Hacker News Reader

Comment by randomsilence | Hacker News Reader

>Behavioral problems, not technical skills, are what separate the great from the near great.

True for those with technical skills. There are also the ones with social skills that haven't honed their technical skills.

Is there a complementary list of technical skills for those who can handle the behavioral problems?

View on HN

I think this book is aimed at people who have already advanced in an organization. Basically you need the skills and credentials to make it to a low level manager for the advice to apply to you. In tech, this is typically a CS degree, internships, and good references. It's hard to sweet talk your way past byzantine HR requirements at most large companies.

In my experience, if you have an inside reference and manager who wants to hire/promote you, HR requirements can almost always be waived.

The older I get the more I realize that after you get to about average intelligence, it's control over emotions that matters far more than intelligence or technical knowledge if you're not working completely alone. That, I think, is why the stereotypes about software developers in the 80s don't seem to apply to modern software developers (why they're more sociable, why they make way more money, etc.) Now it's all about interfaces and community with a little bit of technical work where before it was mostly just you and the computer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com