I don’t need to tell you that the tech field is changing rapidly, some technologies come, some go, yada yada this all impacts the demand for certain technical skills. In addition to the obviously continuously changing conditions on the labor market, in 2022, we have seen an explosive growth of different artificial intelligence systems that have learned to write texts, create images, and also code with minimal human input. Does it mean we will soon lose our careers to AI? While some organizations predict that the demand for programmers will decrease in the next 10 years, we believe that there is still hope.

In fact, I would even go as far as to say that the world desperately needs human software engineers. We might have GPT-3 at hand and other no-code tools but the human component is essential in this industry.

One doesn’t become a software engineer when they learn to code. A machine can be taught to code, no problem. I believe that much more important is to learn how to break life problems into programming (and sometimes mathematical) problems, break those down into blocks that are actually solvable with the means of coding, then distribute the tasks, manage the pipeline, and assemble them back together. And repeat the process multiple times. Creativity, empathy, and time management are the skills that only humans have. And in fact, you will find few programmers among your colleagues who actually possess these skills.

Talking to many team leads, I’ve asked them: what do you think have helped you to succeed? Why did you and not somebody else from your department get promoted? And they would say something like, ‘I am not actually a great coder, but I like to talk to people and make things work. “Not that great of a coder”, huh?! And companies are ready to hire ‘not great coders’ and pay them quite unreasonable amounts of money. Because great soft skills are so rare among technical specialists, you would never believe it.

I don’t have any statistics on this so if you do please feel free to hit me up. But I think if you have worked in the field, you’d probably agree: there are few programmers who like talking to people and are good at it. They might be good at coding, even be responsible, have a good work ethic, and respect deadlines but man are they socially awkward, condescending, or rude.

Not everyone, of course, I wish not to overgeneralize. There might even be many good reasons why software engineers often lack social skills: they have chosen the job to specifically not interact with people or just are more interested in machines than people. But the thing is that to build a successful career in tech in 2023 you definitely need to develop those social skills. If you manage to learn how to build good relationships at work and communicate with stakeholders, it might be the skill that makes you indispensable.

To support my claim, I invite you to have a look at the difference in pay rate between a software engineer and a team lead. I have chosen the machine learning field, since this is one of the most highly paid fields of programming.

According to Glassdoor, a machine learning team lead in the USA makes on average $133,000 per year. They estimate the base pay of $104,014 per year as well as additional pay of $29,033 per year that includes cash bonus, commission, tips, and profit sharing.

At the same time, they estimate the average salary for a machine learning engineer only as $108367 per year in the US. The $25,000 difference doesn’t seem so bad to me! Moreover, we are talking about averages here, and you can definitely encounter positions that offer more money, both in salary base and benefits. In the meanwhile, the most desired skill for a team lead, according to Indeed.com is effective communication and relationship building, and only then decisiveness and leadership!

If you have read up to this point, you might be very disappointed now. ‘Why do I have to be an excellent communicator at a programming job, for god’s sake!’, you might think. Life is so unfair!

Well, yes and no. You can definitely avoid becoming a team lead and developing social skills. Of course, you can. There are many companies that value expert employees. After all, we can’t all be leaders. We must not underestimate the great executors too, the world desperately needs more of those. However, as we have discussed, having developed social skills will definitely add a few points to your profile in the eyes of a potential employer. And who knows, maybe in the future these few points will decide whether to give the job to you or to Sofia the robot ;)

Moreover, you don’t have to become an extravert if you don’t have it in you. You can start small: be kind to your teammates, smile often, say ‘thank you’ and ‘please’, apologize if you’re wrong, avoid arguments and dealing with toxic people. Participate in team events. These small steps may lead you further than you might think.