is another valuable skill that developers too often overlook. Good documentation, well-argued email pitches, and clearly articulated project proposals all depend on excellent writing skills.
Software developers also tend to work remotely a lot, which makes written communication very important since that’s how you interact with other team members.
Good writing skills also improve your coding abilities. Having meaningful variable and function names and useful comments that give context to the enclosed code goes a long way toward ensuring that your code base isn’t a painful mess to follow.
Good code isn’t always the most clever and efficient. On the contrary, good code is simple, clear, and easy to comprehend.
In the end, your colleagues won’t judge you by your code base. Instead, the way you communicate with them will go a long way toward making a good impression. After all, any robot can write a piece of code. It’s the soft skills that set you apart.
Conclusion
When it comes to software engineers, it’s true that writing code is the most important skill to be even considered for job positions.
However, soft skills are highly underrated. Problem-solving, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration all play a huge role in programming jobs today.
It might seem odd, but working on soft skills also contributes to improving your software engineering skills, as you become more empathetic and strive to write code for actual humans.
More importantly, it opens up a door to opportunities to further advance your career.
