32 Skills for Technical People (2024)

A list of 32 areas to consider for continued technical success.

I work in software so there will be some specific examples but the advice should be quite general!

The list is non-exhaustive but certainly hits a lot of the key notes.

General Skills

It’s important to develop the meta-ability to solve problems. That is to get comfortable taking any situation as it is and systematically working to obtain a favourable outcome. Amidst a sea of unreliable information and ambiguity you need to be able to find exactly where you are now, where you need to get to and create a plan to transition that accounts for your constraints (time, cost, resource, physics etc.).

Skills that always support this include:

• Critical thinking / reason / logic.
• Numeracy / statistics / probability.
• Evidence-based methods.
• Cost Benefit analysis.
• Pattern analysis.

Direction

Dealing with situations where it is less and less clear what should be done is a good marker for increased competence.

Technical Fundamentals

Technical fundamentals builds on top of general skills. In a given domain, these provide a shared common reference for actors in the area. In software examples include algorithms, data structures, databases and the traditional software delivery lifecycle.

Industry Knowledge

Industry knowledge builds on top of technical fundamentals. This is more practical common knowledge that you might be expected to understand when working in that industry. This is made up of the most popular and well-adhered to ideas in the space as well as new ideas and trends. In software examples could be DevOps, agile, test-driven development, microservices etc. Learn from books, meet-ups, conferences, other reading and through exposure and experience from working in the industry. I encourage going to the source material for most of these important ideas as so much is missed in translation and application.

Domain Skills

Domain skills build on top of industry knowledge. This is knowledge about your craft which enables you to be really effective and useful in your teams. The use of tools, techniques, technologies, paradigms, principals. Examples from software could include learning Object Oriented Programming, Java, iOS Dev, Kubernetes, testing methods, cloud providers etc.

Role Skills

Role skills are sets of domain skills and knowledge that come together to form a logical role which there is demand for: Front-end, Back-end, Security, Infrastructure etc.

Specialisation(s)

You can differentiate yourself further by taking domain skills and role skills to the next level. You can go several levels deeper. This could be exploring the intersection of domain areas or going wider or zooming in. Here are some software examples:

• Kubernetes and Security > Kubernetes Security.
• AWS and Networking > AWS advanced networking.
• Back-end > Pub/Sub Architectures > Kafka development.
• Front-end > React > React library development.
• Security > PKI > cryptographic algorithms.

You may get to a point where you really understand and can use advanced features of technologies and teach others. You may be able to integrate technologies with other common technologies to make things more usable. You might join working groups to continue the progress of a technology. With a lower-level understanding you might contribute to improve larger projects or create new tools by identifying problems with novel solutions due to your specialised outlook.

Cross Domain Skills

Another advanced method to progress is to take hard-earned established practises from one field and apply them to another. An example is how surgical checklists can influence major change planning in technology. This can lead to substantial improvements but it’s non-obvious where good practises have cross-over. Making meaningful links like this is notable.

Idiomatic

Different technologies can achieve similar things in different ways. That’s ok. You need to go with the flow and not move against the grain. Being idiomatic should be your default position. This can help you become flexible and focus on more important problems.

Variety of Experience

It is good to gain experience by spending time in different environments and projects. This can show you that there are lots of ways that things can be successful and lots of ways that things can fail and make you more wise each time around.

T-Shaped

Being T-shaped is all about having a breadth of useful experience across lots of areas and peaks of skills in a few areas. This recognises the value of generalists and specialists and that no one can be everything all of the time. This is valid for hard and soft skills. The picture that we’ve painted so far supports this view, perhaps having more of a pyramid structure with layers of specialisation.

A key marker for a senior version of being T-shaped is where you could reasonably perform several different roles that are sufficiently different to your own. That’s not to say you are an expert but that you could comfortably fill-in if needed. Do you truly understand the work going on around you? Or are you blinkered by your position and your tasks?

Quality

What does good look like? Solutions that you work on will need to fulfil certain user-facing requirements to function correctly. But you will need to enable far more than this technically. Security, reliability, operability, observability are just a few important non-functional requirements that need to be considered. For every project you will need to work out what is good enough for a whole host of concerns above standard function.

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking is to step back and look at problems critically from an end-to-end perspective. Look at workflows in the context of the whole system. In doing so you will identify bottlenecks. Solve for the bottlenecks and you will have improved the system in a meaningful way. Any optimisation before the bottleneck will not make much difference because the bottleneck will constrain capacity no matter the capability of the downstream sub-systems.

Technical solutions are very expensive. Can a non-technical solution be implemented? If you zoom out far enough is problem A just a side-effect of a different problem B?

Systems Design and Architecture

Apply the principles of systems thinking technically. What needs to connect to what to provide a solution. Starting with a high-level architecture and designing at a lower-level as needed. What options are there? What elements of quality will be prioritised?

Process Design

Apply the principles of systems thinking to process design so that you can enable your technical design and enable others. Practises need to be put in place to support people so they can execute technically.

Ownership

You will need to go from just contributing to projects to taking varying degrees of ownership in them. You will need to take on the role of custodian for projects or parts of projects depending on your role and the project size and complexity.

Collaboration

You need to become an effective collaborator and implement good collaboration frameworks for others utilising effective practises and technologies that are available.

• Work sharing and visibility.
• Reviews.
• Group communication.
• Meetings.
• Pairing.
• Enabling tools.

Communication

Communication is the only tool we have to actually share goals and share work. First, it’s very important to learn to listen to people. Make a practise of not assuming or interrupting.

Good communication skills are incredibly valuable universally. There is so much that can be worked on that there will forever be room to grow. For writing and speaking there are many different mediums. Communication must always be tailored to the audience depending on your goals. Try to be genuine and persuasive. Try to tell a story.

In all cases you should seek to provide complete clarity. Ambiguity causes great problems. It’s incredibly common for people to think they are discussing the same thing when in fact they are having completely different conversations at the same time.

Teaching

You want to teach people to fish. You want to help other people become better but it’s also a matter of efficiency. You need to utilise techniques to teach individuals and groups.

Asking for help

Remember that not knowing how to do something is ok at all levels of seniority and asking for help is always the correct action. Avoid these anti-patterns:

• Never asking for help. This is wasteful.
• Asking for help immediately. Treat others time with respect. You need to do what is in your power before reaching out. Do your due diligence, do the reading and try things. Then when you reach out explain your thoughts and what you’ve already tried and people will be more than happy to show you where you’re off.
• Claiming things don’t work when you don’t understand them.

Documentation

Documentation — in many different forms — is our primary form of knowledge exchange. It is the best way to provide context and help people learn and understand without multiplying effort. You need to advocate for and encourage good documentation etiquette in others. Often docs should be lightweight, simple and minimise duplication. You develop better instincts on how to structure and organise information over time but some documentation is always better than none.

Relationships

Invest into meaningful relationships. You should endeavour to be professional in all situations but occasionally you will find people who are particularly receptive to helping you or being helped. It’s up to you to identify this and put more time in to mutually beneficial positive relationships.

Mentoring

It’s important to try to contribute to the growth of others. Start by helping people out who are new or less experienced than you in some area and really consciously try to ensure they have a good experience working in your team. Make yourself approachable and be willing to give your time to people if they ever want it.

Opinions and Decisions

As you have more experience and take on more responsibility you will need to be opinionated. Being opinionated can have negative connotations but it really is necessary. You need to have practical and pragmatic views on how things can operate to be successful.

Design by committee is awful. Successful work requires coherence. All of the pieces need to slot together and not every little thing can be up for debate.

Be open to change your mind and don’t be opinionated on areas where you have little knowledge. It’s good to say you don’t know regardless of your seniority. Research subjects and evaluate proposals based on their merit. Fall back on your base knowledge. Ask good questions to learn and trust people.

Empower others to make decisions within guardrails. Communicate decisions with clarity.

Future Looking

Use your knowledge of how things are working and what you see on a day to day basis to inform changes which should be made. In the short term always try to have an idea of which tasks you and your team are going to be doing next. Keep a look out on the horizon for events which may affect your work and try to waylay these in advance though remember that premature optimisation is a thing. Over the longer term establish and communicate a vision.

Also, you should try to have a good idea of the direction you want to take your personal development. Then you can set and meet milestones which move you towards where you want to go. A bit of serendipity is great but don’t let yourself be blown about by the wind. If you don’t drive for this no one else will.

Opportunities

Be open and ready to take advantage of good opportunities. If you work to improve yourself over time and spread your bets with various activities every now and then good situations that you should act on will arise.

• You can identify issues that you are well-placed to resolve and turn these into projects where you have more agency.
• You can open doors with work on projects outside of your standard work.
• You should be ready to pivot and maybe take a risk if there is some specialist skill you could learn which could have an uptick in demand. For example in recent years the first blockchain and VR programmers gained a massive advantage by simply being early adopters.
• You should take new positions when they will put you in a meaningfully better place. Change is scary but you need to embrace this, be ready and go when the chance comes (it will never be the perfect time).

Focus

To do any type of deep work you will need to be able to focus for relatively long periods of time to be productive. This is a necessary skill. On a larger scale can you maintain concentration on a goal. Can you see the wood for the trees? Can you tell the difference between distractions and fundamental problems? Can you right the ship if it’s off course?

Leadership

You will need to find ways to consistently inspire and encourage positive behaviour in groups which causes forward momentum and leads to synergistic outcomes.

Management

Though in technical roles you’re not managing people directly you will need to manage work. Organisation, planning, prioritisation, risk mitigation, timing, coordination, delegation. Structures need to be in place for people to succeed. You will also need to get comfortable helping with recruitment by interviewing candidates.

Attitude

The way you interact with others and your mental health more broadly is a huge topic which has great impact on everything you might do. There is perhaps nothing more important than working to get this right.

Try to use positive emotions and minimise negative ones. Positivity effects others positively and the opposite is also true. It is cliché but problems need to be seen as opportunities. Focus your energy on being calm and not erratic. Don’t be too reactive. If something irks you, go away and sleep on it.

Some other traits / emotions to utilise:

• Empathy. Be mindful of other peoples perspectives and experiences and how they diverge from your own.
• Assume best intentions. The default position should be to assume people mean well.
• Humour. Making jokes or admitting to funny things can put people more at ease.
• Patience is key. You need to work hard to improve things that you can control or influence and invest very little mental energy elsewhere. This can be frustrating but improving over a time is the best way to increase your domain of influence. Being patient will improve the experience of those you interact with and will simply make your own days better.
• Emotional resilience. People are not always nice. But that’s a reflection on them not you. We need to do the opposite of what we do naturally. Let good experiences affect you positively and let negative interactions wash away. It’s good to be introspective and try to learn and improve from negative experiences but sometimes there is little to gain. Dust yourself off and move on.
• Trust. When working together with people it’s often a better strategy to start with trust by default. Trust can obviously also build as a function of time and positive interactions. Being more paranoid requires more energy and mental-investment so save this for people who you know aren’t trustworthy or for where the downside would be too great to risk.

Balance

Long-term, continual, incremental success requires time under tension so that you can keep setting and hitting milestones that will move you forward. You need to establish a type of balance in your life on aggregate such that you can continue to work in a good mental space over the years. What this looks like exactly is different for everyone.

Learning

Learning is probably the most important skill. It is another meta-skill. One which enables all others. You need to ensure you can quickly and reliably gain competence in new subject areas as needed. You need to ingest information and retain the more important stuff. You need to make it stick by attaching it to what you already know and making links. More like a tree or a network than a bucket of facts.