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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

#271

Post by u8080 »

winternett wrote: post #218
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…

McDonalds and Taco Bell tried to get rid of their "soft skills" (AKA customer service} and look how they're doing right now... Endless stores that all look & feel the same -- uncomfortable seats, no happy families around for longer than 10 minutes, longer drive-thru lines, and impersonal & impatient staff that avoids customers like the plague. Evangelists will preach Ai because it's good for corporations that don't c…

>uncomfortable seats, no happy families around for longer than 10 minutes

Which is probably also net positive for business - similar to loud music in the pubs is a deliberate choice so people could focus on drinking rather than talking?

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#272

Post by ambicapter »

mawadev wrote: post #251
ambicapter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it's a myth promoted by engineers with poor soft skills to justify themselves never learning said skills.

How do you learn soft skills? Maybe you have a point there

Watching other people do it better than you, or reading about it and trying things yourself would be two ways I can think of.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#273

Post by Balinares »

luckylion wrote: post #181
thfuran wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most of my peers would rather work with brilliant jerk than a friendly average person. If that’s true, you work somewhere very strange. Almost everyone hates dealing with assholes.

People want results. Brilliant assholes produce those, so you tolerate the annoying parts. Would be great if they were also kind, but I'll take a house built by an asshole over a tent erected by a friendly person. It's not a dichotomy, obviously. There are plenty of very smart people who are also pleasant to be around. But if they're either strong in soft skills _or_ in hard skills, I prefer them being asshole over t…

Hard disagree. I've yet to see a "brilliant asshole" with anywhere near the kind results I expect from my teams. The usual pattern is your typical asshole will ship broken stuff and then blame everyone else for the breakages.

Now, average assholes who self-promote as brilliant and hope no one will see through their crap, sure, plenty of those. I'd recommend against failing to see through their crap, though. They'll make your actually good engineers leave.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#274

Post by ethbr1 »

woooooo wrote: post #266
ethbr1 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The soft skills involved in doing that wind up being completely invisible to the status universe. Are you referring to the work the managers are doing or the devs are doing as being invisible?

Both, actually, but in the case I'm thinking of the devs with the strongest leadership skills in terms of organizing their peers to make things happen were completely invisible to management who were playing a different game. Just like their game was invisible to the devs shipping product, who didn't understand the implications on their careers. Saw a couple of great unofficial leaders get fired and a bunch more leav…

I was trying to subtly point out that the information asymmetry goes both ways: most devs aren't aware of what their managers are doing for the team either. More transparency in both directions is healthy (and skip-level meetings, for god's sake).

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#275

Post by woooooo »

ethbr1 wrote: post #274
woooooo wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both, actually, but in the case I'm thinking of the devs with the strongest leadership skills in terms of organizing their peers to make things happen were completely invisible to management who were playing a different game. Just like their game was invisible to the devs shipping product, who didn't understand the implications on their careers. Saw a couple of great unofficial leaders get fired and a bunch more leav…

I was trying to subtly point out that the information asymmetry goes both ways: most devs aren't aware of what their managers are doing for the team either. More transparency in both directions is healthy (and skip-level meetings, for god's sake).

Yeah, I hear you and I also added a parenthetical that the incentives aren't always the same.

In an organization of high-minded individuals, the information asymmetry goes both ways, I've been a manager and a dev and I tried to be high-minded and do my best to smooth that assymetry for the greater good in both roles.

But sometimes, especially the last 3-4 years since it got tough, there's a lot of people trying to hold on by any means necessary. Information asymmetry isn't the problem there, it's incentive assymetry. What if you're just not that good at tech and got promoted to 1st, maybe 2nd level manager in the good years? What's your incentive?

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#276

Post by lolive »

kube-system wrote: post #227
marcosdumay wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember, technical workers, you must grind all you soft skills in addition to the technical ones, so that you can successfully interact with those people hired exclusively to use their soft skills.

Engineers just need to have good enough soft skills to effectively communicate. Engineers who struggle to do that are just as bad at their job as business managers who aren’t technical enough to operate Microsoft Office. There’s a minimum of both hard and soft skills that anyone in a professional environment should have.

Bizness needs to understand that scalable reliable durable solutions take time to craft properly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9wn633vl_c

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#277

Post by kube-system »

lolive wrote: post #276
kube-system wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers just need to have good enough soft skills to effectively communicate. Engineers who struggle to do that are just as bad at their job as business managers who aren’t technical enough to operate Microsoft Office. There’s a minimum of both hard and soft skills that anyone in a professional environment should have.

Bizness needs to understand that scalable reliable durable solutions take time to craft properly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9wn633vl_c

Engineers need to understand that those requirements don’t apply to every project.

https://res.cloudinary.com/monday-blogs/w_1000,h_561,c_fit/f...

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#278

Post by hatmike »

Animats wrote: post #97

It won't help. LLMs are good at soft skills, too. There's a whole "AI girlfriend" industry, and it's quite successful.

Confidently stating incorrect information and unilaterally agreeing with someone until they develop psychosis are not, in fact, desirable soft skills.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#280

Post by luckylion »

lwhi wrote: post #247
luckylion wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the outside, the difference is hard to tell, isn't it? Between neuro-diversity and genuine unpleasantness -- isn't it mostly that one has a diagnosis (that you know of) and the other does not? You might change your moral judgement of someone's behavior if you find out they have this or that condition (at least I do), but it doesn't change how their behavior impacts you, does it? If it did, I think the best you cou…

As someone who's neurodiverse myself, I do want to agree with this. Having said that, I do think it's possible for someone to choose to be an asshole and be neurodiverse at the same time. I wouldn't ever want my neurodiversity to be a free pass for any type of behaviour myself.

I generally struggle with the idea of someone actually choosing to be an asshole, I assume there's usually an unseen cause.

E.g. I work with someone who seems very normal, is very professional, and I have no reason to believe that they area neurodiverse in any way. They once were very direct in a ticket towards a different team. Did they choose to be an asshole, or were they losing their last ounce of patience and politeness because they've been carrying a mountain of responsibility and stress? I think it's very difficult to tell that apart, or to judge based on "well, they could have not taken on that responsibility so they're liable for anything that is a consequence of it".

I don't consider it a free pass, but there's a lot more understanding for things that are outside your control. Where we see that line of control probably determines whether we judge someone harshly or not.

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