
The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market [pdf] - luu
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/ddeming/files/deming_socialskills_august2015.pdf
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zxcvvcxz
Here's a snarky contrarian view: social skills matter more now because there
is less meaningful production and creation occurring.

When engineering consists of making CRUD apps and serving up ads, you're
better off politicking to get a bigger piece of a not-so-expanding pie.

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pm90
I think its a lot more complex than that. I agree that there are a lot of
people who make their living making CRUD apps (and honestly, I think its a
good thing if people can do it! Someone is paying for those CRUD apps which
means there is a demand...). But...as the economy gets more automated and
digitized and the population grows, you're success will be determined by how
quick you are in recognizing opportunities (clients, projects etc.) and social
networks seem to be the best way to get this information. So I would argue
that its the advantage of this property of social networks which is what makes
being social a valuable skill.

Also, I see a lot of disdain over the term "being social" in the tech
community: its not licking the boot of others, its as simple as being the one
who initiates conversation. I cannot stress how important this simple skill
is.

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nether
I'm terrified that my lack of social skills is limiting my personal and
professional lives. I haven't had close friends in 13 years. My coworkers are
middle aged, suburban folks, while mostly nice it gets tiresome explaining
what a selfie is or how Twitter works (or having them explain football to me),
and our workplace (mechanical engineering) is unusually antisocial. The vast,
vast majority of the time we only talk about work because we're in a constant
mild crunch. The people I've met via Meetup.com have seemed kind of narrow and
were mostly older (i.e. a hiking meetup of 20 people where _all they talk
about_ is running/hiking). I despise so many aspects of the tech/startup world
that I gave up hanging out at coworking spaces years ago. I've met some good
individual out on hikes alone, but I can't hold a conversation or keep in
touch to save my life. Is there any experience that I could get into serving
as a crash course in social skills? It can be expensive like long-term travel,
except I've done enough recreational travel to know that I'm just as nervous
in a campsite in Europe as I am in an office in the US. I just want to develop
these skills before my social ineptitude becomes permanently ingrained.

~~~
vrnut
How old are you?

Some of the things that have worked for me:

* Find extroverted people you can tolerate, they can introduce you to a lot more people.

* Find the groups of people who have problems with the tech/startup world but are still interested in tech (Who I'm assuming you're one of), there's a lot of people out there like that and you'll have a lot to talk about.

* If you're not great at conversation, try to focus on just being with people, say something like "I don't really have a lot to say, but I appreicate the company". Find people who want to just be around others.

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nether
I'm 30, with very millennial attitudes except not as anti-establishment.
Thanks, those sound like good tips.

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dsfyu404ed
This paper seems to be equating social skills in general with communication
skills in the workplace. There's a lot of overlap but in my experience one
isn't a solid predictor of the other. Furthermore, communication skills don't
take as much precedence until after you're able to assemble a team to do the
work. Everyone wants to only hire programmers/engineers/whatever who are great
at communicating but the impracticality of that is why team leaders, managers,
etc exist.

You can probably find 10 software engineers to write the bits and pieces for
the back-end software supporting your a shipping business and you can probably
also find 10 with great communication skills. When you want a team of 10
developers to write the code for a surface to air missile system who, by the
way, will need to work with the engineering teams and understand how the
overall system works and its intended implementation (in order to write
workable code) you're gonna have a tough time finding 10 people with all the
qualifications you want and sacrifices will be made.

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hyperpape
This use of "social skills" isn't the only time economic terms are used in a
way that's misleading to non-economists. Another example is "technology"
([http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/08/06/nobody_knows_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/08/06/nobody_knows_where_economic_growth_comes_from.html)).

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conistonwater
It's kind of cool how it looks like you can improve your log hourly wage at
the highest percentiles by forgetting maths if you have good social skills, or
forgetting good social skills if you have good maths skills.

I've only skimmed the paper, but how do the "social skills" map onto what one
would normally mean by the plain-English meaning of social skills? It seems to
be some kind of composite of job description categories, which I'm not sure
what that means exactly.

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Sven7
One way to think about it is the ability to pick up the phone and get a
meeting setup with anyone you want, potential customer, investor, engineering
talent, supply chain vendor, Elon Musk etc. To get to that level, takes a lot
of social skill. It's why CXO's get paid what they get paid.

~~~
conistonwater
But that's not how he seems to measure "social skill" component of an
occupation in the paper.

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yarrel
...is a class issue.

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rancur
the best thing about non-clickbait articles is I don't need to read further
than the title

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1971genocide
Yeah, the thing that is missing in our paradise of an economy is more social
skills.

The labor market rewards social skills because the market's buying power is
transferred to a handful of people.

If you had a egalitarian market that truly reflected the demand of the
ordinary citizen I am sure there would be a huge increase in demand for
affordable housing, healthcare, cheaper college and renewable energy.

Not to mention the demand that exists to find immortality - unlike in newton's
time we actually have the tools to achieve it.

Its only from the ivory tower at harvard can people see the increase in
childhood poverty and homelessness and conclude that "hmm you know what is
missing ? some serf to make me laugh !"

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anigbrowl
I think you're both right and wrong. Those other issues you mention are real
problems, but labor is becoming a much less important factor of production in
those fields than it used to be. I think the Harvard academics are observing
that in a climate of automation and global supply chains, social skills are
becoming more valuable because they are hard to engineer a replacement for,
which is no longer true of many physical, cognitive, or administrative skills.

