Four Soft Skills for a Successful Software Development Career

Demand for software developers has soared over the past few years. There are currently more than 80,000 software engineering job openings in the United States alone. The top skills for such a position require IT and development talent, knowledge of scripting languages, and an overall understanding of toolsets. However, more non-traditional aptitudes have quickly become a requirement for future-proofing a career in software development: soft skills.

Jan Haderka, CTO of Magnolia, a mid-market content management system provider, discusses the top soft skills he looks for when hiring. Haderka is the head of a 15-person product development team, and he plans to expand the team by adding 10 to 15 more developers by 2020. Like many software tech companies, Magnolia has customers and employees around the world. The nature, and perhaps advantage, of a career in software engineering is the ability to work at any time and from any place. "As long as they can do the work, we don't really care where they are," Haderka said. "If they are not sitting in the offices, it is economically even better for the company."

The line of communication is first and foremost a concern when working worldwide. "Even though the teams are distributed, they have daily stand-up meetings over Zoom," said Haderka. "There is a team mindset and daily contact to discuss challenges and resolutions, which is why, he added, it is important for the team to get behind a new hire. At Magnolia, each team member meets with a potential candidate in the hiring process and has a say as to whether the candidate is a good fit.

"We might skip over a candidate that otherwise might pass and may be a good member of the team," said Haderka. "But, we try to make sure that everybody in the team everywhere is comfortable when we are hiring new people."

This process takes some time, noted Haderka, but he added that the culture and comfort that come with the process keep team members happy and, ultimately, the company safe.

"It takes very little to destroy the corporation or the good atmosphere in the team," he said. "It takes one person to poison a development team."

Discriminatory language, the inability to take criticism and a lack of communication can harm the chances of quality production, especially when working with people from all backgrounds and languages.

According to Haderka, there are specific soft skills that stand out in developers who stand the test of time. They include:

As the IT world continues to expand, so do the opportunities for a career in software development and engineering. Developers need to consider that soft skill assessments can make or break their career prospects.