Besides coding, what's the most market-valuable skill to acquire? | Hacker News Reader

Besides coding, what's the most market-valuable skill to acquire?

3 pointsramoswriter7 comments

Thinking more "hard skills" than "soft skills", since those are what get people in the door for new opportunities.

I disagree about discounting "soft skills". As a hiring manager I look for people who can demonstrate the ability to solve problems with code for sure, but equally important is the ability to understand the problem and communicate it from/to lay persons.

Agree with you, I'd just add that I think soft skills are simultaneously underrated and overrated. The deeper the skillset, the more important soft skills are because the people that can benefit from your experience are not even in a position to understand how to use you without your guidance.

On the other hand, I see a lot of people with minimal tech skills, self proclaimed "business translator" types, talking about how important soft skills are. Being all talk is no good either. Personally I think hard skills come first, and then when you understand something well, talk to as many people as you can to figure out how you might be able to help them.

Communication and nothing else comes close. If you're the next coming of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Jim Keller but you only speak Maltese, no one is going to want to take the time to work with you.

I know that's not a fun answer for a lot of people but at least the goal is clear.

The market rewards being good at job searching and interviewing. It makes a bigger impact on compensation than actual engineering value.

So get better at interviewing.

If you're already focused on coding, the next piece is systems design.

The more senior the job, the more likely part of the interview process is moving boxes and arrows around to design a scalable, reliable system.

This book is a great place to start: https://www.amazon.com/System-Design-Interview-Insiders-Guid...

It really depends on level, the more senior you get the more those soft skills are what get you in the door.

You can't let the hard skills rot either, they're kind of just table stakes at that point though.

Project management, communication, statistics, and one or two areas where you have a somewhat deeper knowledge/experience than the rest of mortals.

Selling - in fact, I'd argue it is more valuable than coding as it can be transferred to any domain whether you are selling a product or yourself.

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