A presentation at Everything is Broken Meetup in in Seattle, WA, USA by Dawn Parzych
Leveling up your career with soft-skills Dawn Parzych Developer Advocate dparzych @dparzych
Who am I? Developer Advocate Former teacher @dparzych @dparzych
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Needed Skills Teamwork Communication skills Problem solving Empathy Time management @dparzych @dparzych
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I’ve learned that the biggest source of failure is often due to people and teams. A lack of communication and coordination can cause serious problems. @laurieontech @dparzych @dparzych
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Why do we not focus on soft skills? @dparzych @dparzych
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Four attributes of empathy Perspective taking Non-Judgemental Recognizing emotions Communicate understanding @dparzych
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“Empathy is much harder than we think…But to build empathy we need to slow down.” @dparzych @dparzych
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How Can You Practice? Pay Attention Listen Ask Questions @dparzych
Top 5 tips to be a better human ● Listen twice as much as you speak ● Seek first to understand ● Be open to feedback ● Have a growth mindset ● Practice doesn’t make perfect; practice makes better
Resources https://compassionatecoding.com/blog/2019/4/17/if-you-can-use-a-fork-youre-technical https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/25/the-mindset-shift-employees-need-to-succeed-in-the-future-of-work.html https://firstround.com/review/empathy-driven-development-how-engineers-can-tap-into-this-critical-skill/ https://qz.com/1016900/tracy-chou-leading-silicon-valley-engineer-explains-why-every-tech-worker-needs-a-humanities-education/ https://www.cio.com/article/3206166/3-steps-to-reduce-bias.html https://slack.engineering/technical-leadership-getting-started-e5161b1bf85c @dparzych
To download slides and/or get a LaunchDarkly t-shirt: http://www.launchdarkly.com/dawn @dparzych
Many of us want to see our careers progress from junior to senior to lead or manager. To do this we focus on growing our technical skills, contributing to open source projects, and working on side projects. That’s great but technical skills will only get you so far. To truly succeed you need to master the soft skills–sometimes referred to as people skills or core skills.
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
for free. You
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