Software Engineer Like Qualities

23 Dec, 2021

The Indian armed forces look for 15 qualities, dubbed the Officer Like Qualities (OLQs), in its potential Officer recruits. They are:

Based on the OLQs, I would like to coin a new set of qualities — Software Engineer Like Qualities (SELQs). It is comprised of the qualities that I have repeatedly bumped into while perusing the job descriptions of Software/Fullstack/Backend Engineers for startups (mainly in the EU).

The following are the Software Engineer Like Qualities along with the job description points hinting at them:

Effective Intelligence & Reasoning Ability

Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
You like to continuously challenge yourself by finding new and better ways to solve complex problems

Initiative & Organizing Ability

Be a self-starter and possess a strong sense of self-motivation.
High personal productivity and excellent time management.
You don't take "no" or "that'll never work" for an answer.

Power of Expression

You communicate effectively (listening, presenting, and questioning).
You give and receive open, direct, and timely feedback.
You have strong organizational, written, and communication skills.
You are clear, proactive, straightforward, and a good listener.
You aren't afraid to ask for clarification.

Speed of Decision & Liveliness

You can quickly adapt to changing priorities.
You can work in a fast-paced environment and meet changing deadlines/priorities in simultaneous projects.
You can remain calm under pressure in a frequently changing environment.

Social Adaptability & Cooperation

You are able to work with diverse team members with different levels of experience.
You believe that you can achieve more on a team.
You lead with humility and empathy, respecting and learning from the perspectives of others.
You are always looking for ways that you can help others.

Passion for learning

Ability to quickly learn new technologies.
You don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions.
You are constantly evolving with the technology trends, and willing to embrace change. You don’t mind learning new technologies if it means getting you there sooner.
Ideally, you have published your own app, contributed to an open-source project, spoke at a conference, and/or published blog posts :)

What German startups look for

11 Nov, 2021

I wanted to know what tech startups in Germany were looking for in their software engineering roles (0-3 yrs experience). To do so, I decided to refer to the LinkedIn Top German Startups lists [1] from 2019-2021. After copying the 'requirements' section of about 100 Software/Backend/Full-stack Engineer job listings from the above startups, I had a text file of 5565 words ready.

The following was the output after running a short Python script for cleaning out English stop-words along with non-skill terms and printing the 25 most frequent skill terms in the text file:

java      
aws     
python      
spring    
javascript      
docker     
sql      
kubernetes       
react 
apis
nosql    
kafka     
typescript      
go      
kotlin      
node     
mongodb     
api      
restful      
postgresql      
gcp     
nodejs      
mysql     
ruby     
boot

Word cloud for the 50 most frequent skill terms:

[1]

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-startups-2019-diesen-25-jungen-jetzt-arbeiten-sara-weber/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-startups-2020-diese-zehn-deutschen-starten-sara-weber/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-startups-2021-zehn-junge-top-unternehmen-/