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Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

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Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#11

Post by Judgmentality »

bitL wrote: post #5

Given many folks use tech to escape real-world interaction with messy, untrustworthy and corrupt people, finding their fantasy world in getting awesome things done, I doubt the hard skills will be replaced by soft ones. This is actually a symptom of sociopathic tendencies taking over tech which is a marker for "dark ages" coming, and neutralizing any progress coming from tech. The sociopaths finally figured out tech…

You've clearly got an axe to grind. The idea that sociopaths didn't exist in tech before is pretty easy to disprove, unless you think Steve Jobs was a benevolent person. Not to mention Ellison, Kalanick, Khosla, and honestly the list is endless (venture capitalists are famous for being assholes, many would say it's an asset to doing their job).

Money attracts assholes, I don't think many people would argue with that (although I'd honestly be interested in hearing arguments against this). So if your goal is to keep them away, then just make sure to never monetize your product.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#12

Post by alexashka »

bitL wrote: post #8
watwut wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech is full of messy, untrustworthy and corrupt people. There was never lack of sociopaths or bad actors in tech, no less then anywhere else. We are however, fond of telling ourselves that we are better then everyone else.

Sure, but our industry was never as corrupt as e.g. finances, doing back-channel financing of atrocities like wars/genocides, buying politicians to bypass popular sentiment, setting up drug distribution centers and prostitution rings nearby so that their employees can kill their inner humanity and have reward for corrupting themselves. My fear is that we are becoming the same and that change is happening right now.

And what do you propose?

It doesn't take much to poke holes in the way things are - it's a lot harder to do something about it, other than 'raising awareness' aka complaining.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#14

Post by draw_down »

Some people will construct elaborate reasoning for why they don't need to treat others with basic respect and dignity instead of just getting over themselves. When you find yourself saying, to yourself or others, "why should I have to...", consider that maybe you should just take the feedback and do what is being asked.

On the other hand, part of the experience of the corporate workplace (in America at least) is being coerced into pretending that indignities inflicted by your superiors are actually good. So, you know. As usual we end up focusing on what workers need to do differently, but rarely on what bosses need to do or stop doing.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#15

Post by bitL »

specializeded wrote: post #10
abusoufiyan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't most people use tech to argue with each other on the Internet?

We also use it to construct theories about sociopaths infiltrating the industry and realigning the biggest players’ cultures to better suit their sociopath interests when someone suggests people skills might not be irrelevant.

Soft skills are often used as beating sticks on techies by the rest of populace; it's the usual "socially-clueless nerd" song we hear all the time, like we couldn't take care of ourselves. Don't tell me you didn't notice people that lack skills needed for their jobs diverting their attention to their strong aspects, like being "political", and trying to hack other people to believe that their skills are what actually matters instead of hard skills coming from years of practice and suffering. It's like the oldest play in the book, divert attention from your own shortcoming and negate what is important. Due to "nerds being clueless", it actually often works, which is sad.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#16

Post by watwut »

bitL wrote: post #8
watwut wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech is full of messy, untrustworthy and corrupt people. There was never lack of sociopaths or bad actors in tech, no less then anywhere else. We are however, fond of telling ourselves that we are better then everyone else.

Sure, but our industry was never as corrupt as e.g. finances, doing back-channel financing of atrocities like wars/genocides, buying politicians to bypass popular sentiment, setting up drug distribution centers and prostitution rings nearby so that their employees can kill their inner humanity and have reward for corrupting themselves. My fear is that we are becoming the same and that change is happening right now.

IBM designed and maintained those machines that facilitated holocaust. Meaning, a lot of techies were on a place installing, training users and seeing wagons and facilities. Not just management. NSA spying runs on techies and backdoors don't make themselves. Blackhat is a thing too. Tech does not have as much power as finances through.

But most importantly, on the single average engineer level, which is more relevant, there are plenty of companies with backstabbing culture or individual bad actors in companies with otherwise good culture. For example, I have seen engineers badmouth other peoples work not because it would be bad, but to make themselves look good in comparison. Etc.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#17

Post by RoutinePlayer »

I wish the piece had been better edited to lead with a definitions of soft/hard skills, then a topic sentence for the thesis, then supporting arguments. There may be some good nuggets here, but it just feels like there's just rambling on and on.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#18

Post by quotemstr »

The recent trend toward replacing technical acumen with "soft skills" is disturbing.

Let's dispense with a strawman: of course interacting with other people is necessary. But there are lots of people out there who said the "tech stuff" is easy and it's the coordination and empathy and stuff that's the real challenge. That's a dangerous perspective no matter which of the two ways you interpret it.

One interpretation is that you really don't think that technical quality is important. In this case, you'll end up getting complacent on quality, ship crap, and open yourself up to competition. You'll be in good company if you go this route: it's part of the reason big companies inevitably decay and get outcompeted by smaller, newer ones. (Notice how a lot of this "soft skills only" crap comes from big companies with products having enough inertia to last a while at a low quality level?)

The other interpretation is most insidious: you do recognize that technical excellence matters, but want to redirect credit to non-technical managers. This phenomenon is a huge problem outside tech; it goes back at least as far as Edison. We shouldn't be in a hurry to import this problem into our own field.

The truth is that in our field, there's a wide distribution of skill levels, and some technical problems go from "impossible" to "routine" once your technical people pass a certain skill and quality bar. Soft skills do not get you over this quality bar. Actual technical knowledge does.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#19

Post by bitL »

alexashka wrote: post #12
bitL wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but our industry was never as corrupt as e.g. finances, doing back-channel financing of atrocities like wars/genocides, buying politicians to bypass popular sentiment, setting up drug distribution centers and prostitution rings nearby so that their employees can kill their inner humanity and have reward for corrupting themselves. My fear is that we are becoming the same and that change is happening right now.

And what do you propose? It doesn't take much to poke holes in the way things are - it's a lot harder to do something about it, other than 'raising awareness' aka complaining.

There are some things ongoing by people that realize what is happening, for example in the blockchain space. Blockchain beside attempting to solve cool tech problem of Byzantine generals was also motivated by increasing transparency, i.e. removing or disclosing corruption by money means. There is more work done right now to prevent dominant intermediaries like Amazon from increasingly abusing their position by removing the need to use their platform at all and move it to a p2p blockchain instead. There are now options to (or at least try to) put an end to millenia of horrible human behavior.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#20

Post by bitL »

watwut wrote: post #16
bitL wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but our industry was never as corrupt as e.g. finances, doing back-channel financing of atrocities like wars/genocides, buying politicians to bypass popular sentiment, setting up drug distribution centers and prostitution rings nearby so that their employees can kill their inner humanity and have reward for corrupting themselves. My fear is that we are becoming the same and that change is happening right now.

IBM designed and maintained those machines that facilitated holocaust. Meaning, a lot of techies were on a place installing, training users and seeing wagons and facilities. Not just management. NSA spying runs on techies and backdoors don't make themselves. Blackhat is a thing too. Tech does not have as much power as finances through. But most importantly, on the single average engineer level, which is more relevant…

I guess most of those techies were on "need to know" basis, likely clueless about what was going really on and only the key players (bosses) were corrupt and aware. It's hard for many techies, by nature idealists, to fully grasp how the world truly works, until they are disposed of when their usefulness ends, or they have first-hand experience from war/hit or even from approaching share vesting date and their company going fully into Game-of-Thrones mode etc.
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