Soft Skills - Key Takeaways

Dates Read: 03/15/2026 - 03/21/2026

Rating: 4/5

The first book I was handed during my first week at Abbott was John Sonmez's Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual.

In my mind, I felt everyone on the team must have thought I was a shy, gawky nerd. However, I was relieved to find out I was wrong. Our director gave me this book because I was still early in my career, and it was renowned for giving entry-level engineers insights into navigating a career in software engineering.

I have to admit, the title itself was a bit of a curveball. Rather than focusing solely on communicating well with others, the book spends much more time discussing how to develop yourself, build your personal brand, and shape the career you want in software engineering.

He touches on topics ranging from real estate to finding your soulmate. The real estate chapter was a bit much for me since it felt like a Rich Dad Poor Dad reiteration, which makes sense because Sonmez is a fan of Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter.

With that context out of the way, I'll share a few points that caught my attention.

Point one: if I were reading this for the first time, I would take the financial advice with a grain of salt since there are plenty of other books worth reading, such as Quit Like a Millionaire by Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung.

Point two: marketing is a skill that isn't emphasized enough. Whether you want to be self-employed, an employee, or an entrepreneur, you'll need to market yourself to get the opportunities you want.

It sounds generic, but it has helped me immensely. If I really want to take on a project, the only way I can do that is by confidently selling my abilities. Otherwise, I'd often get passed over and miss the opportunity.

Point three: there is a lot of mindless consumption in this world. To avoid it, question what you're consuming and ask yourself why you're consuming it.

Point four: if you feel like you can't learn as well as you used to, then maybe you've forgotten how to play. I really took this point to heart because I was in a bit of a learning slump with all of the AI tools at our disposal. The key idea Sonmez was getting at is that when we were kids learning something new, we weren't just curious—we also played and experimented with those ideas.

For me, the example that rekindled that desire to play was remembering when I first learned to code by building cash register software in QBasic. Every time I got the price of bananas or apples wrong in my program, I'd go back, think of a fix, implement it, run the program, verify the results, and repeat.

I was struggling to learn unit testing. Although I had learned it during my internships, I had developed this perfectionist mentality of always needing to get everything right the first time and build the perfect infrastructure before starting.

That mindset slowly chipped away at my confidence because I spent more time thinking about getting everything right than simply experimenting with a testing framework and writing tests.

What finally got me playing again was Sonmez's reminder that you only need to learn the 20% that gets you 80% of the results. That idea has held true so far because you can always go back and learn the lower-priority material later. For now, it's better to play around in the sandbox and rediscover the joy of building software for fun.

Overall, it was a pleasure reading this book. It took me about one to two hours a week to finish because it was a quick read with short, digestible chapters and plenty of solid examples.

I would definitely recommend this book to any engineer, whether you're just starting your career or already well into it. I was skeptical because I'd seen Sonmez on YouTube before, and he initially struck me as one of those "get rich quick" personalities. However, the book felt much less like he was trying to sell me something and much more like he was sharing ideas to help you shape your own career based on your interests. I appreciate that he ultimately leaves the decision in your hands.