Are your soft skills a bit rusty?
Learn how to get people to listen, how to manage your confidence in high-stakes meetings and how to properly nurture your network
We have some great soft-skills content this week. If you are grinding relentlessly, but, despite your superb tech skills, not getting the exact results you are expecting, one of the reasons might be your (lack of) soft skills.
Are you focusing at all on nurturing your network? 🤔
Are you mindful of the impact non-verbal communication has on the messages you are trying to convey? 🗣️📢
Are you confident enough when making proposals?
If not, go ahead and read at least the first three articles in this digest👇.
Getting People to Listen is a Skill — Here’s Where to Start (7 min)
A big part of communication is non-verbal. There is a famous 7-38-55 rule introduced by Albert Mehrabian stating that tone of voice and body language overwhelmingly impact how your message will land. Albert later clarified that this rule only applies to situations when feelings or attitudes are being communicated. When facts are being conveyed, it’s a different story.
However, when trying to get your message through, simply relying on just conveying facts is probably not the best strategy. Other factors will impact how your message will be received.
walks us through five focus areas you should be aware of when trying to communicate important ideas to your stakeholders.Audience: All professionals
Value: Learn how to talk so people listen
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
How Confidence Is Self-Fulfilling in High-stakes Conversations (11 min)
I learned the hard way that when presenting proposals to stakeholders, the confidence level that you are emitting is very important. Confidence is contagious. For leaders to accept your proposal, they need to get a good level of confidence from your presentation. If you are not confident in what you are proposing or do not fully believe in it, chances are your stakeholders won’t either.
In this brief article
flows nicely on the topic from the previous ☝️ one, and gives you practical tips on how to manage your confidence during high-stakes meetings.Audience: All professionals
Value: Learn the importance of confidence and how to build it
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
How to Grow Your Personal Network 🍻 (13 min)
This article makes me ashamed that I am probably giving more attention to nurturing plants on my terrace than nurturing my social network 🫣. Here
gives you several clear practices you can use to build up and retain the social network around you.
It might be too structured for some, but it will give you techniques you can use right away 👌. I like it because it makes me think about my relationship with others 🤔.
Audience: All professionals
Value: Learn how to nurture your network
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐
0 to $200 MRR in 40 days (after 600 days of nothing) (3 min)
This brief update from
shows the level of persistence it takes to get traction on your solopreneurship voyage. Orel got his first income after 600+ days of trying 😮. Apart from sharing this one just because I am happy for Orel 🙌 🚀, I included it because it contains good short advice on what to focus on and how to persist until you reach the revenue-flowing milestone 📈.Audience: Software Engineers / Founders
Value: Learn what matters when finding product-market fit
ToT Rating: ⭐
Stack overflow is almost dead (5 min) 💵
This article is paywalled, but the summary at the top gives you an idea of some recent news trends happening. I included it as one of the most loved websites for programmers seems to be on life support at this point. StackOverflow has been losing traction since 2017, roughly, but ChatGPT’s launch cemented its fate.
It served us well 😢
Audience: Software Engineers / Engineering Managers
Value: Learn about the latest trends/news in tech
ToT Rating: ⭐
Top 4 Countries in Europe for Six-Figure Remote Workers (5 min)
Based on
‘s research top four countries in Europe for digital nomads are:Croatia 🇭🇷
Poland 🇵🇱
Estonia 🇪🇪
Czechia 🇨🇿
Read the article to learn why.
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn about the best countries in Europe for digital nomads
ToT Rating: ⭐
Be Productively Pessimistic (3 min)
dontbreakprod.com
A brief read on how to use your pessimism in a productive manner - aka premortems. Which reminds me of a quote that appeared in a Nirvana song.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they are not after you.
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn how to anticipate problems before they happen
ToT Rating: ⭐
Why have you been stuck at the Senior level for so long? (X min)
This newsletter has mentioned many times how difficult it can be for engineers to move from senior to senior+ roles. This LinkedIn post touches on this and shares the top five behaviours correlated with successful senior+ engineers and the top five behaviours preventing senior engineers from making that leap.
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn what to (not) do to get past the senior engineer
ToT Rating: ⭐
InfoQ Culture and Methods Trends Report - 2025 (11 min)
InfoQ
Here is InfoQ’s report on the latest trends in culture and methods. Of course, vibe coding landed in the Innovators segment just three months after the term was coined 🧑💻
Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn about the latest trends
ToT Rating: ⭐
Until next time! 👋