Scotland has produced some of the world’s finest inventors and engineers. Now it’s emerging as a leader in the world of software.
In fact, it’s been a bumper year for many working in this specialist sector of IT.
Thanks to a Regional Selective Assistance grant of £200,000 from Scottish Enterprise, software developer STREAM Technologies, which is focused on the fast-growing Internet of Things, aims to grow its annual turnover by more than a quarter to £20 million by the end of 2018.
Meanwhile, Oil & Gas technology specialists Sciencesoft and cloud computing/health and safety specialists SHE Software have also announced Scottish Enterprise-linked funding of £1.5million and £415,000 respectively.
This funding has secured a total of 56 jobs at Sciencesoft and SHE and created 20 new jobs for STREAM’s new Glasgow Skypark home.
Scottish Enterprise clearly sees a bright future for our software gurus – and not without good cause.
Software jobs today are all about harnessing information and producing technologies that will have a lasting and positive impact for businesses and in our daily lives.
That’s why it’s estimated there will be a six to ten-fold growth in IoT technologies by 2020.
If Scotland’s software engineers can continue the trend for producing innovative and valuable coding, we’ll soon be mentioning them in the same breath as famous innovators such as James Watt, Alexander Graham Bell and John Logie Baird.
If you too want to lead the way in the Scottish software revolution, here are our top three tips for being a super-effective Tech Lead.
- Encourage teamwork
Software developers thrive on the solo challenge of solving difficult technical problems. As a Tech Lead, however, it’s important to share and delegate coding tasks. By creating design sessions you can ensure your team works closely together to grow stronger and more skilled.
- Share the bigger picture
It’s often easy to lose ourselves in those small details but a great Tech Lead never loses sight of the project’s ultimate goals. By creating and sharing representations of a new system everyone can see new and different angles of the entire architecture – and understand how individual tasks enable the end result.
- Learn to communicate
Gobbledygook sounds like a cute Pokémon character but it’s your worst enemy. An effective Tech Lead builds relationships with Marketing Managers, Finance Directors and even the CEO of the company, none of whom speaks ‘software’.
So avoid geek speak and use easy-to-follow explanations that help colleagues understand complex technical concepts.
For all the best IT roles check out s1jobs