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Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

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Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#21

Post by gt_ »

jschwartzi wrote: post #4
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #3

While I broadly agree with the author's characterization and summary of the importance of "real" soft skills, that seems to be a tiny slice of how the term is used. I've seen discussions of soft skills cover a ridiculously broad assortment of actual skills, cultural sensitivities, in-group identity behaviors, personality traits, and neurological aptitudes. Without being a lot clearer about the scope, I think there's…

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, consideration, honesty.

‘Empathy’ as a term actually has a shaky and very recent etymology which reflects some of the contradictions it plays into. A loose translation of it’s origins is to express sympathy, which has a slight technical from what it means now, because it has been widely adopted as dignified form of sympathy. The difference from the classical term sympathy is that empathy is more correlated with communication than intention. Why has it gained in popularity? A socio-cultural argument might center on the fact that empathy carries less vulnerability than sympathy. There are some serious implications here.

The general problem with the focus on empathy is the loss of a bigger picture concern with being sincere. It’s analogous to short-term concerns vs. long-term concerns, where short-term concern is to provide immediate comfort and long-term concern is to provide sustainment and survival. A highly social workplace will value immediate social relations like expression of compassion while overlooking important long term values like honesty and less-empathetic forms of sympathy.

Ideally, we would maintain both, but these simplifications of the issue are unlikely to support that outcome.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#22

Post by tbrownaw »

bitL wrote: post #15
specializeded wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Don't tell me you didn't notice people that lack skills needed for their jobs diverting their attention to their strong aspects

...you mean like pretending that only the easy stuff (interacting with the machine) matters, and all the complicated hard-to-understand things about interacting usefully with other humans are completely irrelevant? :)

instead of hard skills coming from years of practice and suffering

Um, no, the "hard" skills come from playing with the machine and solving puzzles for fun. They're not "hard" as in "not easy", it's as in "not fuzzy".

Due to "nerds being clueless", it actually often works, which is sad.

I do not appreciate your insults to my status as a competent adult.

Are you sure you're as much on the side of the "nerds" as you pretend to be?

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#23

Post by watwut »

bitL wrote: post #20
watwut wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nope, there is quite detailed book on that. They were on place, in Germany and occupied territories. Installing machines, designing punch cards with cooperation of users and training users. Some machines were directly in concentration camps and some on railways used to transport Jews. If you got there to maintain, you seen them. Some were used to sort people by race on occupied territories - and even if you not knew about holocaust you knew it is about finding and mistreating Jews. That much was clear to contemporaries.

Bosses were aware and managed operation. That is true.

> It's hard for many techies, by nature idealists, to fully grasp how the world truly works

Not all techies are idealists and it is not necessary to be idealist to have good hard skills. Also, idealists tend to be focused a bit less on those hard skills then pragmatics (being attracted to ideals). While some techies (on the spectrum) have hard time to grasp world, many many don't. Those who do were less likely to get goodies.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#24

Post by darkerside »

bitL wrote: post #20
watwut wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh the poor little innocent ingenues! /s

Techies aren't idiots (any more so than anyone else).

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#25

Post by moduspol »

Judgmentality wrote: post #11
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…

I think parent poster is drawing a distinction between sociopathy toward capitalistic ends (i.e. making money, providing something of value to someone) and sociopathy toward ideological ends (e.g. social justice, trying to reform the world to be as one believes it should).

We always knew about the former, and it's in every industry. The latter is the more recent (and relevant) phenomenon.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#26

Post by tome »

watwut wrote: post #23
bitL wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nope, there is quite detailed book on that. They were on place, in Germany and occupied territories. Installing machines, designing punch cards with cooperation of users and training users. Some machines were directly in concentration camps and some on railways used to transport Jews. If you got there to maintain, you seen them. Some were used to sort people by race on occupied territories - and even if you not knew…

Do you have any references for that? I'm quite incredulous that American IBM employees were on place, in Germany and occupied territories, during a time that America was engaged in war with Germany.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#27

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

I don't understand what are these soft skills the author is talking about. To me, it seems like he's talking about manipulating and deceiving people. Why is it good for a manager to be skilled at creating the impression that he/she respects his reports?

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#28

Post by skybrian »

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…

Who is arguing for "soft skills only"? Haven't seen that so far.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#29

Post by tbrownaw »

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…

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.

Yes, hard technical skills are absolutely necessary for "building the thing right". The necessary level of skill depends on what that thing is.

But there's also "building the right thing", and that is a completely different set of skills. Many of which get lumped into the "soft skills" bucket.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#30

Post by tome »

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…

> A sociopath has high empathy. Do you want a sociopath as your manager?

You appear to be falling into some logical fallacy here.

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