Communication Matters Most

Tania Samsonova has posted an interesting article discussing the importance of communication skills to job success for junior developers. Drawing on the work of people like Andrew Begel and Beth Simon (who are contributing a chapter to our upcoming book on evidence-based software engineering), Tania talks about how the ability to ask questions and share ideas is a lot more important than specific technical skills. I particularly like this quote:

• Anna, congratulations: your understanding of spoken English improved a lot.

-How do you know? You rarely talk to me anyway.

-You’ve stopped smiling and nodding all the time when people talk to you.