
Hard and Soft Skills in Tech - pdevine
https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/hard-and-soft-skills-in-tech-8be00216f67f?source=linkShare-ccff18f5a169-1514394601
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quotemstr
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 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. You'll be in good company if you go
this route: it's part of the reason big companies inevitably decay and get
outcompeted by smaller, newer ones. (Notice how a lot of this "soft skills
only" crap comes from big companies with products having enough inertia to
last a while at a low quality level?)

The other interpretation is most insidious: you do recognize that technical
excellence matters, but want to redirect credit to non-technical managers.
This phenomenon is a _huge_ problem outside tech; it goes back at least as far
as Edison. We shouldn't be in a hurry to import this problem into our own
field.

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.

~~~
rosser
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're part of the problem.

It's also what we call a "false dilemma" to suggest that your proffered
interpretations for this "trend" are the _only_ interpretations for it.

~~~
lhnz
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 speaking, equality and
empathy) will be more likely to bring success to an employer.

People don't need to literally call for hard skills to be replaced because
that's not the end-goal. The goal here is that employer's realise that soft
skills are more important so that the status of these careers is higher than
that of software engineers.

    
    
      [1] https://twitter.com/joelgrus/status/945114254922825730

~~~
rosser
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 someone else might be;
I was a _philosophy_ major in undergrad, and actively repudiate the ludicrous
notion that a broader, more liberal education is somehow wasteful. So YMMV.

EDIT: Look at it this way: you can be the most brilliant technologist in the
history of ever. If you're impossible to work with, you're a liability, not an
asset. You drive away anyone who tries to work with you, and/or your bus
factor is, give or take, ∞.

Once again, "if you're arguing against that, then you're part of the problem."

~~~
PoachedSausage
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 internet will disappear.

~~~
rosser
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".

~~~
quotemstr
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.

~~~
rosser
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.

~~~
quotemstr
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, "evaluating
ideas...for flaws" in large parts of academia is the process of finding
logical contortions that, in the death-of-the-author spirit, twist texts and
make them say the opposite of what they say. It's essentially formalized
trolling.

That mode of thought has no business getting into the same _building_ as real
engineering.

~~~
emmelaich
Perhaps you're thinking of 'critical theory' and its cousins.

Critical Theory is about the opposite of critical thinking.

~~~
quotemstr
Right. And in many circles these days, critical theory is what passes for
critical thinking.

------
bitL
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 and will use it to enforce their
agendas to detriment of most of us as we will be forced to spend our time on
things we don't believe in and lie to each other we do meaningful things for
betterment of humanity, which we won't. All large corps are becoming
politically loaded places where one expression of "wrongthink" eclipses any
achievements an individual did in the past, nuking future career. As
sociopaths can't really compete on hard skills, they push soft-skill, touchy-
feely agendas, identified as weak spots of techies that can't handle them
reasonably in many cases. Oh, you achieved this awesome stuff that grew
company by $100M? Well, you still don't smile at everyone, this fresh grad
thinks you don't appreciate their Harvardness, please get better at this or no
promotions/bonuses for you!

~~~
Judgmentality
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
(although I'd honestly be interested in hearing arguments against this). So if
your goal is to keep them away, then just make sure to never monetize your
product.

~~~
moduspol
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.

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0xcde4c3db
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 a real risk of a "soft skills are
real and important" position mutating into "if I don't like somebody it's just
because they didn't work hard enough, not because there's anything strange
about my expectations".

~~~
jschwartzi
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.

~~~
gt_
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.

~~~
jschwartzi
Look, if I'm managing someone I need to understand why asking them to work
weekends upsets them. Being able to do this doesn't automatically make me a
sociopath. What would make me a sociopath is asking them to do it anyway and
then leaving early to go play golf. In other words not caring about them makes
me a sociopath.

Sympathy requires you to feel the emotions of others which is often done to an
unhealthy degree. Understanding how someone feels and feeling how they feel
are different and should be treated with different words. It's good to work to
understand others, but that doesn't mean you have to become them. And just
because I don't share your feelings it doesn't mean I don't think they're
valid. It just means I'm not you and I'm free to make my own choices.

I will often still choose to help you, but I'm not taking ownership of your
problem.

~~~
gt_
feeling _sympathy for another_ != feeling _first-person experience_

 _feeling sympathy_ != _taking responsibility_

The difference between the terms’ meanings is beyond mere emphasis, but it
still falls short of occupying the subject’s bodily consciousness.

Look at the spectrum of bonds between family members for reference. Caring for
one another to varying degrees is not so strange for most people. It is just
becoming less common in public and business relationships.

------
alexandercrohde
tl; dr:

1\. Author observes that he's witnessed a lot of emotional backlash to the
suggestion that soft skills may outweigh hard skills in tech; suggests the
emotionality of the reaction is indicative that engineers worry it just may be
true.

2\. Justifies the importance of soft skills by citing personal experience of
teams of 100s+ people needing to be coordinated

3\. Proposes that a [software] system's interaction with the outside world is
a larger problem than the system itself [i.e. UX tougher than code]

4\. Offers a metric to assess management by: if people dislike managers then
those managers must have very low soft-skills. Proposes the traditional
approach to management is a large failure in tech.

5\. Describes soft-skills but gives no hard examples

6\. Proposes creating vocabulary to represent soft skills such as requirement-
gathering so that people can care more about these skills

\---

My aside: I think 1/2 largely depend on the product, some products are almost
entirely technical (alpha go, bitcoin), we'll only ever reach agreement by not
oversimplifying the question.

I agree on 4, but I really think 5 is crucial. I think everybody has a very
different idea of what "Soft skills" are and how well other people think they
do at those skills. For example, I think somebody who creates laughter at work
is a huge asset, others may not.

~~~
et1337
Thanks for the tldr!

> 3\. Proposes that a [software] system's interaction with the outside world
> is a larger problem than the system itself [i.e. UX tougher than code]

I hate this mindset that tries to divorce UX and code. If you're making a CRUD
app, don't think of it as a tiny pure nugget of reusable API goodness
surrounded by an unfortunate layer of messy UI that has to deal with the real
world. The app _IS_ that messy UI code. The rest is just a database schema.
Don't try to abstract away your job.

Of course UX and code are different, but I think they're inseparable and
anyone doing either should have a firm grasp of the other.

------
tome
I appreciate the content of the article but I can't help picking up a dose of
disrespect from the author towards exactly the collection of people he is
trying to persuade.

~~~
ionforce
Who do you think the author is trying to persuade and where did you detect
disrespect?

~~~
tome
I suspect the author is trying to persuade those who make 'very anxious
responses from people in tech at anything which suggests that their “core
skills” may be devalued' and the reason I feel the tone is disrespectful is
because he shows very little empathy for _them_. On the other hand, perhaps
instead the point of the article is to reassure those with the soft skills
that they will soon be more valuable than they currently are.

------
RoutinePlayer
I wish the piece had been better edited to lead with a definitions of
soft/hard skills, then a topic sentence for the thesis, then supporting
arguments. There may be some good nuggets here, but it just feels like there's
just rambling on and on.

------
emmelaich
> 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.

~~~
Viliam1234
I imagine that the people who fired him are congratulating themselves on
having great soft skills and making everyone feel safe.

------
hyperion2010
I think it is time to post a link to The Night Watch again.... [0]

0\.
[http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/thenightwatch...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/thenightwatch.pdf)

------
mannykannot
Is sound engineering judgement a technical skill or a soft skill? How about
the ability to articulate that judgement, so as to explain to others that one
set of choices is better than the alternatives, and persuade them to agree?

~~~
zunger
Yes. :)

Sound engineering judgment typically implies a good understanding of the full
context of the problem ("is this a good tradeoff?"), which often involves
things beyond the merely technical. And without all of the other things you
mention, which are definitely in the category normally called "soft skills,"
the best engineering judgment in the world will go to waste.

------
heeton
I’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.

~~~
emmelaich
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.

~~~
heeton
I don’t associate hard/soft with difficult like that (I personally find soft
skills difficult), but this is a good example of how the terms are ripe for
misunderstanding.

I try to use communication or personal or interpersonal skills, etc.

------
spraak
This post is great for raising awareness but no real solutions offered,
besides "there must be training".

~~~
XnoiVeX
Absolutely. I was looking for the ending and it never came. Feel like I wasted
10 mins of my life.

------
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?

~~~
skybrian
It's certainly vague but that's an uncharitable interpretation. I'd say it's
more like not inadvertently offending or demoralizing people, not accidentally
starting arguments, and so on.

Mistakes in communication happen easily, so it's good to be skilled enough to
avoid them or recover quickly.

