As one of my college professors used to say: I hate to come over as a “sage on a stage”, but over the last few months I have come to learn a whole lot of intangibles. Some advice that was given to me in the past by more experienced former colleagues has started to make a lot more sense, and I felt the need to write it down and share some of the realisations, advice, and experiences I have had.
Fair warning: this post will be more of a bunch of stories, than bullet points on what to do and what not to do.
Now onto the information transfer part of this essay.
When I read stories or career advice for people in the technical sector on social media,
I usually feel that way too much attention is given to technical excellence.
Phrases such as “You won’t really be a developer unless you learn such and such framework”,
“All good developers have read this and that book”, “You really need to know these and those concepts”,
are very common advice given in discussions about doing well in a technical profession.
While most of this is true to an extent, most people that are not active in a professional context
(and even some that are) tend to actively undervalue the importance of being able to express yourself
and to generally get along to some extent with the people you run into on a daily basis.
The main argument here is: It does not matter how correct and technically skilled you are, if you are unable to communicate your knowledge to other people. The stereotype of the computer geek sitting in a basement and only interacting with people through some sort of ticketing system can be quite accurate to some extent. Personally, I feel best when I have the sense of moving forward and collaborating on tackling a challenge together with my peers.
My previous job was my first professional experience in a real-world software development team. I joined the team as an absolute beginner. The terms “junior” or “young graduate” used in the industry were very much applicable to me. As I was inexperienced, I tended to spent the first few months of my employment mostly on the sidelines, feeling as if my opinions were quite worthless when compared to those of my senior colleagues. Most of the time, I tried to absorb as much knowledge from them as I could and being in awe with how competent they all were. I had the considerable benefit that they were all friendly and open people who actively encouraged me to speak up and voice my opinions. I believe it is quite common for someone starting their professional career to hold the believe that the workflow of their first team is “the way things are supposed to be done in the real world”. I know I felt that way at least.
Over the years that followed, my technical knowledge and professional network grew considerably as colleagues came and went. I began to realise that there are alternative ways of doing things. Other approaches, workflows, and technologies seemed to be just as viable as the way we tended to go about our business. Some even seemed to be more desirable. This is when I started to want to experience other things than what I was used to, and grow more. I ended up changing to a different company. Before I started working at my current project, I thought I was as prepared as could be for the change that was going to happen. I mentally prepared myself that the codebase would be different, that the technology would be different, and that the team worked would be different.
The thing I was not prepared for was that the people would also be very different. I spent the first months at my new job looking for my place in the team. I wanted to fit in, and make a positive impact. I no longer felt like the inexperienced junior, and I believed that I had valuable information to share. I just did not know how, and when to speak. The other thing I was unprepared for was how fast I would pick up on small things that were not quite right. At my first job, it took me years to realize that the way we did things was less than perfect and that we could make improvement on almost all aspects of our day-to-day regimen. At my current job, it only took me a few weeks to find possible improvements. I started to point some of these things out. Since I was used to being quite blunt and factual in the way I said things, this did not come over particularly well with some of my colleagues. Their seeming inability to see things from my perspective left me frustrated with these colleagues for a while. I wondered why they would not give my ideas a chance, and was borderline angry with their responses to my suggestions.
I then found a video online on ’non-violent communication’. Because of the struggles I was having communicating my ideas at work, I gave the very lengthy video a shot and watched it. At this point, I have to admit that it took me a viewing sessions or two to get through the whole thing, and that I skipped most of mister Rosenberg’s songs. Even so, I picked up on a few core ideas that I think are quite valuable. He spoke on actively listening to what the other person is trying to say, in stead of getting all caught up in the words that they use. I also realized that at work I was communicating in a way that matched my previous team, and not in a way that fitted the people in my new environment.
After reading through the book, I think the most valuable lessons were that you want to make sure that if you want your thoughts and emotions to be heard, it is best that your communication comes over as friendly, welcoming, and non-demanding. I realized that the way I tend to say things could come over as harsh and that it could make people feel as if I was criticizing their work or value to the team. Obviously that was never my intention. The book also made me realise that when others get annoyed or angry, or when they seemingly criticize me, my first reaction would be to defend myself and respond in force. This tends to escalate situations, or at the very least ensure that both parties are actually holding intermittent monologues, rather than having a conversation.
The main things I took away from reading about a non-violent form of communication are:
There certainly is a lot more to it, but these realizations have certainly made the biggest change to how I try to go about interacting with other people. I can not say I always succeed in having valuable conversations, but being aware of them have certainly made me feel a lot more at ease in how I receive feedback and how I deal with people that are clearly upset about something.
I want to share more realisations on different subjects, but I feel as if this post has grown to be lengthy enough as it is. I will end it here, and maybe write more of these kind of posts.