Soft Skills

Communication

Communication skills are important for software engineers.

Even though software engineers typically spend more time coding than talking, learning to communicate effectively can help in various situations.

Communicating with your manager

Your manager might not know what you are doing. Hence it is imperative that you prioritize communication with your manager. Share what you are working on and your progress to make sure you are aligned on timeline and expectations and avoid last minute surprises. Share your difficulties and blockers so that your manager can help you fight for more time, manpower, or reduced scope of the project.

Communicating within the team

Effective communication is important when working on a project together with other teammates. Making sure that the work is divided among developers with clear boundaries and responsibilities helps to reduce overhead and confusion. Healthy team dynamics can boost productivity and happiness for everyone in the team.

Communicating with other teams

When communicating with product managers, designers and other functional teams, the ability to clarify business requirements can reduce wasted efforts or even lead to better solutions. Even casual catch-ups and coffee chats can open up new opportunities for cross-team collaboration and projects.

Sharing your work

Sharing your project regularly within your team or during organization wide sharing sessions increases awareness of your work. Such visibility and recognition is important if you are looking for promotion to senior software engineer.

Recommended resources for improving communication:

1. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

A book on how to make people like you and influence them

→ How to Win Friends & Influence People - Amazon