Programmers also need people skills. One of my favourite TV series, Silicon Valley, clearly illustrates this point. The main character, Richard Hendrix, is CEO of Pied Piper. Although Richard is super brilliant, his Achilles heel is his awkward personality. However, Richard\u2019s social skills develop with the show. At times, he\u2019s still an awkward nerd. At other times, Richard shows that he is a capable leader, negotiator, and salesperson. Just like Silicon Valley\u2019s Richard, here are three reasons why successful programmers tend to have strong people skills.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 Programmers usually work in teams. Sure, a lot of programmers code alone by their computer. However, programmers usually compile their work in large projects. Hence, it makes sense that strong programmers need project management and team skills such as delegation, time management, and communication.<\/p>\n
In the show, bad teamwork leads to failure and good teamwork leads to success. For example, Dinesh and Gilfoyle are mortal enemies. They argue and often sabotage each other\u2019s work. However, when the team works together to get things done, they get a lot done such as rebuilding their server in under an hour.<\/p>\n
Strong programming teams have good processes and good team players. For instance, the ZenduIT programming team uses a project management board. Team members use this board to assign work, perform quality check, and prevent work overlap.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 Another reason why programmers need people skills is because they get pulled into sales calls. There\u2019s a quote in sales – \u201cthe more you know, the more you sell\u201d. Unfortunately, a lot of sales deals go down the drain when a sales rep does not know their software, or worse, over-promises on something the software can\u2019t do. This is when programmers can be a big help!<\/p>\n
Most of the time, Richard is a hopeless public presenter. He fumbles his words, acts awkwardly and even barfs when nervous. That being said, Richard is actually a great public speaker when he speaks from his heart and his (infrequent) passionate speeches are generally successful.<\/p>\n
Companies usually pair programmers with sales teams for advanced hardware and software. In turn, a people-friendly programmer helps sales teams overcome technical objections and win sales deals.<\/p>\n
Bugs really bug customers and support teams, pun intended! Programmers are the software 911s because they find and fix technical issues. For that reason, successful programmers balance their time between new projects and squashing software bugs.<\/p>\n
Pied Piper goes through its share of bugs. This is actually where Richard earns the respect of his employees. Whereas Richard\u2019s team struggled to fix software bugs, Richard single-handedly fixed half of the team\u2019s bugs in one day. Thus, even with his poor management skills, Richard\u2019s employees loved him.<\/p>\n
Successful programmers need to be approachable. For instance, who would you rather work with? Programmer A:<\/strong> \u201cLeave me alone. My software is perfect and I don\u2019t have time to fix bugs.\u201d Programmer B:<\/strong> \u201cI can\u2019t do it right now because I\u2019m working on an urgent project but when\u2019s a good time later today to chat?\u201d There\u2019s a high chance that everyone would choose Programmer B. Programmers should be approachable to the rest of their team because everyone loves and values a team player. Let us know if you agree with our take on programmers & people skills in the comment section!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Programmers also need people skills. One of my favourite TV series, Silicon Valley, clearly illustrates this point. The main character, Richard Hendrix, is CEO of Pied Piper. Although Richard is super brilliant, his Achilles heel is his awkward personality. However, Richard\u2019s social skills develop with the show. At times, he\u2019s still an awkward nerd. At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":40723,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n