A Good Tech Job Requires Soft Skills, Too

We've done a lot of coverage on the top tech certifications you should focus on when you're looking for a high-paying career in DevOps, IT, or software engineering. And the skills you'll learn while training for those certifications remain the meat of what hiring managers are seeking in tech candidates.

But a recent survey of 525 tech industry workers and managers by Reign (a software development consultancy) and Fractl (a content marketing house) showed that there's more than tech know-how involved in landing a good job. According to the survey, companies looking for tech candidates, especially quality candidates with the potential for upward career trajectories, want soft skills—non-technical skills such as time management, leadership, communication, creativity, and so on—almost as much as up-to-date tech skills.

And it's not just managers who think these skills are valuable. The survey showed that 72% of employees thought soft skills were important for success in their jobs compared to 42% landing on the tech-skills-only side. Meanwhile, their managers leaned even more strongly in this direction with 76% of them rating soft skills important in a good tech employee versus 44.9% for tech. Even when the survey asked directly what a manager's ratio was between tech and soft skills, the majority (52%), said they wanted an even mix of both, not a heavy focus on one or the other.

Reign being a software house rather than a general technology firm meant the survey asked about the top development languages that programmers felt were most in-demand this year. Overall, it was a close race between Python, Java, JavaScript, and C++. However, Python won the day with 29.15% of developers rating it the best language to know, while 30.57% of managers felt the same way.

For those aiming for a career in software development, the Reign and Fractl survey has a lot more interesting information, including how often you should be refreshing your skills to stay at the top of your field and how many employers actually reimburse for that expense. It even talks about your side-hustle options, if you're one of many programmers doing freelance work to increase your income in addition to a nine-to-five job.

About Our Expert

Oliver Rist

Contributing Editor

My Experience

I've covered business technology for more than 25 years, and in that time I've reviewed hundreds of products and services and written a similar number of trend and analysis stories. My first job in journalism was with PC Magazine in the 1990s, but I've also written for other enterprise technology publications, including Computer Shopper, InformationWeek, InfoWorld, and InternetWeek.

Between stints as a journalist, I've worked as an IT consultant, software development manager, and marketing executive for several companies, including Microsoft, where I was a senior technical product manager for Windows Server. My focus is on business tech reviews at PCMag, but you can also find me co-hosting This Week in Enterprise Tech on the TWiT.tv network.

My Areas of Expertise

Business-grade Voice over IP (VoIP) and video conferencing
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems
Digital marketing platforms
Cryptocurrency, digital payment, and point of sale (POS) systems
IT management and security tools
Backup, data protection, and disaster recovery

The Technology I Use

My daily workhorse baby is a sleek Dell XPS 13 9310 ultraportable running Windows 11, a recent purchase that still gives me goosebumps when I look at it. When I'm at my desk, I connect it to two honking HP U28 4K displays using Dell's fancy WD19 docking station. When I'm doing personal work or something that's graphics intensive, those 4K displays get shared with my desktop machine, an iBuyPower Pro Gaming PC that uses Windows 10. And when I'm testing a network product, I use a slightly older Dell Precision Mobile Workstation that dual boots between Windows 10 and Ubuntu.

Being a business tech reviewer, my home network is a little more involved than most. It's based on a business-class Verizon FiOS internet connection, but between that and the rest of the network sits a Ubiquiti UniFi Security Gateway (USG). My wired connections, including my wife's and my PCs, our smart TVs, and printers run off two UniFi Switch 8 boxes, while the Wi-Fi gets handled using three UniFi AP AC Pro access points. Data protection is a combination of my 32TB Western Digital My Cloud Pro P4100 home NAS, a 2TB Dropbox business account, and BackBlaze's backup software.

The network is managed with UniFi's Cloud Key and Controller software, because I'm a sucker for colorful dashboards and heat maps. I sometimes back that up using a Wireshark instance I've got running on the Ubuntu machine. For work, I'm a Microsoft Office guy. I live in Outlook and use OneNote for practically everything aside from final draft writing. My days at Microsoft also made me Excel and PowerPoint proficient. The latter is where I do most of the work-related graphics chores, though for personal projects I like Adobe Photoshop and Wonderdraft.

My Wi-Fi network handles all our tablets and phones, as well as all the home automation devices in our ADT Pulse home security system. That said, I've backed that up with a couple of Wyze Cams. My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S10, and my tablet library includes three Apple iPads, an Amazon Fire HD 10, and a Samsung Galaxy Book 13.

In the misty days of yore, my first PC was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 4, and my first mobile phone was a Nokia 8210.

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