DEV Community: Gregor Ojstersek

How to get better in people skills as an engineer?

Gregor Ojstersek — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 15:42:22 +0000

You will grow a LOT faster in your career as an engineer if you focus on developing your people skills!

How to get better in people skills?

There are a lot of ways to get better and there’s not a “one size fits all” approach.

I’ll share with you what helped me to develop good people skills.

Develop teamwork and collaboration

Team sports

I played a lot of team sports growing up (mostly basketball) and that helped me a lot get to know the importance of teamwork. You can’t win the game without great collaboration.

Team-oriented games

I played video games competitively growing up (mostly team-oriented games) and the mindset is the same, you can’t win if you are not working together well.

Doing freelance projects in collaboration with other people

I did a LOT of freelance projects in my career and it’s hard to have success, without great teamwork and collaboration between people.

Develop empathy and active listening

Doing freelance projects for non-technical clients

You need to really understand the motivation and the problem behind their ask if you wish to create the right solution. Just jumping into code after the first requirements will in 99% provide a wrong solution.

Coaching and mentoring

A lot of people may think that this only helps the person that you are coaching or mentoring, but it really helps you to develop the necessary skills to help effectively. Being able to put yourself in their shoes, offer guidance, active listening, etc.

Consulting and advising

Similar principle to doing freelance projects, you need to really understand the problem and their motivation. That’s how you can actually map the right solution to it. A LOT of times the solution is actually hidden inside a lot of layers.

Develop communication

Sharing knowledge by doing presentations or talking at events

You help others grow and at the same time, you are improving your public speaking skills, overall communication and meeting new great people (networking).

Writing online

That can be writing posts on LinkedIn or X, or you are regularly posting articles on your blog or newsletter. This helps immensely with getting better in your written communication (saying the most in as few words as possible). At the same time, it also helps you a lot with your personal brand.

Explain technical solutions to non-tech people

If you can explain a complex tech solution to a non-tech person, you understand it well. And to do that, you need to find the right words and sentences that resonate with them.

What would you add?

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How did freelance work help me to progress in my career?

Gregor Ojstersek — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 17:03:06 +0000

By doing freelance work, I was able to get different experiences on various of different problems and grew my context via various cases. My perspective grew widely from different experiences. This has helped me immensely to do my full-time roles a lot better.

By doing projects for clients I learned the importance of:

successful planning,
clear communication,
managing expectations.

And especially learned the importance of understanding the business side. It’s important to clearly understand that we as engineers are here to provide as much business value as possible.

By doing coaching and mentoring I:

learned the importance of empathy,
learned how to properly help others,
cemented my knowledge on various of different topics while helping others.

I was doing this even before I grew to my first managerial role. So this has helped me a lot when I first started managing others in my full-time role.

By doing consulting and advising I:

grew my perspective,
learned about various of different problems that companies were facing,
enhanced my creative problem-solving.

Seeing and understanding various problems that companies/projects have faced and advising solutions to those problems have been one of the biggest growth factors for me. Because of this alone, I was able to do my management roles a lot better.

What are your thoughts?

This is part of the newsletter article on my Engineering Leadership newsletter. If you liked this, you are going to love my newsletter. Join here: Engineering Leadership newsletter, 14.2k+ engineering leaders are already reading it!

As much as we love our engineering industry, it also has some downsides

Gregor Ojstersek — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 13:52:49 +0000

I’ll share with you some of the issues I have been dealing with as an engineer and an engineering leader throughout my career.

Perfecting my solutions to an extent

I could particularly see this as an issue when I was building something visual. I was not satisfied with the result. This color should be like this, this font should be like that, etc.

And then this also transferred to code as well. I was trying too hard to make things “perfect”, and I was hurting my progression toward getting things done.

Right now, I still find myself sometimes trying to “perfect”, but I remember how important progress is and I try to quickly readjust my mindset. I also have a quote on one of my shirts to remind myself: “Progress over Perfection”.

Not making decisions fast enough

As engineers, there are so many micro-decisions that we are making daily. I have found myself procrastinating and making decisions a lot of times.

Decisions like:

naming the variable or a function,
should we split the file/class differently or not,
what approach to use to solve a particular problem,
how to properly test the solution.

This brought me to unnecessary stress, that I could avoid if I would just make a decision.

Procrastinating on tasks, hard conversations and giving feedback

I was guilty of this a lot of times, the first one is still the case sometimes. And the second and third were obvious when I first started with engineering management.

I saw things that needed to improve but hesitated to have the conversation and give feedback. I thought that things were going to get better eventually. But I was wrong. Therefore it’s really important to react swiftly and not procrastinate.

Feeling like an imposter

This was the case, especially at the beginning of my career. I thought that engineers with a lot more experience have such amazing abilities. That it would be hard or almost impossible for me to develop.

But then I found out that we are all learning consistently. And I wasn't that far from that. That sparked me to learn even more and be even better every day.

Can you relate to them?

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Don’t compare and compete with others, instead collaborate

Gregor Ojstersek — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 12:22:44 +0000

If you are a person who likes to compare and compete with your colleagues. Let me tell you one important thing. Don't compare or compete, instead help and collaborate.

Being a lone wolf and just focusing on yourself and your progress will certainly get you somewhere. But rather than trying to do everything yourself. You have a group of like-minded people who are all on the same path as you!

Your progression is going to be much:

faster,
more exciting,
more fulfilling.

Compete only with yourself and try to get better every day!

The software development world is smaller than you think. Collaborating and helping each other instead of competing puts you in a position where fellow like-minded people can help you find opportunities.

A practical example

If you are searching for a new role, the best way to find it is to get recommended for the position.

If someone from my team recommends a candidate.

I already know 2 things:

He/she already is familiar to an extent with a person on my team, so the collaboration and onboarding would be easier.

He/she has already shown to some extent capability to be able to do the job.

This gives you much better chances right from the start. Make sure to help each other to grow and progress in careers!

What are your thoughts?

This is part of the newsletter article on my Engineering Leadership newsletter. If you liked this, you are going to love my newsletter. Join here: Engineering Leadership newsletter, 8100+ engineering leaders are already reading it!

How to show your value as an engineer?

Gregor Ojstersek — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 09:32:10 +0000

Being a good engineer no longer means that you only need to be technically solid, but you bring a lot of value to the company with your non-technical skills - soft skills.

Here are 6 tips:

Always learn new things
It’s important that you always stay up to date with the latest trends. I don’t mean that you need to jump on the next JavaScript framework wave as soon as a new one arrives, but it’s important that you know what exists and what pros and cons can you anticipate from a particular stack.
Don’t be afraid to take ownership and responsibility
If there is a potential problem in the codebase and you know about it, take action and resolve it, even if the problem wasn’t introduced by you. It’s important to always improve what you or your team is building.
Individual contribution is not as important as helping others
It’s important to understand that as an engineer you are not only judged by your individual contribution, but what’s more important is that you are there to help others when needed.
Become customer centric
Always ask yourself if what you and your team are building fits the needs of the customers. Being customer centric, enables you to make good technical decisions that show alignment with what the needs from customers are.
Focus on the business value
Focus on tasks and provide solutions that bring the most value to the business. Try to ask yourself if your current task can actually bring any value to the business and what will be the impact when the task will be successfully finished.
Share your knowledge with others
If you are feeling passionate about a certain technology or a certain framework, make sure to share that with others! It’s great if you share your passion as well as knowledge with your colleagues.

What are your thoughts?

This is part of the newsletter article on my Engineering Leadership newsletter. If you liked this, you are going to love my newsletter. Join here: Engineering Leadership newsletter, 6200+ engineering leaders are already reading it!

What to look for when hiring a new engineer for your team?

Gregor Ojstersek — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 13:42:23 +0000

During my career, I had the pleasure to interview more than 300 engineers.

Throughout my experience, I came across an important finding that always stood out with engineers that were successful in the role after they joined the team.

They were all great engineers, but what made them great was not just their technical expertise, but their soft skills.

When I’m interviewing a new engineer I value soft skills more than technical expertise.

Unless I’m hiring for a strict expert in a particular technology, I normally look for engineers that can reasonably articulate things and can demonstrate drive, motivation for learning, as well as being a good team player.

The reason for this, as said above is that teams build great software, not individuals.

I am a big believer in hiring people that can make others around them better, not just focus on their individual contribution.

If everyone makes everyone around them better, we are all exponentially growing. There is no better environment to be in where everyone is always there to help and support you.

What are your thoughts?

This is part of the newsletter article on my Engineering Leadership newsletter. If you liked this, you are going to love my newsletter. Join here: Engineering Leadership newsletter, 4900+ engineering leaders are already reading it!