A Dev's Guide to Solving Class Function Call Issues
Technical skills are just the beginning. Discover the unspoken skills in communication, business acumen, and collaboration that separate good developers from truly great ones.
Alex Carter
Senior Staff Engineer and mentor passionate about building effective and happy developer teams.
You’ve spent countless hours learning frameworks, mastering algorithms, and perfecting your favorite language. Your technical prowess is sharp, and you can ship features with the best of them. But what if I told you the biggest breakthroughs in your career won’t come from learning another library, but from skills that have nothing to do with an IDE?
Why Technical Prowess Isn't the Whole Story
The myth of the lone-wolf developer, hacking away in a dark room and emerging with a perfect product, is just that—a myth. Modern software development is a deeply collaborative, human endeavor. Code doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s a solution to a human problem, built by a team of humans, for other humans to use.
You can write the most elegant, performant algorithm in the world, but if it solves the wrong problem, or if your team can't integrate and maintain it, it's worthless. Friction, misunderstanding, and a lack of shared context are bugs of the highest severity. They don't just crash a program; they crash projects. This is where the other skills come into play. They are the force multipliers that transform your technical ability into tangible, scalable value.
The Holy Trinity of Non-Code Skills
While there are many "soft skills," three stand out as non-negotiable for any developer looking to move from good to great. These aren't just nice-to-haves; they are core competencies of a modern software engineer.
Mastering Communication: The Ultimate Debugging Tool
Think of communication as the API for your team. If it's poorly designed, you'll get constant errors, timeouts, and unexpected responses. If it's clean and well-documented, everything flows smoothly.
- Written Communication: This is your most frequent form of interaction. Is your pull request description a lazy "fixes bug," or does it explain the why behind the change, the trade-offs you considered, and how to test it? Clear documentation, concise Slack messages, and well-structured emails save hours of confusion. Before you hit send, ask yourself: "Is this message impossible to misinterpret?"
- Verbal Communication: Can you explain a complex technical concept like message queues to a non-technical product manager? Can you articulate why you chose PostgreSQL over MongoDB for a specific feature, focusing on the business implications (like data integrity or scaling costs) rather than just technical jargon?
- Active Listening: This is the other half of the equation. When a stakeholder gives you feedback, are you truly listening to understand their underlying need, or are you just waiting for your turn to talk and defend your code? Often, the initial request isn't the real problem. Great developers listen deeply to debug the requirements themselves.
Developing Business Acumen: From Coder to Problem-Solver
At its core, a developer's job is not to write code. It's to solve business problems using code. Without understanding the business context, you're just a code monkey executing instructions. With it, you become an invaluable strategic partner.
"Don't just ask 'what' you should build. Constantly ask 'why' we are building it, 'who' it is for, and 'how' we will measure its success."
When you understand the business goals, you can make better technical decisions. Should you spend an extra week building a more scalable solution, or is a quick MVP that gets user feedback faster the better business move? Should you use a battle-tested but 'boring' technology or the hot new framework that might be harder to hire for? Answering these questions requires you to think like a product owner, not just a programmer. Connect your work to metrics like user activation, retention, or revenue. This not only makes you more effective but also makes your value to the company crystal clear.
The Art of Mentorship and Collaboration
A developer who makes themselves 10% better is good. A developer who makes five other people on their team 10% better is a force of nature. Your impact is not just what you produce, but how you elevate the team around you.
- Constructive Code Reviews: Go beyond just pointing out style nits. A great code review is a teaching opportunity. Ask questions instead of making demands (e.g., "What do you think about handling this edge case here?" instead of "You forgot the edge case."). Praise good work and explain the 'why' behind your suggestions.
- Mentorship: Whether you're a senior guiding a junior or a mid-level dev helping an intern, mentorship is key. Be patient, be approachable, and remember what it was like to not know things. Sharing your knowledge solidifies your own understanding and builds a stronger, more resilient team.
- Psychological Safety: Be the person others aren't afraid to ask "stupid" questions. Admit when you don't know something. A collaborative environment where people feel safe to be vulnerable and learn is an environment where innovation thrives.
Mindset Shift: The Coder vs. The Engineer
Embracing these skills requires a fundamental shift in how you view your role. It's the difference between being a coder and being a software engineer.
| Aspect | The Coder Mindset | The Engineer Mindset |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Goal | Write code; complete tickets. | Solve business problems; deliver value. |
| Approach to Tasks | Waits for perfectly defined specifications. | Seeks context and asks clarifying questions to help define the spec. |
| Definition of "Done" | The code is merged into the main branch. | The feature is in production, working as intended, and delivering value to users. |
| Communication | A necessary evil to be minimized. | A core tool for alignment, clarity, and building better solutions. |
| Team Interaction | Focuses on individual output and velocity. | Acts as a team multiplier, improving the output of the whole group. |
| Feedback | Views critical feedback on code as a personal critique. | Views critical feedback as a gift to improve the product and their skills. |
Key Takeaways: Building Your Legacy Beyond the Code
Your journey as a developer is long and full of learning. While you should never stop honing your technical skills, remember that they are the foundation, not the entire structure. The most respected, impactful, and successful engineers build their careers on a bedrock of strong non-technical skills.
To start building your legacy today:
- Treat every PR description as documentation. Explain the why.
- Ask one more "why" question in your next planning meeting.
- Offer to pair program with a teammate, either to learn or to teach.
- Review a teammate's code with empathy, aiming to teach rather than to correct.
Technical skills get you in the door. Communication, business acumen, and collaboration are what will build you a remarkable career and make you the kind of developer everyone wants on their team.