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Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

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Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#71

Post by rosser »

PoachedSausage wrote: post #64
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…

The problem we have is that fewer and fewer people are choosing to pursue hard engineering skills, partly because they're, well, hard and partly because soft skills seem to provide an equal or better living. I have nothing against philosophers, musicians and poets, I spent most of today being entertained by them on the radio, but without the hard skills the comforts of civilisation like running water, electricity and…

It's, again, anecdotal, and no small amount of confirmation bias, but I've been a technologist for over 20 years now. In all that time, most of my favorite technical colleagues, including their "hard" skills, were film majors, sociologists, historians, &c.

You do not need a STEM degree to be an outstanding technologist, or even a competent one. Far and away, the most valuable skill for this kind of work is critical thinking, and I've never seen classes teaching that offered outside the "liberal arts".

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#72

Post by adrianratnapala »

u801e wrote: post #55
adrianratnapala wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to see it from the inside to be sure that this (rather than some other pathology) is going on, so I will give an example from my own work. I wrote a design program for [thingys] that were basically rectangles, but could have circular arcs instead of straight line edges. A user could fake a circle using two semicircles joined by zero length edges. The PM saw this and wanted a circular [thingy] feature. He cou…

Your example reminds me of this video [1] that (humorously) goes over a similar mismatch problem. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

Yes this is a classic, and I think I was first introduced to it when I was going through my fake-circle trauma. As ridiculous as it seems, it describes the real (mis)behaviour of people. But I feel there should be an equal and opposite video. Perhaps one where an engineer keeps producing solutions to problems nobody has. (An astroturf mower? A robot that goes to the gym for you?)

I think if you had both those videos and a convincing explanation of how they can both be truthful, the combination would great training material for everyone on a product team.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#73

Post by john_moscow »

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…

>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.

I would dare say this mechanism has been in trouble for the past decade or so and that's the root of the problem. If you're a large company with a sizable share in an established market, technical quality becomes secondary. It's customers' habits, compatibility and your sales budget that run the show. Until the market turns and you go bust, of course.

If you're quickly growing startup, the budget you can spend on growth (i.e. the amount you can raise) far outweighs the technical side. Efficiency? Investors don't care about that, they care about you making enough buzz and getting acquired (or IPOing) while you're still hot. They will get a return even if you never had a single profitable quarter.

Unfortunately, as much as we technical people hate this, I don't see any reason for the "IQ -> EQ" trend to be reversed anytime soon. Not in the current market. The only way out of this circus is making your own bootstrapped business.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#74

Post by quotemstr »

rosser wrote: post #71
PoachedSausage wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem we have is that fewer and fewer people are choosing to pursue hard engineering skills, partly because they're, well, hard and partly because soft skills seem to provide an equal or better living. I have nothing against philosophers, musicians and poets, I spent most of today being entertained by them on the radio, but without the hard skills the comforts of civilisation like running water, electricity and…

It's, again, anecdotal, and no small amount of confirmation bias, but I've been a technologist for over 20 years now. In all that time, most of my favorite technical colleagues, including their "hard" skills, were film majors, sociologists, historians, &c . You do not need a STEM degree to be an outstanding technologist, or even a competent one. Far and away, the most valuable skill for this kind of work is critical…

The bridge designer imagining failure modes for a new bridge design isn't critical thinking, but the liberal arts autoethnography about the colonial etiology of Daft Punk, that's critical thinking?

Reality is the opposite of your assertion: critical thinking is largely dead outside STEM, and that's because only in STEM does reality punish you for indulging sweet-sounding nonsense.

I've also met good developers over the course of over 20 years writing software. Many of them had no degree or an irrelevant degree. I respect them tremendously, but they're exceptions.

The kind of thinking that today's liberal arts departments encourage is contrary to the rigor needed to solve real engineering problems, and it's rare that you find in a single individual both a knack for the cold logic of engineering and the social sensitivity needed to succeed in a world of post-modern, post-logic quicksand.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#75

Post by mpweiher »

tome wrote: post #30
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…

> A sociopath has high empathy. Do you want a sociopath as your manager? You appear to be falling into some logical fallacy here.

What logical fallacy would that be?

https://www.google.de/search?q=ceo+sociopath+study

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#76

Post by [deleted] »

quotemstr wrote: post #74
rosser wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's, again, anecdotal, and no small amount of confirmation bias, but I've been a technologist for over 20 years now. In all that time, most of my favorite technical colleagues, including their "hard" skills, were film majors, sociologists, historians, &c . You do not need a STEM degree to be an outstanding technologist, or even a competent one. Far and away, the most valuable skill for this kind of work is critical…

The bridge designer imagining failure modes for a new bridge design isn't critical thinking, but the liberal arts autoethnography about the colonial etiology of Daft Punk, that's critical thinking? Reality is the opposite of your assertion: critical thinking is largely dead outside STEM, and that's because only in STEM does reality punish you for indulging sweet-sounding nonsense. I've also met good developers over t…

[deleted]

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#77

Post by rosser »

quotemstr wrote: post #74
rosser wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's, again, anecdotal, and no small amount of confirmation bias, but I've been a technologist for over 20 years now. In all that time, most of my favorite technical colleagues, including their "hard" skills, were film majors, sociologists, historians, &c . You do not need a STEM degree to be an outstanding technologist, or even a competent one. Far and away, the most valuable skill for this kind of work is critical…

The bridge designer imagining failure modes for a new bridge design isn't critical thinking, but the liberal arts autoethnography about the colonial etiology of Daft Punk, that's critical thinking? Reality is the opposite of your assertion: critical thinking is largely dead outside STEM, and that's because only in STEM does reality punish you for indulging sweet-sounding nonsense. I've also met good developers over t…

No, "critical thinking" is evaluating ideas and arguments, including one's own, for flaws. That you conflate it with engineering further suggests that you don't actually know what it is, and continue to over-value the "hard" skills beyond their (admittedly incredible and irreplaceable) worth.

It also tells me we are utterly talking past one another here. I have better things to do with my afternoon than refute yet more straw-men.

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#78

Post by DrScump »

lhnz wrote: post #49
rosser wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not necessarily that people are calling for hard skills to be replaced with soft skills, however they are writing articles in which they imply that soft skills are more valuable than hard skills at Google [1]. It's basic self-interest. If you believe that you're unable to sell your hard skills to an employer, it's in your interest to try to convince people that what you offer (superior generosity, motivational s…

  they imply that soft skills are more valuable than hard skills at Google
More valuable, or just more difficult to find there?

Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech

#79

Post by lhnz »

rosser wrote: post #67
lhnz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we disagree but I do think you're absolving the sins of social assholes because of the sins of asocial assholes. I've met rockstar asshole programmer's before, but I think it is overblown -- I do not think there are as many as everybody thinks there are. Far more often I've met great engineers that were well-rounded, kind and decent people. And yet the myth persists...

I'm not absolving anyone of anything, and I'm curious what I might have said to suggest I am. I've met far more, as you say, "social assholes", and been thrown under buses by them far more often than by technical folk, of whatever caliber socialization they had to offer.

  > I'm not absolving anyone of anything,
  > and I'm curious what I might have said
  > to suggest I am.
The whole 'hard and soft skills in tech' conversation depends on uncritically swallowing the belief that technically-minded people are naturally less empathetic.

This perspective is utilised by people that want to raise their own position in relation.

I'm not suggesting you're purposefully letting people off the hook -- I guess the term 'absolving' made it seem conscious. What I'm saying is that people in tech are normal, and so the whole conversation about bringing empathy and other soft skills into tech is fundamentally disrespectful and abusive, and that people are doing this for selfish reasons.

Honestly, to me, the whole conversation about people in tech feels corrupted by ridiculous caricatures: 'The Tech Bro', 'The Socially Unaware Autist', 'The Rockstar Asshole', etc. This isn't a normal state of affairs: it's an effect of the constant tech tabloid media cycles. We're basically left with a mess of unreflective stereotypes that distort everything they touch.

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