soft skills

Today I wanted to focus on the importance of non-coding skills.

I was reading some articles over the weekend about success, and the skills required to succeed as an entrepreneur.

• The Skills That Make Entrepreneurs Extraordinary
• Why Successful People Take 10 Years to ‘Succeed Overnight’

Recapping from these articles, the main points that resonated were that failure happens on the road to success and having positive relationships will give you a competitive advantage in recovering from setbacks or even moving onto the next level.

It is my observation that most engineers are not deliberately trained to have soft skills while in school, and those who have introverted hobbies such as coding in their free time aren’t necessarily getting exposure to practice/improve social skills. Actually, there’s some difference between interpersonal skills and social skills, actually. One-on-one vs group settings have much overlapping but also you might have certain skills that work better in one over the other context.

I’m really glad for groups in the city who have regular events like N-Lang, NY Haskell, and all the women in tech friendly support groups.

Having a network of folks to ask for help is awesome but not only that, just knowing someone finds what I have to share in this blog useful helps me continue. Thanks to all the N-lang buddies who encourage me to keep blogging!

I highly encourage everyone interested in tech blogging join our blog ring where we discuss our favorite blog software tricks and other yak shaving techniques at #blog on the nlang slack group.