The #1 software soft-skill
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A common question we get asked is: what are the soft-skills that a software developer needs? The answer to that question can be pretty big and some of the candidates can be very surprising (e.g. marketing skills - for advertising yourself in the new job market where employers actually find you rather than you find employers). But if the question is rephrased to:
“What is the the #1 soft-skill that a software developer needs?”
The answer is super easy. There is no confusion here, the answer is:
“The ability argue with logic”
Why?
Because, the software profession is all about debating and arguing what the correct solution to a problem is. There are no final or perfect solution out there. What works for one problem doesn’t work for another. What works today for a certain situation may not work tomorrow. There are just too many possibilities and there are no silver bullets! Nothing is sacred in this space, if “normalization” was the one thing that everyone agreed on data storage strategies (aka databases) yesterday, “de-normalization” could be (and is) the flavor of the day today. We have to live with the possibility that everything we believe in is probably wrong! So the only way to find solutions in this sea of uncertainty is - debates. Rational debates where every argument is proposed with logic and countered with logic. From such an exercise, maybe, just maybe a consensus may be reached. Or, what is more likely the common situation, no consensus is reached but a decision is made one way or the other with the pros and cons of that decision clearly out in the open. This is the only way to make progress.
Emotion destroys a software debate
In this scheme of things the worst possible situation is a debate where arguments are not based on logic but on emotion. The classics in this area are statements like “Relational database is the only way” or “Nothing is better than Java and I don’t want to hear anything else”, etc. These lines and people who make these lines are detrimental to the progress of a software project. They need to be killed, erm sorry, I mean they need to update their soft-skills and learn how to control their emotion and fight it out with logic (and data where possible).
An unpleasant reminder
I was reminded of this recently in an unpleasant way. We run a series called the career booster on youtube - it’s planned as series of shorts in Bangla language about what to do to prepare yourself for a career in software. The target is mainly students and early stage professionals. The third video came out a few days ago and it had the unfortunate title of “Programming languages NEVER to learn”! By itself it’s a mistake to have a title like that because it’s plainly wrong in our field (every language including the dead ones have a place and need and people do need to learn them). The correct title could have been “Programming language not to learn as a beginner” or something like that. But the cardinal sin was that the “NEVER” to learn languages included the mother of all languages C/C++ and the other big god in the pantheon - Java! With a lineup like that a storm of protest was inevitable. The social media became buzzed with hate pointed at us (and at our idiocy). Several influencers picked up on this and we walked in shame. The hate was fully well deserved. We took the video down and tried to come up with various forms of apology and lame explanations.
Needless to say, a complete mess!
But in this huge mess at least something positive came out which is all about today’s topic about the art of making your arguments with logic. Among the literally hundreds of comments (I really mean hate messages here :) ) there were some clear patterns. Some were just awesome killer retorts that proved beyond a shadow of doubt that our video was totally wrong and why it was wrong. And some were irrational and emotional banter that added no real value. You could easily separate out the professionals from the not so professionals in our field just by looking at the comments. Let me go over some of the good ones here to highlight what works great in software. But before I do that that let me restate, the great thing to know is that:
the ability to argue well is a skill and it can be easily learnt.
So being aware that you need to pick up this skill and then practicing some caution to keep your emotion in control and your logic in hyper-drive you can hone in this skill.
Back to the comments. There were some super awesome comments. They were precisely worded, designed to hurt yet made with logic and data that is so undeniable that you can just cry and look at yourself in the mirror and try to remember where and when you lost your brain :) Here’s a particularly good example, and I’ll point out the qualities that make this such a good one:
Clarity: Notice how the writer takes a direct jab at our lame excuse of saying that we had a plan to start a debate with the video (actually partially true but very badly executed). The jab is very sharp yet it is cloaked in the wording of being helpful i.e. “… hurting people’s career, which is misleading.” Precise, to the point and without any strong emotion. The write is just expressing his concern clearly and the opposing side has to either answer back or just accept it as correct.
Supporting logic/data: Then comes the killer - data. If you have solid data as your proof for any argument it is the show stopper. The writer clearly shows that at least in the job site indeed.com Java and C++ jobs are at the top thereby proving that the main goal for our miserable video - career betterment was not met.
Suggested solution: Then comes what I think is the master stroke of any good technical argument - some suggestion on how to improve things now that crack has been identified.
I am awed by a retort like this. Software developers like this person will be an asset for any team where he works. He will make debates short by cutting out the fuss and the endless bickering. He will make his point strong and believable and thus acceptable to other team members including the opposing group (assuming they are not emotional or illogical). And he will suggest a solution and reconciliation that will help the team heal and move on. Awesome!
Here’re two more good ones in a different ways, one points out a clear issue and basically is asking us to address it. Important for any tech discussion where you throw a logical question to the other side and ask them to explain it. The other one in Bengali is purely on the solution space trying to turn the issue into something useful rather than bicker about what’s obviously wrong.
The Survey
We’ve gone over several Facebook pages and filtered out about 300 purely negative comments made by people with software background (as given by their profiles). Overall, on our rough survey only 20% or so of these comments would qualify in some way as a logical, data driven and solution driven argument. The kind of argument we love in technical debates. This is worrying but this data could be an unreliable metrics of the reality as people don’t always stay very rational or professional in a social platform like Facebook. It would have been interesting to run this on a professional network like LinkedIn and see what the data is like. But hey, that’s not going to be us! This was too traumatic and we are done self-mutilation for the year :)
Anyway, gotta go, have fun, stay logical and stay with C/C++ no matter what career videos say. btw, our next career booster video will be about this very topic but we can’t find our actor, he is in hiding after this storm… joking of course! Should come out pretty soon.
