Soft Skills Of The IT Future — What Will Set You Apart?

In today's fast-paced and highly competitive tech industry, having strong technical skills alone is no longer enough to succeed. As technology advances, the need for software engineers who can adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing landscape is becoming increasingly important. While tech expertise is essential, soft skills are often overlooked in the IT world, but it’s exactly them that can truly set you apart from other engineers and help you attain greater career goals and results.

And today I’m going to share my TOP-5 Soft Skills which will utterly stand you out from others in the market today and in the future whatever level you are. As a testament to how the Power of Soft Skills helped me achieve extraordinary results in the world of IT, you may learn more in My Profile or on LinkedIn. And I really hope my tips below will help you too! Let’s get to the point!

🎙️ Communication

First and foremost. Profitable businesses won’t pay a cent if the engineers can not clearly express their thoughts to clients, stakeholders, team members, or anybody else they work with due to the potential risks of costly misunderstandings, delays, and mistakes in project delivery.

I’ve seen so many times how skillful engineers fail the project, get dismissed from the company, or ruin the relationship with the client just because they were not good negotiators. In most cases, IT businesses will give a chance to a less experienced engineer who can more effectively communicate, understand customers’ needs and concerns, and can build solutions that better meet their expectations.

🚀 Here’s an example:

Let’s say you observe a client is wrong about something. Don’t rush in a hurry to say he’s talking nonsense or likewise. No one likes that. Instead, try to SUGGEST some alternative solutions reinforcing them with good recognized practices, links, guidelines, screenshots, or apps that have already utilized your solution. Which of these two statements below you would appreciate seeing as a client?

You’re not right. It’s complex to implement.

OR

I’m just thinking - what if slightly improve that solution to look something like this to follow the best development practices:

1. Option_1
2. Option_2
3. Option_3

It will give us the following benefits:

1. Benefit_1
2. Benefit_2
3. Benefit_3

Otherwise, in the future we may stumble into:

1. Problem_1
2. Problem_2
3. Problem_3

On top of that popular companies like Google, Facebook and Uber (or alike) have already used these options in their apps - see the screenshots attached.

What do you think about these ideas?

Do you feel the difference? Believe me or not, but in the lion’s share of all cases, customers will listen to your recommendations and be inclined to move forward with one of your alternative ideas.

💡 Creativity

As automation and artificial intelligence become more prevalent in the software engineering industry, employers will be looking for individuals who possess a unique set of skills that go beyond technical expertise. And the ability to think critically and outside the box as well as to come up with innovative solutions to complex problems from different angles will be highly valued in the future.

🚀 Let’s check out an example:

Let's say you’re a Web Developer and you are tasked with building a new e-commerce platform for a non-technical client. Your team has been given a set of requirements, including a list of fundamental features that the platform must have. Demonstrate your creativity skills. Try to brainstorm some innovative features or improvements that weren't included in the initial specification and suggest them to the client. It can be anything that you feel may bear fruits to the platform, increase client’s sails, attract more users, and drive more revenue, for instance:

• Incorporate blockchain for secure transactions;
• Introduce a VR try-on feature for clothing or makeup products;
• Develop a chatbot with OpenAI to improve customer service;
• Enable payments of the products via cryptocurrency;
• Add a social media integration to allow customers to share their purchases with friends;
• etc…

By bringing such ideas to the table, you’ll add value to the project by enhancing its functionality and user experience. This, in turn, will lead to increased customer satisfaction, better engagement, and ultimately, higher profits for the IT business. And as a result, you may get paid more.

⏰ Time Management

Being able to be organized, complete tasks on time and within budget is an essential skill. It can be a significant competitive advantage for you in the future if you learn how to manage your time effectively to meet deadlines and deliver quality work. This includes the ability to prioritize tasks, manage distractions, and work efficiently.

An engineer with exceptional time management (TM) skills can address tasks on time and ensure that any issues that arise are dealt with promptly. This sort of engineer is invaluable to any business. Moreover, excellent TM skills can also help you maintain a healthy work-life balance. You can reduce stress levels and increase your productivity and trust in your managers and clients. This can lead to a more enjoyable and happier work experience, drive more motivation, and potentially higher job compensation.

To ultimately hone in on this skill and learn a multitude of practical examples I’ve even created a separate story for you - 🚀 Boost Your Productivity as a Software Engineer 🚀. Feel free to drop me a line in case you have any questions and I’ll be glad to help you tackle them down!

🧠 Self-Autonomy

The next skill we’re going to embrace is Self-Autonomy. This skill refers to the ability to work independently without constant supervision or direction. It becomes indispensable and invaluable in the IT industry because of the increasing complexity of software, the diverse number of consistently emerging new tools and technologies, and so forth.

Self-Autonomy allows you as a Software Engineer to take ownership of your work and responsibilities, work independently, make decisions on your own, and take actions without persistent guidance or seeking approvals from your leaders. It has already been and will be highly valued by employers, as it enables more efficient use of time and resources, and leads to boosted productivity and faster project delivery.

🚀 Time to learn an example:

• Imagine a Software Developer, John, who is working on a new mobile app for a client. John is highly skilled in coding and understands the project requirements. However, he struggles with self-autonomy and is not confident in making decisions on his own.
• The client requests a change in the app's design. John seconds that it’s a straightforward fix. The task is urgent and important as the client wants to demo this change to investors soon. But the team leader and the client become unavailable at that moment, and the rest of the team is working on other tasks.
• John comes to realize that the task is not as easy as ABC and incites a significant update to the codebase. John has no idea what to do. He gets stuck, starts treading the water in hesitation to make mistakes, and sends a ton of repetitive emails to the client and his team leader, but no one responds.
• Consequently, John wastes too much time contemplating, fails the delivery, and unhappy investors turn down a potential proposal.
• However, if John had self-autonomy skills, he could take responsibility for the situation, re-prioritize the tasks on his plate based on consequences, dive deeper into the client's request, even converse with his colleagues or resource manager, and come up with a solution that would fit the project's scope and timeline.

Don’t let mistakes intimidate you. Don’t wait for the grass to grow, take responsibility and make your own decisions as if you were your client, your manager, your stakeholder, or whoever else. And ultimately you’ll be in high demand in the market.

🧩 T-Shape

Another highly valued soft skill in the future for software engineers is going to be a T-Shape skill. The IT world changes at an extremely rapid pace, a ton of new technologies emerge every day, and businesses become more agile and focus on delivering products quickly to outstand competitors and corner the market. In such a hurry, you must be able to instantly learn and tailor new skills, methodologies, programming languages, tools, and frameworks.

Today IT businesses are getting more interested in hiring engineers who have cross-functional skills over developers with a specific framework knowledge because they can contribute to different aspects of a project beyond their technical expertise. And this is where T-Shape skills come into play and start taking on a substantial role in the IT industry.

The “T-Shape” term was first introduced by McKinsey & Company to describe their ideal employees, who possess a wide range of knowledge and skills while also being experts in one or more areas.

If you as a Software Engineer exhibit these skills, you will be indispensable to IT businesses in the market because of your high adaptability, flexibility, collaboration, and broad tech & non-tech knowledge. It will ultimately lead to higher client satisfaction, faster delivery, and drive more revenue.

🚀 And this is how it works:

Let’s stipulate there are 3 team members on the project: 1 Backend, and 2 Frontend including you. You’ve got a shallow UI/UX design in Figma and a brief project spec. There are no Team Leaders, Project Managers, or QAs here. The client is a non-technical person and has no clue how to manage the project, but feels like something is going wrong.

If you keep on doing your development work as it is on a daily basis, you will be yet another regular developer and you’ll be fairly easy to be replaced. What could stand you out and define you as a T-Shape Engineer here? Whatever goes beyond your current responsibilities:

• Take the initiative and leadership indirectly, and start being informally responsible for your team;
• Regulate technical processes, set coding guidelines, cross-code reviews, etc;
• Kick-off conducting project demos of the work your team accomplished for the client;
• Recurrently brainstorm ideas and suggest project improvements to attract more users;
• Get a grasp of the business goals and pinpoint potential opportunities to upsell for your company and grow your team;
• Provide feedback on the UI/UX design;
• Having prior QA knowledge or experience, validate the features and bug fixes and put together reports to enhance the quality;
• Having prior Backend knowledge or experience, help your single Backend Developer to brainstorm solutions on the server side and tackle ensuing obstacles;
• and so on…

Apart from that, by taking on these extra responsibilities, you will increase the client’s trust and satisfaction, position yourself as a valuable team member and raise your chances of being recognized for your contributions. In the long run, this will lead to accelerated career growth, higher position titles, new opportunities, and augmented salary compensation.

Conclusion

The Informational Technology industry continuously raises the demand for engineers who have more than just specific technical expertise. 🎙️ Communication,💡 Creativity, ⏰ Time Management, 🧠 Self-Autonomy, and 🧩 T-Shape Skills are becoming increasingly paramount to succeed in a professional career.

Together, these skills will let you get ahead in life and thrive in today's fast-paced and ever-changing work environment. You will not only be able to excel in your current roles but also prepare yourself to adapt to future challenges and opportunities. It will set you apart from others and help you achieve greater success in your career.

I wish you good luck in your future career path! Should you have any questions, don’t hesitate to let me know by email - [email protected]. I’m always willing to help you!

My other articles you may be interested in:

• 🚀 Boost Your Productivity As A Software Engineer 🚀
• 📥 Boost Your App's Intelligence: Leveraging OpenAI and JS File API