Intro

Before I started my career, I assumed I would just code all day and that would be it. Well, I was very wrong.

Many other people outside of the engineering industry have this thought as well → they believe that all engineers do is just code and solve problems in isolation and that’s it.

In reality, engineering is really one of the most collaborative fields out there.

Good people skills are really important and you only develop them if you put yourself in social situations.

In this article, we will break down how important is to be social as an engineer and work on your people skills. I’ll be also sharing my 5 practical tips on how you can become more social as an engineer.

This is a must-read article for every engineer who is avoiding social situations and thinks that they are not needed. I’ll tell you exactly what to do to get better at it!

This is an article for paid subscribers, and here is the full index:

- For many engineers, being social doesn’t come naturally
- I stood out from other engineers because I was more open to being social
- I consider myself as a mix of introverted and extroverted person
- No matter if you are introverted or extroverted, you can become much better at being more social
- The reality is that being more social is very important if you wish to progress in your career
🔒 5 practical tips on how you can become more social as an engineer
🔒 1. Talk with people even if it’s not necessary
🔒 2. Pick up a hobby that involves other people
🔒 3. Become the go-to person in the organization
🔒 4. Have lunch together with other engineers and people inside your organization
🔒 5. Be genuinely interested in getting to know others better
🔒 Last words

For many engineers, being social doesn’t come naturally

Throughout my 12+ year career in the engineering industry, I worked with many engineers in my full-time roles and also in freelance roles.

I believe I’ve worked with all different types of people over the years and one common characteristic regularly stood out from these engineers.

Being social didn’t come naturally to a lot of them.

Especially if put in a position where was needed to present something, get the buy-in on a particular project with the stakeholders or hold a learning session for an engineering organization.

A lot of the engineers intentionally didn’t want to put themselves in such positions, because it wasn’t natural for them and they wanted to avoid them.

This reflected in other social aspects as well:

• building good working relationships with peers, managers, stakeholders, etc.,

• doing small talk with different people and getting to know them better,

• speaking up in meetings or leading meetings.

That’s also the reason why Tech Lead/Team Lead role is something that a lot of the engineers avoid. Because the social aspect is very much expected with the role.

I stood out from a lot of other engineers because I wasn’t avoiding such things → a lot of my fellow engineers were solely focusing on technologies and wanted to stay in fine details, but I had a lot different view of what success looks like as an engineer.

Let’s get to that next.

I stood out from other engineers because I was more open to being social

I was good technically but what really made me stand out from others was that:

• I was always good at collaborating and communicating when it came to certain projects or functionalities.

• I wanted to always make sure we have the correct requirements and that we are building the right things. I wanted to fully understand the needs and find the best solutions that would fit these needs.

• I also understood the importance of managing expectations. You can do the best work in the world, but if the expectations are not met correctly, all the effort is wasted.

So I wanted to always ensure that all of this was done correctly and I didn’t just solely focus on technical implementation. I always focused on ensuring that my communication was on point.

These particular focus points proved to be very valuable for many of the teams I was a part of and projects overall. This also played a role in my promotion to become a Team Lead.

I consider myself as a mix of introverted and extroverted person

I like my personal time, where I can deeply work on particular things (like writing this article) and at the same time, I like to also be around people (but not for really long periods of time).

I consider my social/communication skills to be good for the engineering industry, but poor if I was in sales.

But I believe that if I would put the effort into continuously improving and also being around other salespeople, I would get much better at it. So, it’s all about how much intentional effort you are putting into such skills.

So, this is the important point that we’ll go through next. You can become a lot better socially if you work on it. It’s the same as just any other skill → you need to develop it.

No matter if you are introverted or extroverted, you can become much better at being more social

And especially with more introverted people, being social is something you are not so good at, because you are avoiding it with all of your heart!

And the unfortunate truth is that the more you are avoiding it, the worse you are at it, so you need to practice. And if you don’t regularly practice your social skills become worse.

I can definitely see that in my case, where for the past 8 months, I don’t work a full-time role anymore and I was used to having a lot of my day filled with meetings (probably around 60%), so I spent a lot of my time talking with various people.

And right now, I have less amount of meetings and I spend a lot of my time writing articles, organizing everything, written communication (emails, slack messages, etc.).

I intentionally try to put myself in more positions where I have to be more social: hobbies, being a speaker at conferences, meeting with like-minded people (online + offline) and also a good example is my course Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role.

We spend 2 hours / 2x per week talking about various different engineering/engineering leadership topics. Which is both fun for me and a great place to talk with like-minded people who are equally excited about the topics as I am.

So, my advice is that even if you want to avoid doing such things with all of your heart, you should actively put yourself in situations where you need to be more social and practice your people skills.

And you’ll get a lot better over time if you do that.

The reality is that being more social is very important if you wish to progress in your career

You may know a person who is joking with the manager, executives, their peers and it just seems that they know everyone and everyone knows them + they’ve been able to build good relationships with many different people.

Over time, they have been promoted and have gotten a lot of different opportunities and you may wonder how is that possible because you are actually better than them technically and you may have a good track record of solving various problems.

But the reality is that the more you grow in your career, the more there is a need for good people skills → navigating conflicting situations, building good relationships, being able to speak and present clearly, good written communication, etc.

Good people skills will take you much further in your career than just pure technical skills.

So, make sure to spend time on them and not neglect them, especially since everything around us is becoming more and more “robotic”.

Good people skills are what are going to be worth more and more as we mentioned in this article:

Future Proof Your Career as an Engineer in Gen AI World Gregor Ojstersek · May 28 Read full story

Now, let’s go to my practical advice on how you can become more social, no matter if you are an introvert or extrovert.

5 practical tips on how you can become more social as an engineer

As we mentioned above, the key is to practice, practice and more practice. You need to stop avoiding it and take it as a challenge and look at it as any other skill that you want to get better at.

We already mentioned how you can get better at people skills here:

Engineering is more about people than tech Gregor Ojstersek · February 25, 2024 Read full story

But now, we are going more into practical advice on how to be more social. Let’s go to the first one...