The Soft Skills Episode 🍦

Welcome to Iteration, a weekly podcast about programming, development, and design. JP Intro — Hi, I'm JP and I am a full stack developer. Today, I am joined by John: John Intro — My name is John and I am a software developer for a home services startup. What are soft skills? Why are they important? Are they important? Wikipedia defines "soft skills" ... Soft skills are a combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, character or personality traits, attitudes, career attributes, social intelligence and emotional intelligence quotients, among others, that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals with complementing hard skills. tldr; people skills Hard skills, also called technical skills, are any skills relating to a specific task or situation. It involves both understanding and proficiency in such specific activity that involves methods, processes, procedures, or techniques Conversation is loosely based on this book , the author is famously kind of a dick. Doesn't mean there aren't some solid takeaways, using it as a framework for conversation. Link to summary of "Soft Skills" Another summary Section 1: Career Few tips to improve your career: From SS: Specialize, don't generalize. From SS: "Fake it till you make it" John Always be working on yourself: "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity" Meet lots of people, be helpful and friendly Do a lot of interviews. Confidence and enthusiasm — "Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points." JP The importance of friendliness. How does this work for introverts? Recommended Career Books Linchpin Startup of You JP: Crucial Conversations Section 2: Marketing yourself From SS: See yourself more as offering a service and not as a employee. Less about Salary and work hours, more about the uniqe "Features and beniftis" you bring to the table, you solve problems, you are an investment not an expense. John Blog, be vocal — Share what you learn, don't be afraid to look dumb. Teach others when you can Take speaking and presentation gigs (Was a speaker at GA and got work out of it, you never know) Again — Specialize JP I love this idea around you being a service. EAAS: Engineer as a service I have mixed feelings about marketing yourself. I go back and forth on whether or not I want a bigger online presence Section 3: Learning From SS: "Learn you want? Teach you must." John: Be consistent. 1 hour a day for 12 days is way better than a single 12 hour day. Try to understand the concepts, not the syntax. Concepts and fundamentals you can take anywhere. Good domain design, testing, clean code. All these concepts work in any language / framework. JP: Deliberate practice. I just hammer concepts into my brain until it sticks. Honestly, just keep writing code but more importantly keep READING code Whiteboard, talk about problems from a domain perspective Section 4: Productivity From SS: Focus John: +1 (20% done isn't worth anything. 5 tasks 20% done, or 1, 100% done) From SS: Pomodoro Technique From SS: Kanban John: Getting Things Done Break down the work. 80/20 — Pareto principle Eat that Frog JP: I'm currently giving Pomodoro a shot. I'm trying to figure out how to effectively context shift How do you eat an elephant? Sections 5 and 6 — Financial and Fitness Section 7: Spirit From SS: power of positive thinking From John: Mental space, day off, unplug sometimes. Confidence + enthusiasm JP: I could use some tips from this section... BONUS From John: Communication This one probably goes at the top of my list. — Learn to be a better writer. Book: On Writing Well Tool: Hemingway Editor Headline writing — Most important things first Learn how to explain complicated topics. ELI5 Picks John: Naps JP: Loom screen recording

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The Soft Skills Episode 🍦 is an episode from iteration by iteration podcast.

This episode is 00:37:45 long.

This episode was published on Jun 15, 2020.

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