A superpower every dev and data scientist should have

When you start your career in tech a big part is finding your superpower. At the beginning you might have to try different things to know what is yours. Some people are super happy working on databases, others like backend stuff, machine learning… you name it. A big part of your 2-3 first years is finding the intersection between what you like and what you are good at.

It’s normal that we look into tech-related superpowers. It’s what we do most of the day. But there is another superpower that can make you stand out. Does not matter if you are a developer on a big company, founding a startup or somewhere in between. I’ve found that this superpower can change your career and help you grow in some interesting directions.

The superpower is talking to business people or to other people in general. You might not like it but it can help a lot. You might need to communicate with them for different reasons: you might want to suggest a new feature, you think the team should spend more time on a specific topic or you might need to explain a delay in the development process ( I know this never happens :-)).

Understanding how much to talk, what messages to pass on, and how to structure them can be key in your professional development. And even more importantly, can make you enjoy your job way more. People will enjoy working with you, they’ll look to you for advice and you will enjoy working with them.

You don’t need to be a smooth talker. Just focus on your audience, what are they interested in? What do they need to understand? Don’t use big words. Don’t lecture them in Computer Science or Statistic complex concepts. Understand their metrics, what they are trying to achieve, and align your speech to those.

It’s never the same to say we need to implement SAML2 than to say: single sing on will make our customer life easier. Don’t say we need to re-vamp our whole backend to improve performance, say: we’ll lower our order processing on an average of X%. Those little tricks can help you get your features built and explain better what you are trying to achieve.