The Rising Demand for Soft Skills in Engineering | LinkedIn’s VPE Aarathi Vidyasagar
Plus, how cognitive fatigue impacts developer productivity and our host moves on...
According to a LinkedIn study, engineers with strong soft skills are promoted 13% faster than those with only technical skills. Given how AI will continue to reshape market demands for developers and engineering leaders, how can you adapt to these changes and further your career?
Aarathi Vidyasagar, VP of Engineering at LinkedIn, joins me this week to explore the growing importance of soft skills and how leadership, communication, and empathy are becoming just as critical as technical expertise. Aarathi offers valuable takeaways into building engineering teams that balance hard technical abilities with the soft skills needed to lead, mentor, and work effectively in diverse teams, equipping engineers for long-term success in an AI-driven world.
Author’s Note
Hey readers 👋 - your host here - sadly, this will be the last Dev Interrupted newsletter I author personally.
You’ll still hear my voice in podcast episodes we’ve recorded through the end of 2024, but as of this Friday, I’ll be embarking on a new adventure and won’t be around to co-host Dev Interrupted. As this season comes to a close, you’ll continue to hear from Dan Lines - and you’ll start to hear more from who’s taking over from me as showrunner.
If you want to stay in touch, you can still find me on Substack, or please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.
Thanks for four wonderful seasons of Dev Interrupted — I’ve been hard at work helping Ben plan Season 5 of the show, and I’m confident you’ve got even more incredible content ahead!
- Conor
Episode Highlights:
00:56 How industry changes have impacted the need for communication and soft skills
04:31 How software development is going to continue to change
12:33 Generalists vs. Specialists
15:52 How is LinkedIn positioned for the new era of hiring?
31:11 How is LinkedIn approaching developer experience and productivity?
36:33 How to support devs in automating migrations
The Download
The Download is engineering leadership content we’re reading, watching, and attending that we think you might find valuable.
1. How cognitive fatigue impacts developer productivity
Cognitive fatigue is the enemy of productivity, and for developers, the #1 source of this fatigue is context switching and unnecessarily long feedback loops.
The SD Times interviewed Gradle’s CEO Hans Dockter to unpack the underlying issues that create cognitive fatigue. Dockter emphasizes the need for companies to optimize workflows to minimize context switching and reduce feedback times. This approach doubles down on key research from the DORA team, as well as LinearB’s research on how the pull request process impacts productivity.
Read: How cognitive fatigue impacts developer productivity
2. Be a technical mentor, not a micromanager.
One of the quickest ways to alienate your team is to micromanage them. Developers want autonomy and guidance, not someone looking over their shoulder.
Joey Freund shared practical advice for guiding engineers in areas like avoiding unnecessary hacks, managing dependencies, and enhancing performance while encouraging them to tackle annoying issues that affect daily productivity. Freund advocates for helping engineers make well-informed, strategic decisions and giving them the autonomy to take risks.
Read: Be a technical mentor, not a micromanager.
Managing Bot-Generated PRs & Reducing Team Workload by 6% (Sponsor)
13% of all pull requests are bot-created today, and they are creating a unique impact on your SDLC — LinearB’s upcoming research and workshop will expose the effects bots are having on your team’s developer experience and productivity.
Engineering orgs who create a system for managing bot-generated PRs are able to reduce their entire review load by over 6%, while also making drastic improvements in their security and compliance posture.
If you want to learn how your team can manage bot-generated PRs and get early access to LinearB’s report, register for our upcoming workshop on September 24th or 25th
3. Netflix's Blueprint for Building Inspired Engineering Teams with Carol Barrett
My interview with Netflix’s Carol Barrett is one of my personal favorite episodes of this season. I really appreciated her approach to empowering engineers to make their own decisions, ensuring product management and engineering are perfectly synced, and building flexible team structures.
Our listeners seemed to agree with me - it's one of our most listened-to episodes ever!
4. What CTOs Say vs. What Their Developers Hear with DataStax
One of our most popular episodes on soft skills and managing communication pathways as an engineering leader was early in our second season, when I interviewed DataStax CTO Shankar Ramaswamy.
Shankar is a veteran leader in the engineering space, having helped recruit, build and guide teams at companies like Amazon, eBay, Paypal and Google. If you want tangible insights on communicating effectively with your teams, this is a great episode to dig into.
Upcoming Events
September 20th | Bay Area
SheTO Summit is the only conference that focuses on women+ in engineering and focuses on topics pertaining to enhancing their leadership. This unique Summit is truly a remarkable experience and an opportunity to learn, connect with fellow women+ engineering leaders across tech.
Encourage women+ from your team to attend this unique Summit. Use code: ALLYSHIP to get 10% off
Managing Bot-Generated PRs & Reducing Team Workload by 6%
September 24th or 25th | Online
Highlights: In this 45-minute workshop, LinearB will walk you through insights about bot issued pull requests, and how you can reduce your team workload by 6%
PS - Thanks for reading my last edition of Dev Interrupted as co-host!