I have been planning to write blog seriously, but I have written several articles for several times but failed to stick to them. Recently, I think I should write something to exercise and sort out my understanding and accumulation in technology. So I started again. I felt that the content was not good, the direction was not right, and the time was too little. When I was struggling, I came across a book called “Survival Guide Beyond Soft Skills Code” by chance. First, I was attracted by its title, so I read it on my e-reader, and soon I was attracted by its content. I spent three days reading it on the subway on my commute.

This is a book that really focuses on the development of software developers from a “people” (as opposed to a technical or managerial) perspective. It talks about habits and ways of thinking, highlights the “people” aspect of technology, and explains all the “soft skills” software industry developers need to know.

In the first quarter of 2019 the number of China’s software industry from an average of 6.12 million, can be seen from the figure software developers is quite a big team, but because the team is young, in the previous two years, are focusing on their hard skills, make the whole industry rapid development and has attracted more and more people to join the team, But another problem is that the soft skills of this group are relatively weak compared to many other industries. In particular, most programmers have the impression of writing code with their heads down and not communicating well.

professional

This is the first time I have seen such a detailed career planning. When I was planning my own career, I planned when I would change jobs and prepared some skills to know or learn before the interview. But the author’s plan is more detailed, involving locating the company he wants to work for; How to connect with the company’s technical lead before the interview; Make a good resume and so on. Here’s how the author describes his job before starting his own business:

I decided in advance that I wanted to work for this company because it seemed like a nice company and allowed developers to work from home. I spent some time researching the company and finding out which developers there were blogging. I started following all the blogs of the developers who worked for the company and started leaving thoughtful comments under their blog posts. Over time, many of the developers who worked for the company got to know me and knew who I was through the comments I made to their blogs. Some of them even started reading my blog. Then, when the company started hiring developers, I applied. How hard do you think I have to work to get this job? Of course, I still had to interview, but as long as I didn’t mess up, I got the job for free and paid pretty well (I wouldn’t have gotten it if I hadn’t applied that way).

How “scheming” is prepared, but how many people can put so much effort, compared to my own job hunting this matter is too casual.

Self marketing

This chapter focuses on how to build a personal brand, one of the most important ways is blogging, which is also a very low barrier. But the benefits of blogging are just too compelling for me right now.

• Regularly updating your blog can help you land a good job. Many job postings now give you bonus points for having a personal blog.
• It can make you a better software developer and evangelist. Blogging is also a process of clarifying your knowledge and improving your skills.
• If you work freelance or part time, a successful blog can bring in a lot of clients.
• Improving your communication skills, organizing your thoughts and translating them into words is a difficult but valuable skill.

Each one of these items energizes and inspires people who are blogging.

The way you market yourself, the way the author describes self-marketing, is that in order for people to follow you and listen to you, you have to bring value to them: you have answers to their questions, even joy. If you continue to improve yourself and don’t add value to others, you won’t get very far because everyone will leave you.

In addition, the author also made a list of marketing methods, which is worth referring to:

Finally, and most importantly, keep writing. It will be difficult at the beginning, so you can start in a way that you feel comfortable with. As long as you stick to it, your content, text and thinking will gradually improve. If you don’t know how to write, you can write around words you know well, or just write “how to” at least once a week.

learning

The author summed up a set of learning methods. For me, the most important points are: to determine the scope. In many cases, when learning a knowledge point or a language, there are too many related things to learn, which are not targeted, and finally give up due to lack of time. One of the things developers often say is that they can’t learn because there is so much to learn. So customizing your goals and scope to the topic you’re interested in makes learning more specific and more likely to be completed.

Consider time when defining your scope of study. If you only have a week, you need to be realistic about what you can learn in that time. If you had a few months, you might be able to tackle a larger topic. Your area of study must be appropriate for both your reasons and your time constraints.

Create a study plan, before to create a study plan to myself to learn what make a outline, it is also in the process of combing the knowledge structure, the final list is a progressive transformation module, as the catalogue of a book, for their own learning content with after the module partition can drive a module of a module.

Comprehensive grasp, learn to apply, a lot of time can see a few knowledge points on the Internet, just finished when you feel very clear, but how long will become very fuzzy. The right way to learn is to give yourself enough time to deeply understand your topic, can read, can experiment, can observe, can also operate, in short, from the multidimensional learning topic, as much as possible to use, in order to consolidate knowledge points.

Teaching others what you’ve learned is a great way to make sure you really know something. It’s also a great opportunity to catch up on what’s missing. When teaching others, we need to extract what we have learned from the brain and organize it in a way that others can understand. After going through the whole process, we will find that there are many knowledge points that we think we have understood, but in fact we have not understood. So we make connections that we didn’t quite understand before, and we simplify what we already have in our head, condensing it and reviewing it often.

productivity

In this section, the author mentions an important concept: focus.

Focus is the opposite of distraction. We live in a world where there are so many temptations that many of us don’t know what focus really is. It’s easy to go around all day and never reach it. Email, phone, wechat, distraction, interruption…… These distractions come at us and we can’t focus.

When it comes to concentration, I always think about whether students can pay attention to the teacher in class, but not whether they can pay attention to work and study. This reminds me of my recent work. Although the company has adjusted the content of my work, there are not many tasks in this period of time. I thought I could have more time to study, but the result is that I haven’t completed many tasks and I haven’t had more time. The main reason is that there are many trivial things in the work, and there are many parts of communication. See the chapter is realized their concentration is too low, when doing a task not finished and switch to another task, this is the cost to switch between, switch to another task, time is needed to enter the state, and need to start work after wake up some memories, so natural low efficiency.

What the author recommends here is the Pomodoro technique, which many people have heard of before. You can find many instructions and tools by searching on the Internet. This method is also what the author has been using.

The author also uses a “rated workload” to manage tasks to ensure that he is making clear, measurable progress toward his most important goals each day and each week.

How quota work works. It’s very simple. Pick a few repetitive tasks and set a quota on how often you will do them in a given period of time. This can be monthly, weekly, or daily, but you must have a clear time frame for how much work must be done during that time. If you have a big project, you need to find a way to break it down into smaller, repeatable tasks. For my Pluralsight course, I can break it down into modules; For this book, I can break it down into chapters. (By the way, I set myself a quota of one chapter a day while writing this book.) Once you know exactly what you’re going to do and how often, the next step is to make a commitment. This is a very important step, because without real commitment, you won’t succeed. True commitment means that you spare no effort to accomplish the task you set for yourself. This means that nothing can stop you from getting the job done unless you’re physically incapacitated.

With quotas in place, I found myself getting much more done than before. The best part is that by doing this consistently, I can measure and mark my progress over time. I know exactly how much WORK I can accomplish in a given period of time. One of the biggest things I’ve achieved with this approach is the Pluralsight course I created. I set myself a quota of 3 modules per week (each module is a 30-60 minute class). Most of my courses consist of 5 modules. By setting this quota, I was able to complete more than 55 courses in three years, albeit with some interruptions. I quickly became a top lecturer, developing three times more courses than anyone else in the company. `

conclusion

The above is the content I pay more attention to, and there are three other parts of the content, financial management, fitness, spiritual interested people can read the original book. My description will make this book lose a lot of original color, this book has a lot of inspirational elements in, but for me as a programmer, a little hit, just right feeling, or recommend to read the original book.

These are some of my conclusions and thoughts. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section after reading this book.