Comment by toomanybeersies | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomanybeersies | Hacker News Reader

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toomanybeersies

In my experience, social skills tend to be far more important than ability of knowledge when it comes to getting a job. Personal connections are also very useful when it comes to finding internships and graduate jobs, I had a B- grade point average and still managed to get an internship that led on to full time work when I graduated, purely by knowing the right people (completely by luck in my case)

I'm not a bad programmer by any means (my poor academic performance was due to undiagnosed ADHD), but time and time again it's brought up by management that I'm a valuable asset because I'm a software developer with social skills. Apparently we're a rare breed.

Don't take only CS papers, thinking that non-CS papers are a waste of time, I did that and I regret it. Intro to computer graphics was just as much a waste of time as philosophy or any other arts paper would've been. It's had literally zero use in my career. Taking arts papers will help you avoid getting stuck in a CS bubble.

Remember that college/university isn't just a place where you learn things so that you can get a job (most of what you learn you won't use in practice). It sounds cheesy but it's also a place where you grow a lot as a person. College is the time where you'll have more freedom and spare time than any other point in your life, make the most of it. Make mistakes, fall in love, get your heart broken, learn from your mistakes, it becomes a lot harder to do these things when you've graduated and settled down.

100% this. University exposed me to a much wider range of society than I’d ever encountered before. Those social interactions have been foundational to my career. The knowledge you learn in classes is secondary to the skills you learn living and working with people who are nothing like you. Embrace it.

You guys really exaggerate how much people lack social skills in our field. Most people have perfectly good social skills (at least those I'm friends with). Someone that exceeds you in technical skills is gonna snag that shiny internship away from you AND have the social skills to boot.

I guess I'm being unfair when I say that most software developers lack social skills, it's rare for me to run into another dev who I can't hold a decent conversation with (it's rare for me to run into another dev at all to be honest). It's more that most devs are usually bad at workplace communication with non-technical people.

Besides that, most software developers just aren't that great. By definition half of them are below average in their ability, so if you're an average programmer with good business communication skills you're ahead of the curve by a good margin.

At the end of the day, the best way to get an internship is to know the right people. My brother went to university with the lead developer of the company I got my internship at, it wasn't the only reason I got the job, but it was definitely a big contributing factor. My B- GPA definitely wasn't why I got the job, and I had literally zero experience with Ruby on Rails or JS at the time either.

Upon saying that, my experience doesn't necessarily map to everyone else. At the risk of sounding arrogant: I'm a very talented, although not necessarily motivated, programmer. I managed to get my degree without attending more than a week of lectures each semester, while at the same time feeding a pretty heavy drinking problem.

Building on this, I think good technical skills will definitely help get you in the door but won't get you that far up the ladder if your ambitions are management/executive track. And that's not for everybody, which is why larger companies have built individual contributor tracks.

Social skills in a career context are not just getting along well in the office and being able to make small talk in the snack room. It's about creating a strong and deep network, and as an engineer, being able to interface effectively with business and other stakeholders on a social level. It's also about seeking out, recruiting, and fostering new talent, moreso at growing companies. I work at a unicorn tech company and very few engineers meet these criteria.

social skills are one part of a bigger whole - communication.

Looking back, two classes that I should have doubled down on at school are: written and oral communication.

Think of it as a multiplier for the skills of your tech tree.

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