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Being competent at coding is mere table stakes for being a software engineer. Success at being a software engineer is mostly about combining that coding skills with people skills: coordinating with people, negotiating with people, communicating effectively with people, working with people who are difficult, etc. I would have been far more successful if I'd improved my people skills early in my career alongside improving my coding skills.

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How do you improve your people skills? I mean besides just experience.

You can accelerate the benefit of experience by paying closer attention to what your co-workers and immediate managers do when there's a crisis, disagreement, etc. Try to figure out what tactics they're using and think about how well or badly what they did worked. Also think what you would have done in their shoes and try to game out how others might have responded to that.

There's also plenty of books out there on people skills. 99% of them are rubbish but a few have stood the test of time, e.g. the Dale Carnegie books.

Thank you very much for your suggestion. It's very useful to me.

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