What Software Engineering Universities Don't Teach You

With almost 10 years of working experience, I played several roles as a software engineer. And I am currently CTO of a video game company. Thinking back about my time at university, there are tons of subjects I wish I had been taught properly. Here is my list...

Time and task management ⏲️

• Partitioning time (ex Pomodoro)

• Avoid distractions, getting into the flow state

• Inbox Zero

Tooling 🛠️

• Hardware: computers, input devices, and network devices

• Tools to increase productivity, shortcuts

• IT: resources inventory, resources management

Testing 🧪

• Test frameworks and test automation

• Unit tests and integration tests

• TDD, ATDD, BDD

• DDD

Communication 💬

• With your technical colleagues

• With your non-technical colleagues

• With clients and customers: be confident and assertive

• Marketing: Self and Company promotion

Project Management 💼

• Agile: Scrum, Kanban

• Stories, task definition

• Task estimation

• Performance monitoring

Leading / Mentoring 🦸

• Onboarding people

• Mentoring people

• Documentation

• Code reviews

• Peer reviews

• Pair programming, Mob Programming

Management 👨‍💼

• 1-on-1

• Delegation

• Feedback and Performance reviews

• Career management, coaching

• Objectives definition: OKR, KPI, SMART, etc.

Budget Management 💰

• Definition of budget

• Expenses monitoring

• Accounting

Entrepreneurship 🏢

• Corporate governance and the basics of corporate law

• Business development

• Business plan

• Business monitoring

2026 update

Almost six years later, I would add:

• Working with AI: delegating implementation to LLMs, and still reviewing their work and correcting their direction.

• Security basics: when there is something at stake, somebody has to think about security.

• Selling what you build: building something is not enough. You need to communicate about it, market it, help people find it.

• Disagreeing well: examining reasons, including your own, and changing your mind when they don't hold.

And testing now has its own section. I think it's even more important now with AI, because you want the AI to be accountable, and tests are the only way to prove it.

Do you agree? I also invite you to make your list and share it as well.

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Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash