The Most Important Soft Skill in Tech

This One Is Non-negotiable

Leo Godin
10 min readJan 23, 2024

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My oldest son once got hired after being late to both interviews. The youngest went from lugging tools in a warehouse to working for a title company in a shirt and tie. They both have something that seems to come naturally to we Godin’s and I bet you can guess what it is. After all, it’s difficult to hide with that introduction. Before we get to that, let me tell you about the best interview I ever had.

I promise to keep things interesting.

Photo by Daniel McCullough on Unsplash

A Personal Story

That glorious summer day in 1998 held all the promise a budding career in tech could offer. Warm temperature, wispy clouds, and a beautiful office park in Nashua NH. Fifteen dollars an hour providing tech support to the finicky users of NetManage Ecco Pro. This was it. The fast track to a career I didn’t understand but would finally allow us to pay the bills. All I had to do was get the job.

Strolling along manicured lawns and pine trees, I embodied the hopes and dreams of anyone not qualified for the position. A year of stuffing paper into a bunch of printers at Digital hardly made me a tech-support technician. Don’t tell that to my resume, though. It was chock full of help-desk experience. I…

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Leo Godin

I’m Leo and I love data! Recovering mansplainer, currently working as a lead data engineer at New Relic. BS in computer science and a MS in data