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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

#81

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #29
karczex wrote: post #28

So I opened this article to find out at the very beginning, that author put's a lot of money to AI providers... So probably also used it to write this article. So, according to the rule "text which is not worth of spending time on writing is also no worth of reading" I closed it.

I found out that the author of a blog post paid a maid to clean their house, and sends their laundry out. Therefore, the blog post was written by the maid, or one of the laundromat employees. So I closed it.

Err, no, the equivalent would be if the author had written an article about laundry, and how important it is to pay attention to all the details... then you realize the photo of his laundry still has a tag on it from the laundromat.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#82

Post by sigotirandolas »

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 hope this too but it's not a given, IMO. Previously people without technical chops failed quickly by being unable to deliver working code, now they can deliver mediocre code with the damage only becoming clear years later. It breaks the "can deliver code --> good technical ability" proxy and even after the initial damage wave, it's unclear if we will find a better proxy.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#83

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

LatencyKills wrote: post #7
anon946 wrote: post #2

The irony here is that universities are struggling to teach writing skills, due to massive cheating with AI.

I mentor CS students at two local universities. The best students are using gen ai to enhance their learning and understanding (i.e. they use it as a tool instead of a crutch). The worst students are using it in attempt to “level the playing field” and are failing miserably. It is easy to determine if someone solved a problem using AI because they can’t explain or recreate “their” solution. Detecting cheating in essa…

You could probably detect essay cheating (AI written) in the exact same way by questioning the student about it - why did they organize the essay in this way, what was their motivation for focusing on X, or expressing something as Y... Of course anyone can concoct an explanation on the fly, but it should be obvious if they are speaking from the experience of having authored it or just coming up with a post-hoc rationalization.

If they had AI write the essay, yet can still explain it as well as if they had written it themselves (ditto for code), then it would tend to indicate that they at least read it and thought about it, which I think should be more acceptable in a learning environment.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#84

Post by Havoc »

shevy-java wrote: post #27

> Today, I use Claude Code for almost all non-trivial programming tasks and have spent $500+ on it just last December. Truthfully, I don't want to get advice from people who become addicted to AI, sorry. The money investment that person did, already leaves me with tons of questions.

Best to also avoid people with LSP and debugger addiction.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#85

Post by sbrother »

MattGaiser wrote: post #37
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…

There are plenty of devs who do nothing beyond taking a Jira ticket scoped by others, implementing it, and then grabbing the next ticket. While they may not have been very successful, they did have a place.

I've heard this, and I've even seen it in plenty of poorly performing businesses, but I've never actually seen it in a highly performing, profitable tech company. Other than at the new grad level but it's treated as net-negative training while they learn how to build consensus and scope out work.

Not coincidentally, the places I've seen this approach to work are the same places that have hired me as a consultant to bring an effective team to build something high priority or fix a dumpster fire.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#86

Post by mikewarot »

Unless you're buried deep in an organization, the main value that programmers provide is to help translate the needs of a business into a program that, when compiled, creates a reliable artifact that, when executed, works reliably and is easy to use.

Writing code is just how that happens, sometimes. Soft skills are essential to communication with the users and product managers.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#87

Post by Xelbair »

qoez wrote: post #70
Xelbair wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry but is being employed a job or a daycare? Not only this is extremely patronizing towards all people on spectrum, but at the same time extremely hurtful statement for people who are treating employment as a job(ie - most of population). And what are you going to say to people who are stuck in low-end jobs?

I'm on the spectrum to be clear

[flagged]

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#88

Post by networkadmin »

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?

How about the skill of saving hard disk space, memory, and CPU cycles, for a start? The skill of designing simple, reliable, fast, and efficient things, instead of giant complex bloated unreliable pieces of shit? How about a simple, usable web page that doesn't drag my machine to a crawl, despite its supercomputer-like ability to process billions of instructions per second and hold billions of bytes of data in working memory?

Remember when BIOS computers used to boot in seconds, reliably? When chat clients didn't require an embedded copy of Chromium? When appliances and automobiles didn't fall apart in 6 months, costing thousands to "repair" or just needing to be thrown away and bought again?

Remember when there used to be these things called "machine shops" and "Radio Shacks" and "parts stores" that people who built things frequented? Now most people have to call AAA if they get a flat tire. Changing their own oil is out of the question. "Eww, dirty oil, on my clean fingernails?" Many couldn't tell you which end is which on a screwdriver if their life depended on it.

I'd say these concepts are pretty essential, especially for any nation entertaining delusions of waging Total War against other big and powerful nations. Wasteful and foolish nations lose wars.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#89

Post by veyh »

miav wrote: post #66
MattGaiser wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of devs who do nothing beyond taking a Jira ticket scoped by others, implementing it, and then grabbing the next ticket. While they may not have been very successful, they did have a place.

Is this genuinely common? I’ve only ever seen that level of hand holding extended to new grad hires.

I have 13 years of professional experience, and I work in a small company (15 people). Apart from one or two weekly meetings, I mostly just work on stuff independently. I'm the solo developer for a number of projects ranging from embedded microcontrollers to distributed backend systems. There's very little handholding; it's more like requirements come in, and results come out.

I have been part of some social circles before but they were always centered around a common activity like a game, and once that activity went away, so did those connections.

As I started working on side hustles, it occurred to me that not having any kind of social network (not even social media accounts) may have added an additional level of difficulty.

I am still working on the side hustles, though.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#90

Post by JohnnyMarcone »

echelon wrote: post #72
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 v…

It's also the fun path! Although I think we should acknowledge that most don't have the means to do this. For engineers with a high salary I would advise saving as much as possible so you have more agency.
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