Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership
by dimitrios1 on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @10:41AM
(#26167577)
I am having a hard time understanding what you are saying, perhaps you could restate? Coding is not a soft skill, even if that is in a capacity where it's used ancillary to other tasks such as the ones you mentioned.
I am glad you mentioned it, because communication and trust, on the flip side, are soft skills. You can foster trust through excellent communication and understanding Where the engineering manager does not excel in a particular area of expertise, he or she will defer to the ones that do. A good engineering manager knows their weaknesses, and how to ask for help. The good engineering manager will seek to gather understanding of the technical debts and use that to represent the coding team well. Again communicating those decisions effectively are orthogonal to that process (meaning you can communicate a poor decision effectively just as well as communicating a good decision effectively)
This is also true for communicating enterprise-wide considerations to coding teams. They have to trust you not to blindly push senior management priorities. If you know the cost of both capital and tech debt, you are more likely to have represented the coding team and influenced decisions, and be able to communicate decisions effectively.