Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills • Hacker News Board

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#71

Post by marginalia_nu » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #55

marginalia_nu wrote: post #17

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 mult…

The shift is from tarpit to unemployment. A Jira ticket processing dev still has use. Probably not for much longer.

Doubt we'll see that in the short term. Long term, possibly, especially if you add a financial crisis.

Truth is most larger software development organizations could have even before LLMs downsized significantly and not lost much productivity.

The X formerly known as Twitter did this and has been chugging along on a fraction on its original staff count. It's had some brand problems since its acquisition, but those are more due to Mr Musk's eccentricities and political ventures than the engineering team.

The reason this hasn't happened to any wider degree is quarterly capitalism and institutional inertia. Looks weird to the investors if the organization claims to be doing well but is also slashing its employee count by 90%. Even if you bring a new CEO in that has these ideas, the org chart will fight it with tooth and nail as managers would lose reportees and clout.

Consultancies in particular are incredibly inefficient by design since they make more money if they take more time and bring a larger headcount to the task: They don't sell productivity, but man hours. Hence horrors like SAFe.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#72

Post by echelon » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

benttoothpaste wrote: post #58

I've heard this "soft skills are the only skills that matter" thing throughout my entire career but these days this is indeed greatly amplified. Our CEO started sharing screenshots of his xitter/linkedin feeds and most of them contain wisdoms like "Opus 4.5 is better than 90% of talent". There is also longer form business fan fiction. It usually follows this template: there is a hero - a humble manager/sales person,…

Two things can be true:

- You can have a horrible CEO that doesn't value their employees and is trying to devalue labor.

- AI coding tools can be incredible exoskeletons in the hands of skilled engineers and enable them to get much more work done.

Perhaps the real "SaaS-killer" is innovation capital [1] realizing it can take advantage of the various forms of arbitrage and changing of the guards happening now, raise venture capital, and take on the old and slow management-driven businesses.

If you've ever had the itch to fire your boss, now's the time. It's a hard path, there are way more hats to wear, but the dry powder is out there waiting to be deployed.

[1] ICs in both senses of the acronym.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#73

Post by kube-system » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

ambicapter wrote: post #57

lolive wrote: post #19

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.

The trouble isn't that they would convince me with their reality distortion (they don't), the issue is that they are satisfied with their "progress" while I'm still asking crucial questions (which they ignore, b/c they don't see the importance).

Part of the soft skills that are useful for a developer is being able to frame your crucial questions in a way that makes their importance relevant to their world.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#74

Post by cyanydeez » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #12

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 thing…

Often it means being a sociopath

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#75

Post by kube-system » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

qoez wrote: post #18

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.

On the other hand, the increase in remote roles has made this a bit easier for some.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#76

Post by kube-system » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

netdur wrote: post #13

calculators doing a perfect job did not end accountants' jobs, it made it faster.

I don’t think that’s as good of an example as you think it is.

“Computer” used to be a job title. It was entirely replaced by … drumroll … electronic computers, i.e. calculators.

Technology doesn’t usually eliminate the need for a job output in general but it can sometimes shift the skills needed wildly.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#77

Post by EGreg » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:15 PM UTC

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.

Look, if we zoom in, then "learning to code" is also quite a broad range of skills that someone needs to master before they can meaningfully carve out a career in a competitive marketplace.

The point is that if you zoom out, it's just a thin slice that can be automated by machines. People keep saying "I'll tell you in my experience, no UAV will ever trump a pilot's instinct, his insight, the ability to look into a situation beyond the obvious and discern the outcome, or a pilot's judgment"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZygApeuBZdk

But as you can see, they're all wrong. By narrow here I meant a thin layer that thinks it's indispensable as they remove all the other layers. Until the system comes for this layer too.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#78

Post by cindyllm » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:15 PM UTC

CrulesAll wrote: post #10

flitzofolov wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Beyond engineering itself, strictly computer engineering? How many coders have no idea what goes on behind an IDE. Have not even the slightest notion how a computer works. Who thinks building a computer means watching a Youtube video and buying ready made parts, putting them together, and then think they should be employed by NASA. To begin: Math, Linux, Devops, C, and Assembly. Not a youtube video. Not arithmetic. L…

[dead]

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#79

Post by ndriscoll » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #60

CrulesAll wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"software engineers are going to have to get better at thinking in larger abstractions" ........Math was first on my list. I don't know how else to say that.

Computer science is indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced maths. The AI can already do that part. The abstraction that matters going forward, is understanding why the abstraction chosen by the AI does or doesn't match the one needed by the customer's "big picture". The AI is a bit too self-congratulatory in that regard, even if it can sometimes spot its own mistakes.

A lot of studying math is just learning jargon and applications for what are actually pretty straightforward concepts, which lets you better communicate with the computer. You get higher bandwidth communication and better ability to know all of the nuances in things it might propose. You can propose things and understand when it replies with nuances you missed.

Like intro differential geometry is basically a deep dive into what one actually does when reading a paper map. Something everyone (over 30?) is familiar with. But it turns out there's plenty to fill a graduate level tome on that topic.

Linear algebra is basically studying easy problems: y=ax. Plenty to write about how to make your problem (or at least parts of it) fit that mould.

I suspect and think I've seen others say that you get better outputs from LLMs when using jargon. Essentialy, its pattern matching tells it to say what an expert would say when using the terminology experts use.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#80

Post by binary132 » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

benttoothpaste wrote: post #58

I've heard this "soft skills are the only skills that matter" thing throughout my entire career but these days this is indeed greatly amplified. Our CEO started sharing screenshots of his xitter/linkedin feeds and most of them contain wisdoms like "Opus 4.5 is better than 90% of talent". There is also longer form business fan fiction. It usually follows this template: there is a hero - a humble manager/sales person,…

Once upon a time a clever software engineer realized that engineering talent is the fuel which the business relies on to support its revenue growth, and management is for facilitating this process, while the CEO’s purpose is to be blamed when it doesn’t work out. He wrote a small bash script which replaced corporate leadership with a “quote of the day” generator and everyone lived happily ever after.