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   Robert Roskam (raiderrobert@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 11-Dec-2025 23:38:36 JST Robert Roskam

   A software engineer without "soft skills" is 0.1x engineer.

   We all know this guy.

   The one that you make sure to never talk to customer. The one you always need to ensure you approach carefully. The one who's "not good with people."

   Yeah, that guy.

   Software engineering is fundamentally a team sport. Even if he is very fast at typing in and recalling algorithms from memory, he'll make the entire org around him 1/10 as effective.

   • Embed this notice
     Bradley M. Kühn (bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org)'s status on Thursday, 11-Dec-2025 23:38:35 JST Bradley M. Kühn

     in reply to

     @raiderrobert I agree with you, but I encourage you to use the term "interpersonal skills", or "political acumen", or some phrase like that. "Soft skills" as a phrase is specifically designed to make it sound like they are skills that are lesser-than. (I do thank you for putting in scare-quotes to hint at that point).

     Meanwhile, this reminds me of an anecdote from my undergraduate. Names are changed in next post to protect the innocent & guilty:

     Cc: @wwahammy

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Niki Tonsky (nikitonsky@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 12-Dec-2025 09:37:02 JST Niki Tonsky

     in reply to

     @raiderrobert software engineer without soft skills is just “ware engineer”