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Mark_Wallace wrote: The ability to play nice with the other kids has nothing to do with one's intelligence or eagerness to learn.
Good point, though, using communication skills in a manipulative way (which is what I call "playing nice") isn't really what I meant. I guess the concept of what a good communicator is needs to be better defined.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: I would rather work with a person with great soft-skills and mediocre hard-skills than the other way around
And me the other way round. As a manager, I buy technical competence. I have no willing to get some nice guy who cannot code in my team. I have currently people who are very rough in their commnunication, but they get things done, and this is what I want from them, not being communicative and nice to each-other.
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Rage wrote: I have no willing to get some nice guy who cannot code in my team.
You've just nailed the difference between German and British industries - we could do with a bit more thinking like that in the UK 
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Rage wrote: I have no willing to get some nice guy who cannot code in my team.
Of course, but isn't the team more efficient if it also is capable of communicating well? On the other hand, if all you need is the equivalent of a skilled laborer, then yes, I can see that communication is not really a requirement.
Marc
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Soft skills are a pro in any profession! Some people have them, others don't. I guess they can be trained...
I know how important they are because I didn't have them. I had some nice ideas about my companies' products and code. To bad I told my managers in a way that they didn't WANT to listen to me (basically what I told them is that everything they had was bad and I had the solution to all the problems they didn't have). Later I learned to word it a bit different, more along the lines of "what we have now has some great potential, but what if we changed this a bit and did that too?" I found that management was willing to listen and management found that I did actually have some good ideas, but that my communication skills were a bit lacking. And once I got me some soft skills I got me some promotions because now I had good ideas AND I could communicate them to management and the team 
Leng Vang wrote: Companies should stop looking for people with both skills because they are only going to get half-good skills people.
I completely disagree with you on that one. I know some people who have great technical knowledge and soft skills! And I know these people are hard to come by so they're worth something!
My blog[ ^]
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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How About NO SKILLS?
Haha, I worked with a guy who was a jerk (no softskills) _and_ had no hard skills. His code was utter trash and then he'd defend it. Then he'd go to managment behind people's backs and undermine them.
Okay, how bad was his code? He didn't even know how to use a function. Not kidding. He had a bug in a for loop once and it was repeated over 13,000 lines of code about 50 times. Same for loop.
Everyone wanted to fire him but no one ever did.
They just kept passing him along to other divisions within the large corp.
Ineptness Has Its Place.
He was successful, if you consider that he got paid by a company for many years.
I hope this made you laugh, because it was painful at the time.
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I disagree  ... that guy definitely had some soft skills to manage to keep his job!
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Quote: Soft skills are management and leadership trades
I completely disagree. Soft skills are part and parcel of any job - useful for getting information out of people (definitely IT related), useful for influencing how you want to do things (definitely IT related), useful for finding out new things (definitely IT related) etc etc etc. We are all managers (of ourselves). We are all leaders, no matter how "insignificant" our role.
To be honest, in my personal experience, "management" and "leadership" in many places would benefit from learning the true power of "soft" skills and how they could benefit their teams. I once worked with someone who was technically inept ... but they kept "the world" off our backs with enough technical jargon while letting us get on with our jobs (and authorising the training budget  ) ... in other words, they took one for the team. He also kept up enough with changing technology terms to make it convincing.
I guess it all comes down to the definition of an "IT Career" - I've lost count of the times a user has asked me to fix their broken home PC/Laptop or "how do I change my screen resolution" or some such. Doing that stuff is not my "IT Career" but it is for other people - and when I call a helpline (yet another "IT Career") I appreciate the people who have the "soft skills" - not sure what they do to keep "current" at it though.
Have a nice day!
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Soft skills translates to backstabbing, bullshitting, ass-kissing, etc.
I have encountered several people with such soft skills in my career.
Unfortunately, top management likes these things because they themselves reached the top thru such techniques.
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This is all too true all too many times.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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People that have change the world the most is often complete maniacs (Cesar, Napoleon, Alexander ... and on and on ). They are very good at inspiring people getting them to work for them, whatever they crazy idea they had, but running a county in peace that would benefit the common man they have no clue about. In short: I agree 
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Well you know what they say:
An organization is like a tree full of monkeys.
The monkeys on the top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces.
The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but a bunch of assholes.
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So... hierarchy is ... wrong? 
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Didn't say that, it's a necessary evil until someone comes up with a better solution.
Just stated that people on the top branches and the bottom branches may have slightly different opinions on how soft skills are working out.
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Yeah, yeah, perspective and sh*t
Although if I where to complain about hierarchical structures, it might seem a bit strange as we live in Scandinavia. We generally score low on hierarchical things compare to Japan and pretty much every other country in the world.
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Succinct.
A small story here, told by my colleague:
A manager asked his junior: "<<some technical="" problem,="" and="" one="" proposed="" solution="">>. Will this work?". The junior said: "Well, blah blah blah ... <<add all="" indecisive="" statements="" you="" know="">>".
The manager replied: "This is a yes and no kind of answer. Tell me definitely".
IMHO, what is needed is:
"Yes, this solution works. However we need to fill in these gaps ..."; or
"No, this solution will not work. Does not fulfill these two most important conditions ...".
Further IMHO, this is the most important soft skill needed. All others follow.
modified 4-Feb-15 3:58am.
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This is not an RPG, it's not like you get 100 points to spend and you can either allocate them to technical skill or soft skills. Some people just have more points across the board, if we're going to stick with that analogy.
Machiavellianism is of course important to anyone wielding power, and that's a soft skill. Anyone with intelligence can learn it some degree, you don't have to sacrifice your other skills for it.
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Let's put some balance into this subject.
The best soft skills in the world is not going to help you if you can't make the right decisions.
And the best technical competence in the world won't help you either if no ones going to listen.
While you are wrong on the premise that companies should stop looking for people with both traits, it has to be said that those that are both brilliant programmers and brilliant with soft skills are few and far between them.
They are of course the best ones to employ, but when you can't find them you need to have a workplace in balance.
I can recommend the article in my sig on this subject.
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Leng Vang wrote: Companies should stop looking for people with both skills because they are only going to get half-good skills people.
I forget who said it originally, but the essence of an outstanding software engineer is the ability to communicate with other humans. Any 12-year-old can be taught programming, and many are. Being able to document your code, to write specifications, and to interact with clients makes all the difference between a "code monkey" and a professional.
I suspect that this is also true of the IT world.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Hello all.
I've been doing a bunch of looking around but I can't really find an answer to my question. I would like to create an application written for Windows using the .NET framework and WPF with an SQL Server backend.
I've read online that creating and selling your own software can be very expensive. You will need to trademark your idea and apply for a patent in order to make sure you retain all the rights. You will also most likely need to retain a lawyer to make sure all your t's are crossed.
So, considering all the above, I have 2 questions.
Does anyone know of a "beginners" guide for creating and selling your own software?
If I just wanted to sell it outright retaining no rights. How could I market the application to a company like Microsoft without them just taking the idea and developing it on their own?
Thanks all for reading this.
I appreciate any help.
I hate users. Not all of them, just the ones who talk.CP member: Al Einstien
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If you want to market it is to a company like Microsoft, you need to offer something that they do not already have in-house and if they already have something similar, you need to known that your software is better then their own.
How do you know/believe that Microsoft might be interested in your product?
Patenting a software is more or less useless these days (IMO), if someone steal your idea, the cost of trying to handle that (in time and money) will be prohibitive.
I'd rather be phishing!
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Well, that's a good question
Microsoft doesn't have any tools that are really good/efficient at importing huge files (~5GB). Especially if the user using the tool is non-technical.
The file I was importing had ~320 columns with ~5m rows of data.
I tried using the Import wizard build into SQL Server Management Studio.
Once you finally got past all the errors and crap it took almost 8 hours to import.
Even if this had worked, I wouldn't be able to ask a non-technical user to use Management Studio...
So, I created an application that would allow a non-technical user to do this.
My application can import the full file in ~45 minutes.
Plus, I was able to build in a ton of nice features that would benefit both the technical and non.
I've worked with SQL Server and Visual Studio for 14 years now.
Honestly, I don't know if I could market this to Microsoft. I've just worked with their software for so long. They are the company that popped in my head.
thanks for your reply!
I hate users. Not all of them, just the ones who talk.CP member: Al Einstien
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bcp?
SSIS?
I think even 45 minutes is too long.
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I would never provide either of these to a non-technical end user as a solution.
Considering the maintenance and permissions required along with always having to know both the source and destination. Neither of these would be a viable solution.
They also would not provide an easy "wizard like" way to apply custom filters and rules to generate separate exports. Nor would they give the users an easy way to view the results before exporting.
bcp is great as long as you always know your source and destination.
Both the source and destination also need to "look the same".
SSIS in some situations may work if this were strictly ETL and was being used/maintained by the IS staff. However, as a non-technical end user environment. This would never work.
Here again, you would need to know the source and destination. If anything were to change, it would require a change to the package.
It's more of a "right tool for the job" kind of deal.
The application I created allows you to easily apply rules and/or filters to data.
It allows a user to create different exports from the same source data.
The application does not care what the source or destination are and the size of the file is a non-issue as well. If you are a technical user, you can provide column widths and data types but it's not necessary or required. You can import from any source and export that information to any source (n) times.
Thank you for the feedback.
I hate users. Not all of them, just the ones who talk.CP member: Al Einstien
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Show it to Microsoft.
They will work with you for 3 months stringing you along while learning how you did what you did.
Then they will reverse-engineer it and freeze you out of the marketplace.
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