When interviewing for an open position as a software developer, a lot of focus is spent on technical knowledge and not so much is spent on soft skills. I suppose this is because technical skills can actually be measured. At least to some degree. Soft skills on the other hand is very subjective and also depends on the context and culture you are working in.

The good thing about soft skills however is that if the person is willing to change, then improvement is easy. A lacking in technical skills requires some significant effort to overcome.

In this post I will outline some behaviors that are easy to apply that I consider constitutes being a good team member.

• Be polite. For example: Say “thank you” when you receive help and “well done” when someone achieves something.
• Never leave your team mates (or neighboring teams) blocked. For example, you should prioritize doing code review over completing your own work.
• Be on time to meetings. Otherwise you are wasting the time of the people who were on time. If you are hosting the meeting you should be prepared, and preferably be early to the meeting.
• Emphasize positive feedback over negative feedback. No one wants to work with someone who only complains.
• Give team mates the benefit of the doubt. If unsure whether some solution suggested by a team mate is good, give them the benefit of the doubt and let them verify their own solution.
• If a team mate makes a mistake or causes an incident. Be supportive and have their back.
• Do not nit pick in code reviews. Every code review cycle is expensive. If the only thing wrong with a pull request is a spelling error then it’s probably not worth going through a cycle to fix that.
• When giving feedback. Prefer to give those as loose suggestions rather than as absolute facts (even when you know that you are right). This leaves the person receiving the suggestion less attacked and also gives an opening for disagreeing with the suggestion. Plus if you are wrong in your suggestion you will not look like an idiot.
• Accept that you will not win every discussion and some solutions will not be made like you would have done it. Even if you are right cannot control every outcome.

Or to summarize it: “Don’t be a jerk”.