Hard and Soft Skills in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#101

Post by xkcd-sucks » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 5:45 AM UTC

rosser wrote: post #36

quotemstr wrote: post #18

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 i…

Please cite examples of calls for "replacing" hard skills with soft. That's far more a straw man than the one you "dispense with" — conveniently distracting from your own, I might add. I'm hearing a call for recognizing their value as complementary and essential in their own, independent ways. Soft skills do not supplant hard skills, but either is worth less without the other. If you're arguing against that, then you…

I've seen 'soft' vs 'hard' skills treated as a constant-sum quantity, e.g. somebody who conclusively demonstrates hard skills must not have soft skills so they must be a bad person to work with, won't be able to teach/learn, probably works badly in a team, etc. This is in the context of hiring meetings to discuss candidates. Interestingly, the opposite isn't as strong: a candidate with soft skills is presumed capable of picking up hard skills quickly, although it doesn't actually happened in most of these hires

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#102

Post by heeton » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 7:37 AM UTC

emmelaich wrote: post #93

heeton wrote: post #46

I’ve stopped calling these “soft” skills, especially when hiring in the last year. They’re anything but soft, and no less important to a team.

I've seen that argument before and I don't think it is helpful. You're associating the word soft with easy and hard with difficult -- which is part of the problem. Soft skills are difficult for many.

I don’t associate hard/soft with difficult like that (I personally find soft skills difficult), but this is a good example of how the terms are ripe for misunderstanding.

I try to use communication or personal or interpersonal skills, etc.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#103

Post by kenhwang » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 10:24 AM UTC

ericd wrote: post #65

kenhwang wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

engineer w/only soft skills = management. Managers have their value too, but you can't only have managers.

I'd infinitely prefer a manager with at least some hard skills than one with none. My most frustrating managers were the ones you describe, because they just weren't at all qualified to make decisions about what we were doing. I don't think I'm alone among engineers in that opinion.

Preferring a manager with hard skills is like preferring an engineer with soft skills. It makes everything so much smoother. Similarly, I'd argue that a manager with only soft skills is as frustrating to work with as an engineer with only hard skills. They're functional, but it's not anywhere near ideal.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#104

Post by jschwartzi » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 12:34 PM UTC

gt_ wrote: post #21

jschwartzi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly soft skills represent your ability to react rationally and appropriately to your own emotions and to the emotions of others--even emotions that you're anticipating and not just experiencing. The most basic soft skill in my mind is empathy, which is your ability to anticipate how others will feel in a given situation. If you're not capable of empathy I do not want you as my manager.

Be careful with the term ‘empathy’. The contemporary use of this word (reflected in your definition) conflates a few different concepts in a potentially confusing manner. An ability to predict how others feel can be used, to put it simply, for both good and evil. A sociopath has high empathy. Do you want a sociopath as your manager? A better set of characteristics to look for might be: sympathy, compassion, considera…

Look, if I'm managing someone I need to understand why asking them to work weekends upsets them. Being able to do this doesn't automatically make me a sociopath. What would make me a sociopath is asking them to do it anyway and then leaving early to go play golf. In other words not caring about them makes me a sociopath.

Sympathy requires you to feel the emotions of others which is often done to an unhealthy degree. Understanding how someone feels and feeling how they feel are different and should be treated with different words. It's good to work to understand others, but that doesn't mean you have to become them. And just because I don't share your feelings it doesn't mean I don't think they're valid. It just means I'm not you and I'm free to make my own choices.

I will often still choose to help you, but I'm not taking ownership of your problem.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#105

Post by gt_ » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #104

gt_ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful with the term ‘empathy’. The contemporary use of this word (reflected in your definition) conflates a few different concepts in a potentially confusing manner. An ability to predict how others feel can be used, to put it simply, for both good and evil. A sociopath has high empathy. Do you want a sociopath as your manager? A better set of characteristics to look for might be: sympathy, compassion, considera…

Look, if I'm managing someone I need to understand why asking them to work weekends upsets them. Being able to do this doesn't automatically make me a sociopath. What would make me a sociopath is asking them to do it anyway and then leaving early to go play golf. In other words not caring about them makes me a sociopath. Sympathy requires you to feel the emotions of others which is often done to an unhealthy degree.…

feeling sympathy for another != feeling first-person experience

feeling sympathy != taking responsibility

The difference between the terms’ meanings is beyond mere emphasis, but it still falls short of occupying the subject’s bodily consciousness.

Look at the spectrum of bonds between family members for reference. Caring for one another to varying degrees is not so strange for most people. It is just becoming less common in public and business relationships.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#106

Post by Viliam1234 » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 2:00 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #53

rosser wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "soft skills are more valuable than hard" is not what I read in that article. It sounds more to me like degrees in STEM correlate less well with success at Google than people expected. Not "negatively" — "less positively", and merely less positively than people anticipated. So what was the "wrong" here? People's assumptions . This is my surprised face. But I'm probably biased to read it more generously than some…

> if you're arguing against that, then you're part of the problem That's in incredibly dangerous and irresponsible thing to write. We need to entertain all arguments, not enshrine some things in untouchable dogma. Calling people personally awful for stating an argument --- instead of addressing the argument --- is the reason that today's public discourse is bonkers. The line I quoted above turns disagreement into a w…

>> if you're arguing against that, then you're part of the problem

> That's in incredibly dangerous and irresponsible thing to write.

Also quite ironic, in context of an article advising to "make sure that everyone’s voice is heard, and that important warnings don’t get lost because someone didn’t feel safe saying so". Because this is how the warnings get silenced.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#107

Post by Viliam1234 » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 2:39 PM UTC

emmelaich wrote: post #91

> The fact is that the kinds of “soft skills” we’re talking about aren’t the ones that come for free to anybody I wish that a certain ex-Googler could have been educated in these skills rather than being shown the door.

I imagine that the people who fired him are congratulating themselves on having great soft skills and making everyone feel safe.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#108

Post by 0xcde4c3db » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #48

tbrownaw wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. So, those small online stores didn't used to all be on Amazon or Ebay. Which means those platforms must be providing something that the store proprietors think is worth losing some of their independence over…

For example not being kicked out from a platform for no reason, because some MBA needs to fill their quarterly quota of kicked out 3rd party sellers? Not giving sales data on what is selling well to your competitor that in turn would start manufacturing their "essentials" line, copying your product, and undercutting you? Please read what is right now happening with Amazon and tell me you like what it is becoming. Ama…

> This is no longer feasible for most 3rd party sellers; instead Amazon is becoming very restrictive, siding with big brands, more and more rejecting honest businesses and locking them out of their platform.

I'd be interested in reading more detailed first-hand descriptions of this, but searching for some key phrases from your description is just bringing up irrelevant product links. It's seemingly at odds with the rampant counterfeiting and listing spam (to confirm that my experience isn't outdated, I just went to the "Unlocked Cell Phones" category, sorted by lowest price, and found a listing for "Example Product Title" by "Example Product Brand", available from 3 sellers) on Amazon. I guess it's conceivable that Amazon is good at logistics/infrastructure but flagrantly awful at the "marketplace" component.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#109

Post by bitL » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #108

bitL wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example not being kicked out from a platform for no reason, because some MBA needs to fill their quarterly quota of kicked out 3rd party sellers? Not giving sales data on what is selling well to your competitor that in turn would start manufacturing their "essentials" line, copying your product, and undercutting you? Please read what is right now happening with Amazon and tell me you like what it is becoming. Ama…

> This is no longer feasible for most 3rd party sellers; instead Amazon is becoming very restrictive, siding with big brands, more and more rejecting honest businesses and locking them out of their platform. I'd be interested in reading more detailed first-hand descriptions of this, but searching for some key phrases from your description is just bringing up irrelevant product links. It's seemingly at odds with the r…

They recently opened up their marketplace to junk sellers from China and India, then adjusted their automated ML to be super restrictive to sort out the junk, and honest US businesses are now treated the same way as junk Indian ones, getting kicked out on mere suspicions of violations (i.e. presumed to be guilty by default). I guess it doesn't matter to them.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#110

Post by zunger » Fri, Dec 29, 2017, 5:43 AM UTC

zug_zug wrote: post #7

tl; dr: 1. Author observes that he's witnessed a lot of emotional backlash to the suggestion that soft skills may outweigh hard skills in tech; suggests the emotionality of the reaction is indicative that engineers worry it just may be true. 2. Justifies the importance of soft skills by citing personal experience of teams of 100s+ people needing to be coordinated 3. Proposes that a [software] system's interaction wit…

On (2) -- I picked a personal anecdote, but I've seen this be very true on much smaller teams, as well. (Including, as it happens, AlphaGo! Think about what went in to creating the circumstances where it could be tested... they did some heroic labor)

On (3) -- not just UX! Interaction with the outside world is a feature of every aspect of how people will use (or misuse) the system.

(5) Totally agree that this is crucial. I did give a few examples (later in the article) but I think that coming up with a good taxonomy of these skills, and patterns for learning and teaching them, is a huge challenge going forward.

Many intuitions are useful: for example, you note that some people want more laughter at work, others don't. A good leader should be able to make that meta-analysis, figure out what the team needs, and create that. But needs to do what? How do we describe the (positive) effects of laughter that you're trying to capture?