"Technical" Skills

When a coder asks another coder whether a boss is technical, it just means “can they code?”. There’s not much more to it. You may not like this, but it’s how the word is used, and language is defined by usage. I don’t like that y’all use the word “crypto” for get rich quick schemes either, but I suck it up, the ship has sailed.

This whole hair splitting about the real meaning of the word “technical” adds little. Yes, people who are good at what they do, whatever it is, are good at it and thus have technical skills. This doesn’t change anything about what the coder means when they ask if the boss is technical. We all know what they mean. They mean “can they code?”

To be honest, I don't really think it's actually that deep. Usually, the purpose of the distinction in this context is just useful to convey if someone is skilled in software engineering specifically. For example, when I hear "technical manager" in the context of programming, I think of "the type of manager that weighs in and leads 'technical' decisions directly".

This distinction is pretty important for the expectations to be set right, so throwing ourselves into another euphemism treadmill feels like a bad idea, this always leads to a lot of confusion for questionable gain. I'd rather we just tried to make people value "soft skills" more if the problem is that people do not.

These kinds of articles which endlessly dissect semantics give me similar energy to the trite gymnastics many speakers do like assigning numbers of letters of a words and adding them to make a point. Or finding substrings in a word (leadership is a ship).

Context of our language matters. I wouldn't call my engineering manager technical in my software company just because he is really good at sewing. When program managers are called PM or TPM, there is a reason and function to it.

Also felt weirdly sexist tones in the article, if men do it it's making but if women do it is not technical? Who is saying this? Where is the straw man coming from? Non technological skills are definitely called technical in every field from film making, arts, painting, music construction, cooking, wood working, metallurgy, industrial production etc. Is the article based on solely on opinion of few ignorant people?

It goes both ways. No one is denying that things like sewing, crocheting, hell even putting on makeup takes skill and practice. People similarly are ignorant of "technical" skills too. I have been asked so many times about what is so special about typing colorful text in a window all day. Or why I can't hack their ex's facebook.

My heart sinks every time a "non-technical" manager has opinions on technical matters and makes decisions based not on the case presented by the technical team but on made up stories told by other managers, architects, and consultants. I spent a decade fighting with those types to deliver good work and do the right thing, but they have worn me out so I switched to pure dev work. At this point I am undecided as to whether a non-technical manager is worse than a "slightly technical"() one.

() - has a iPhone and an X-Box which in his mind qualifies him to make decisions on backend architecture designs.

I am writing a book the premise of which is “software Literacy” - the ability to code is a major inflection point. You may, 100 years ago have been a brilliant solider / seamstress/ sailor / sushi chef but if you were illiterate you were at significant disadvantage - and I believe the same is true today for software.

The “technical skill” everyone talks about is coding - and it matters. The desire to arrange the world so it can be iterated over, the … I don’t know the difference between someone who understands a three act structure and story arc and someone who has never read a novel is a big gap

Agreed that sewing is "technical". Imagine you're an artisan seamster and your clueless boss (zero sewing experience) says stuff like "go faster, it's just putting the needle in the hole isn't it?" or "can't you just tape this part together to meet the sprint deadline and do the sewing stuff later?".

I agree with most of the article. There's a part of the world that makes a distinction between "technical" and "creative" which bothers me even more.

Putting yourself or someone else in a bucket of "technical" or "non-technical" creates a subconscious barrier to expanding your skills beyond your label while also giving you an excuse, and others the same low expectations.

It is also a gray area I feel. Is writing efficient code a technical skill, while keeping maintainable or readable a soft skill? The difference seems similar to me.

I might be totally off here, but having a distinction has always felt weird to me.

I think the main reason there is a distinction between technical and non-technical skills, is because usually technical skills require a lot of time and effort, and depending on the subject matter it could takes months, if not years, to be competent.

That is not the case with note-taking, managing or planning, etc. These non-technical skills are usually something you can "pick up" and also there is a huge factor of context where these skills depend on how the organization does things and how people work together. This is why they're also referred to as soft skills. There is a lot of variability in how they can be practiced and learned which depends on many factors that change from team to team and org to org. .

I understand the article is trying to make a point of appreciating these other skills, however at least in the software industry today, I think technical skills have been undervalued and engineers are expected to spend a lot of time and effort on "soft skill" tasks, which I think is a waste of expertise.

To me, "technical" in this context simply means how many layers of abstraction are you capable of piercing together with me?

I'm 20 years removed from any deep technical work at this point but I'm quite thankful that my CS degree's philosophy was that by the end of the program, you should be able to sketch out conceptually what's happening on a computer from electrons on a wire to how users react to your UI (basically, Nand2Tetris before Nand2Tetris). I've forgotten the fine details but that conceptual stack still exists in my head and it's an asset I'll always have.

There absolutely are many amazing managers of tech teams that are deeply non-technical and rely on their mastery of the abstraction layers they can grok to drive effective team performance. But there's also many times where the details do matter and the ability to dive deep into the guts of minutiae is an enormously valuable tool in your toolbelt. Management is a diverse set of skills and every manager rolls a different set of attributes on your character sheet and nobody is a 10 across the board. The art of management is to figure out what differentiated management style works with your character stats and build a team/environments to buff your strengths and make up for your weaknesses.

But the kind of technical knowledge you get from a solid CS education is too time inefficient to learn on the job and so there's real value to in absorbing it as much as you can in an collegiate setting.

disagree with this. there is clearly a difference between "technical" and "non-technical" people.

the definition "technical people" are using when they make that distinction is close enough to 1a of Webster: "having special and usually practical knowledge especially of a mechanical or scientific subject"

now, it's fine to be non-technical. but don't try redefine "people-people" as "technical, but in a different way". part of being a good manager of technical people is to understand the distinction and the different way they think. i've had great managers and leaders that were technical people that became managers. and the very best managers i've had were non-technical people that were extremely skilled leaders. they grew to understand, trust, and manage technical people. they knew the difference and thrived by providing complementary viewpoints and skills.

but i've seen a whole lot of amateur politicians that didn't really understand people as well as their supposed expertise was touted to. they don't have strong technical skills or even the right mindset, so the recast themselves as being good at other things instead (if not good at engineering, they must be good at management, right?).

they chafe at people calling it "soft-skills" or "non-technical". they use analogies like basketball a lot (and sewing, and rock climbing). to try to equivalate a technical engineering mindset to the way the author thinks is a tell that they don't understand the difference at all. the attempts to change the reality by changing language. mis-ascribing phrasing as some kind a value judgement or slight.

all of this tells me this person is not as skilled in technical fields OR with people as they think they are.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/technical

It's bothered me every now and then that the word "technical" is quite ambiguous. In German, we have a separate word for skills relating to any particular field, which is called "fachlich" ("field-y"). And then we have "technisch", which primarily means "relating to technology". Both translate to "technical". In the software world, I tend to express the former as "domain expertise", but it's not an exact match of what I mean usually.

Though in the first example given in the post, relating to technique, it's even ambiguous in German. The joys of natural language I suppose.

> every field has "technical" skills.

> they're simply the skills used to produce the work.

it's contextual, words can mean different things in different context.

in my work technical skills just means that you are a manager who progressed through engineering. you understand our problems and speak in the same terms.

non-technical is just someone from a different contextual background. although in their own context of dealing with humans ("soft skills") is also a "technical" skill in that it require specific skills which we engineers may not have.

Changing the name changes nothing. The distinction will remain useful and people will invent a new word.

If what we currently call technical skills is unfairly overvalued - the evaluation needs to change, not the name.

Similarly you don't fix racism by replacing one word with another. That's just magic thinking.

BTW I think technical skills in IT are overvalued, mostly because of outdated perception of rarity. And over time the hordes of people pivoting to IT and the improving generative AI will change that.

"Technical" skills just means a person has or can switch to a "technical" mindset, which I find to be quite different from non-technical people. Not to say that one is better than the other, but I do find it much, much easier to communicate with other people who have "technical" skills than those who do not. Mainly because I also happen to think in similar way. In that regards, it's a very useful heuristic.

Another way to look at it, is that there are people and there are things. Humans will inevitably have to interact with each other, at least in order to mate to prevent the species from dying out.

Arguably, everything involving people is communication overhead, the larger the organisational structure, the more communication overhead.

Anything non-people related are "things". This includes anything from planning, math, engineering, logistics, marketing.

There's an unfortunate distinction between people who are very curious and possibly have formal training in a technical field, and those who do it because it makes lots of money.

Orthogonally, there are project managers (PMs) and architects (they need an acronym) who either A. recently had or B. distantly had serious technical chops, and those who C. were the latter of the first sentence.

C'est la vie; the anti-pattern of the corporate machine operating with the efficiency of the Peter principle.

Perhaps the only and irreducible way to discern A. above is to work with someone else on something meaningful for longer than the pop quiz bullshit of 20-30 minute technical interviews.

Possibly, project managers can be effective without technical knowledge if they both check their egos and communicate efficiently and effectively to reduce and consolidate external comms.

Architects also need to defer to people digging away at the problem rather than mandating a vision or some equally ineffective pretend work. Architects and PMs can be extremely effective if they know their limitations, are honest, understand human nature and the natures of their team, and how to manage external expectations.

I like the term soft skills. I find it relevant and meaningful. To me, soft skills are skills for which we have no strong evaluation mechanism. Are you good at communication? It's hard to tell. A lot of judgement and context is involved. That makes it a soft skill.

Programming might be a soft skill under this definition, except it isn't: because programming tends to be judged on results, which are easier to see and harder to argue with.

The definition of "technical" in this article is overly broad. Although I agree that sewing is a technical skill. I'd suggest this definition "A technical skill is the ability to create technology of some kind." A knitted cap is technology, therefore knitting is a technical skill.

When we are speaking of projects in IT, "non-technical" specifically means skills other than those of fashioning hardware and software.

“technical” is just shorthand for “has ever once used a text editor to read or write code professionally before”.

There are a bunch of people who work in tech who have technical skills who don’t know anything about code. That’s a bright line skill boundary and it is an important practical distinction.

Bit biased, but I'd say this is an non-technical article about overthinking terminologies. As others already mentioned, we use techie /non-techie to quickly categorize people into coders and non-coders, but techie also works for the embedded-guy or the kick ass devop or Linux neckbeard.

"Tech" has also become an allegory of topics that we can discuss where there is a clearer right and wrong. It's still subjective and opinionated of course but at the moment when your mind is really soaked into tech, everything feels so simple and ultimatively true. It's probably part of the God-complex/imposter-syndrome that so many coders experience, but that's another topic...

I agree. But one thing that I think the author should have talked about more (or eloborated on in case I missed it) is the natural followup to the articles conclusion.

Yes, there are technical skills in pretty much all fields. But if we recognize this fact it still does not address the starting point of the article. Is it better to have a manager with deep technical skills in the field of the people they manage?

Should a basketball coach be a good basketball player? Should the project manager of a software team be a good programmer?

Yes, there are seperate technical skills in the area of project management and sports coaching. But does the manager also need the technical skills of the people they manage?

What people mean by "technical" is whether a person has a background and education in some field related to what they are doing now.

No doubt that conversations and sewing require specific skills and techniques. Certainly they are "technical" on some level, it just isn't what is meant.

"Technical" in the context it is used means what level of specifics you can communicate on. Which is why it can be total nightmare to have to work with "non-technical" people, as there often is a relatively easy low level explanation, but that is useless to the other person, so communication starts to break down.

Ok, we get it, you can do your job. But when I ask a fellow engineer if someone is technical I'm asking if they can do my job. So yeah, feel free to call me non-technical in conversations with other sewers.

Go back to C.P. Snow's "two cultures".[1] This is not new, but it's not that old, either. The concept appeared in the 20th century when tech started being important. Don't have time to recap the history of technology right now.

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-review/arti...

Hard disagree with the premise. It's disingenuous to pretend there isn't a difference between knowing how to resolve an interpersonal conflict vs knowing the calculations needed to build a bridge. Yes, the skill ceilings may be high, but the skill floor is clearly different.

I'm not downplaying soft skills, by the way. Soft skills are what get you successful in life. And the disdain some people have for soft skills vs hard skills is uncalled for, but that's a separate issue. Technical skills clearly mean something technical.

Like everything in life, these things fall on a distribution, and usually have more hidden variables than the visible ones.

I've worked with people like the following:

A) Excellent systems and architecture/big picture knowledge, but hadn't done actual coding in ages, and likely wouldn't be much help if placed in a team to produce code.

B) Terrific coder, but not too interested in the process. Ad-hoc type that would much rather spend time on iterations, than planning. "Get shit done" type.

C) Very good people person, but with fading technical knowledge.

D) Extremely enthusiastic person that came from the business side, but with limited technical knowledge. Would happily spend time on reading and learning about new technical stuff, but didn't necessarily have the foundational knowledge to lead a project alone.

And many more.

If asked "Is [x] technical?" I'd have answer "Yes, but..." or "No, but..."

At first I wanted to suggest: 'will he or she understand the technical details of our work?' instead of 'is he or she technical?'

But then I realized it doesn't make a lick of a difference. Those who find the distinction meaningful will have already internalized the point of the author's article.

Those who feel superior when they themselves are 'technical', while someone else isn't, think that the ability to understand the technical details of their work is proof that they are smarter, more passionate, and more interesting than the other person.

That person will not be enlightened by your word choice.

In other words, a monad is not a burrito [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40556699

Such a breeze! I love to remind myself that some things I take for granted require extraordinary skills that I just don't have the time or willingness to process and understand.

I think that's the reason why I love to watch Real Engineering/Practical Engineering channels on YouTube. I watch what seems like a "simple" task, such as pouring concrete, and then suddenly realize that it's actually not that easy. Or "How It's Made" - Chips? Easy, right? Well, no, lol!

> Do you know how to defuse an entrenched argument between coworkers, help a burned out coworker get out of a rut, or tell someone they're not doing a great job without making them furious? Managers do.

Ehh, maybe if you're lucky. But I wouldn't count on it. Frankly I'd just be happy with not getting a stick in the eye

> Likewise, we can ONLY write off marketing, sales, management, design, product, HR, etc etc etc etc as less important because "they're not technical" if we choose to ignore that they are very technical.

Design requires a lot of hard skills... how many people here could open up photoshop or indesign and not get overwhelmed by the magnitude of features? Seems like a really lazy example

The real distinction is between people who actually work on real products and all the auxiliary people who exist to facilitate business process. Like the difference between a professor and a uni administrator. The former rightfully deserves more props than the latter

I have learnt over the years, that rather than calling a specific skill "soft" or "non-technical" to actually learn it and get good at it. Along the way I have learnt a great deal about the unknown unknowns.

We have a progression: unconscious incompetent -> conscious incompetent -> conscious competent -> unconscious competent. And it is completely context and domain specific.

This article starts with a false premise that non-technical skills are undervalued then works backwards to try to defend them.

> We often dismiss skills that are not societally valued by pretending they are not skills.

The truth is that "non-technical skills" are valued far more than technical skills. The people who run our world didn't get there from "technical" skills.

Non-technical skills are less legible so it's harder to deliberately practice them and there are many people running around in non-technical roles who are simply not good at the role. Tons of salespeople can't sell. Lots of product managers have no product vision. etc.

People who are actually good at non-technical jobs don't need to be lionized. They already have the money and power.

I wish self conscious insecure people would stop policing language. It means what it means when people use it.

Are you responsive to selection pressure? Are you accountable for anything? Is your employment coupled in any way to the success of the organization? How, exactly?

Are you playing the game? Do you have to play the game?

> And consider the "maker movement," which, in my most frustrated moments, I call "arts and crafts, but for boys." The "movement" has been careful to highlight its technical skills to position itself apart from similarly technical fields, like sewing.

I call bullshit on this. Sewing is making. Simple as that. The "maker movement" is not distinct from sewing but encompasses it. At our hack space we have people doing woodworking, people doing machining, people doing 3d printing, and people doing various fiber-arts (sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery). Very often they are the same people, because it is all just making.

This is a bit hard to digest for me who have lived most of my life in a culture where technical skills are not valued but soft skills are (Sweden). It has turned around to some extent over the last 15 years, but I still fondly remember how I “destroyed” my manager back at Ericsson by interrupting a long rant about how little she understood about engineering and pointing out that her title was in fact “technical manager”. If a look could kill I wouldn’t be here today.

I can understand that the Silicon Valley culture can be frustrating if you’re “not technical”. But just remember that the opposite culture (i.e. the old Swedish one) is a road to serfdom for everyone involved. If you don’t believe me, just compare e.g. Ericsson’s and Google’s market capitalizations over time.

OK I kinda get what author is trying to say here.

In the first screenshot, "were the Project Managers technical", the asker means "does the PMs understand technical details"

Then the author argues that marketing, sales, management, design, product, HR people were also "technical" if you pay enough attention.

This article is arguably a very nice write-up, but it misses the main point.

In an emerging field, "technical" means decision makers can adapt very quickly with the know-hows and gets an advantage, but for mature business with tons of off-the-shelf technical solutions, soft-skills means a lot.

It all depends what kind of business you are in. They are not contradictive.