> 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.
Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
91–100 of 117 posts
Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
#92Earlier 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…
Yes, it's unfortunate that sympathy has gone out of favour and empathy has changed in meaning.
Perhaps 'simpatico' is closer in meaning to the desired emotion.
Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
#93I’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.
Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mo…
I'm sure the engineers reading your comment appreciate your suggestion that the many late nights they've spent finding flaws in their proposals and those of others were all some kind of fever dream. It's amazing that the academic departments that talk up their critical thinking in the most produce nothing that resembles a workable theory of the world. Maybe what you wrote was true at one time, but these days, "evalua…
Perhaps you're thinking of 'critical theory' and its cousins.
Critical Theory is about the opposite of critical thinking.
Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure the engineers reading your comment appreciate your suggestion that the many late nights they've spent finding flaws in their proposals and those of others were all some kind of fever dream. It's amazing that the academic departments that talk up their critical thinking in the most produce nothing that resembles a workable theory of the world. Maybe what you wrote was true at one time, but these days, "evalua…
Perhaps you're thinking of 'critical theory' and its cousins. Critical Theory is about the opposite of critical thinking.
Right. And in many circles these days, critical theory is what passes for critical thinking.
Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
#96While 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…
As it stands I think "soft skills" is one of those buzzwords like "critical thinking." Everybody thinks its good, but it hasn't been established as a scientifically-valid / measurable concept.
Thus the phrase "Soft skills" gives a veneer of objectivity to something to personal dynamics that are incredibly subjective and unscientific. The term is potentially a weapon for the politically-savvy to punish those who oppose them with an unfalsifiable attack.
Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
#97I 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?
I think this is a fair question because you sincerely are asking.
I think you have to admit that a manager who can make the team care about work, enjoy it, feel like a team, feel like they're working on an important problem together (even though none of this emotional stuff is objectively true/false or valid/invalid) is an asset to the company.
Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
#98Given 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…
Weirdly enough, I feel like saying the blame should not be put on the people for being assholes; assholery is not something people are born with. Rather, the type of environment is at fault for self-selecting for them.
Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
#99Earlier 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…
What nonsense, if anything it's techies who are themselves promoting this theory after years of working in the tech industry
Soft skills are important especially in programming. Open source projects for example, live and die by how much and how well they can engage their community, an inherently soft skill.
Re: Hard and Soft Skills in Tech
#100Earlier 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…
You've locked onto the exact reason here. The incentives are all wrong.
Learn how to work people like a psychopath manager? Unlimited earning potential. Learn hard skills? Pigeonholed as "too valuable" to promote while being taken advantage of by those psychopaths until you connect enough dots to expose them or are deemed no longer necessary to their evil plan.