Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills • Hacker News Board

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#301

Post by robocat » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 4:01 AM UTC

robocat wrote: post #125

marginalia_nu wrote: post #17

The sort of people who have been able to neglect their soft skills are probably still going to be able to do so in the future. But those were always the extreme intelligence outliers, generational talent type figures. For most software engineers, neglect of soft skills have always been a career tarpit that leads nowhere you want to end up. Being able to navigate social settings and to communicate well is a force mult…

> [people without soft skills] were always the extreme intelligence outliers This is a B-player myth. High intelligence makes you better at soft skills. People are complex, and being good at soft skills takes intelligence, intelligence to intuit the importance and see the patterns of soft skills. It is true that if you have high skills that a business needs, you can choose to ignore many internal norms of dress or et…

To add - their comment about socially prickly smart devs (my paraphrase) makes me think they are referencing the mad genius stereotype (crazy artist, Aspie developer, etcetera).

Are rudeness and crazyness markers of intelligence? is Terry Davis a good or bad example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105215

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#302

Post by lolive » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #300

lolive wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does an engineer know that he is involved in a bozo-driven PoC or in a technical deathtrap that will end up as the core business of the company?

Again, by communicating. If someone doesn't know what they are building, who they are building it for, and why -- then they do not have a solid grasp of the requirements.

Never saw a subcontracting requirement document, stating "the solution is for a bozo-project. so don't spend ages making it robust for the future"

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#303

Post by kube-system » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 10:16 PM UTC

lolive wrote: post #302

kube-system wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, by communicating. If someone doesn't know what they are building, who they are building it for, and why -- then they do not have a solid grasp of the requirements.

Never saw a subcontracting requirement document, stating "the solution is for a bozo-project. so don't spend ages making it robust for the future"

Effectively communicating as an engineer is not “reading a requirements document”.

If you’re just blindly implementing someone else tech spec, you’re not doing any engineering, you’re just programming.

Re: Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

#304

Post by ethbr1 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

ragall wrote: post #293

ethbr1 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! The "How does a bad manager with a good team ever get identified/fired?" problem is something more companies should have an answer to. That's why I think skip-levels check-ins and direct reports regularly anonymously rating their manager (via HR) should be the starting place at all companies. Otherwise, toxic (or just underperforming) managers stay in their positions longer than is good for the company.

Most employees are incapable of rating their manager. They can complain or praise, but they're not competent to judge whether the manager is competent. There's an interesting parallel to the advice often given for "lean" startups, of never taking seriously the customers' feature requests, only their complaints. Most customers know their own pain points but aren't capable of suggesting good general solutions that can…

> Most employees are incapable of rating their manager. They can complain or praise, but they're not competent to judge whether the manager is competent.

Disagree. I think most employees are qualified to judge whether their manager facilitates or hinders their team's work.

Servant-leader is one (among many competing) valuable manager traits because it does press managers to align part of their focus on enabling their team to get work done, instead of simply taking credit for work their team does without manager involvement.

Sure, you're going to get volatility in direct reports' rankings of their manager (versus an objective truth), but...

(a) You get that with manager rankings of their direct reports too

(b) Individual rankings aren't the signal: the signal is median ratings. If managers have entire teams that universally hate them, that's not noise