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Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

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Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#11

Post by alentred »

flitzofolov wrote: post #6
CrulesAll wrote: post #4

Software 'engineers' are going to have learn the hard skills that they have gotten by without thus far. The ones who were never engineers in the first place will have to learn 'soft skills' because they are incapable. I believe @ Tsoding put it best: The only thing AI will do, in so far as coding goes, is to remove a lot of people who should never have been in it in the first place.

Can you elaborate on this? What are some examples of skills you think are now essential, that prior have been taken for granted or obviated in some way?

Not the original author, but I would guess that understanding the domain problem and interpreting it correctly in a software solution (not code, but a product with workflows, UX, etc.), which in turn requires ability to listen and understand and ask right questions on one hand (what a user wants to achieve), and a good understanding of the technical limitations as well as human habits on the other hand (what is possible and makes sense). One can argue that AI lacks what we'd call intuition and interpersonal qualities which are still necessary, as before AI.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#12

Post by lordnacho »

I don't think it has ever been the case that you could neglect soft skills. You will hear this over and over, in every area of every business: people become successful by adjusting their behaviour to what works for the business. Sometimes this is called being a slick politician, sometimes it is called avoiding getting bogged down in politics.

But it's never been the case that a dev could just focus on technical things and not spend any time figuring out the context they are working in, and behaving accordingly.

My first day of work, this is what my boss said to me: "Look at this trading floor. There's screens everywhere, everything is numbers. Deltas, gammas, vegas. Everything is calculated by computers. But don't forget, every business is a people business!"

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#14

Post by CrulesAll »

joshuaisaact wrote: post #8
EGreg wrote: post #5

As usual - the advice is essenially rats from a sinking ship all the way. “You all need to do this narrow thing to survive now”. 2016 to truckers: “Learn to code LOL” 2026 to coders: “Learn soft skills” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46436872 Look, I personally am taking full advantage of exactly the skills described. I was the one who posted the above thing on HN showing how I am 20-50x more productive now, co…

I may have misread your comment, but I don't think soft skills are a 'narrow thing' at all. Effective communication, building trust, bringing people along with you - these are fundamental to being an effective human, not some niche pivot.

"Effective communication, building trust, bringing people along with you" That's a David Brent powerpoint presentation.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#17

Post by marginalia_nu »

The sort of people who have been able to neglect their soft skills are probably still going to be able to do so in the future. But those were always the extreme intelligence outliers, generational talent type figures.

For most software engineers, neglect of soft skills have always been a career tarpit that leads nowhere you want to end up. Being able to navigate social settings and to communicate well is a force multiplier. For most people, it really doesn't matter how good you are if nobody understands what you are saying and you can't convince other people to buy into your ideas. You far more often see moderately successful charlatans that are all talk than successful people with awful communication skills. Of course if you're able to walk the talk, that's when you can really go places.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#18

Post by qoez »

CrulesAll wrote: post #4

Software 'engineers' are going to have learn the hard skills that they have gotten by without thus far. The ones who were never engineers in the first place will have to learn 'soft skills' because they are incapable. I believe @ Tsoding put it best: The only thing AI will do, in so far as coding goes, is to remove a lot of people who should never have been in it in the first place.

I think this is kinda sad. I always thought coding was so beautiful for creating a (good paying) job for socially awkward people on the spectrum who pre-coding was considered dorks and went into idk what but probably some unsatisfying job. It seems like we're heading back to that which makes me sad and worried about the highly functioning autistic population.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#19

Post by lolive »

Be careful, engineers, when interacting with soft skill experts not to join their reality distortion field where it’s all about coordination, alignment, bizness strategy, clever planning. Whereas the real stuffs are just implémentation details, quickly solved.

In the end, they might convince you that 2+2=5.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#20

Post by ilinx »

flitzofolov wrote: post #6
CrulesAll wrote: post #4

Software 'engineers' are going to have learn the hard skills that they have gotten by without thus far. The ones who were never engineers in the first place will have to learn 'soft skills' because they are incapable. I believe @ Tsoding put it best: The only thing AI will do, in so far as coding goes, is to remove a lot of people who should never have been in it in the first place.

Can you elaborate on this? What are some examples of skills you think are now essential, that prior have been taken for granted or obviated in some way?

My rule of thumb is that if you’re not measuring anything you’re not engineering. It’s not the whole picture, but to me the engineering part sometimes means being able to explain (and even quantify) why one solution is better than another.
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