Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude

I agree with this article in spirit, but in practice we have made some very bad Jr-ish hires on attitude alone, which we tend to look closely at where I work. There needs to be a verified bar of technical excellence in order to succeed at engineering. There's too much stuff to learn.

Going into an interview with a can do attitude doesn't say much about problem-solving abilities; it also says nothing about getting over humps, or determination in the face of real difficulties. One can be enthusiastic about anything.

I don't agree - it's about equal

A certain level of soft skills and attitude is required to function as a member of a team.

A certain level of technical skills is required to do the job.

Both have a minimum bar to clear and you shouldn't hire an asshole genius just like you shouldn't inept social butterfly or whatever the genius equivalent is for soft skills.

Once the bar is cleared you look at being better than required minimum in both aspects.

Preaching is easy. Practicing is hard.

I would like to see Amazon Director+ having a winning attitude, not an adversarial one pitting people against each other.

Until these directors can fix a bug, they should not be allowed to talk about tech skills. Their fluff pieces are merely delusional articles meant to garner "likes" on social media.

At a more senior level, a company can probably have a better handle on what you're capable of. At that point, it's more about fit for a given role and, really (although folks here may not like this), whether you click--the first date thing. Which IMO is perfectly fine especially at a more senior level.

Of course, I say this as someone who has gotten every one of my (few) jobs since grad school through personal connections.

kiss the right people's ass and make sure you are well liked. Everything else is secondary