Okay so here are some soft skills tips for IT and general professionalism:
1) Read How to Win Friends and Influence People (there is a nice audio book out there too). A friend of mine called it the Necronomicon he found it so powerful. It really is a good basis if you don't get interacting with people or the beauty of a win-win situation. Non-zero sum games are fun to play.
2) Get a safari account. Even the small one: safari.oreilly.com or safari.ciscopress.com. It allows you to burn through IT reference books that would not be worth having on your shelf after you extract the needed details from them. It is totally worth every penny for an IT professional.
3) If you haven't go talk to some one in another group at your company. Maybe become friends with a couple. It will help you. Sometimes you get advance warning of new projects, sometimes you get a political ally if something unpopular needs to be fought, sometimes you get someone fun to hang out with that has a new point of view. It is all beneficial.
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2 comments:
I second the recommendation of how to win friends and influence people. It can be an eye opener for engineering types (myself included) that tend to see the world and human interaction in binary terms.
--Colin
Thanks for the comment! Soft skills might be the most under-rated engineer skill. I hope to do a post on presentation zen.
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