I meant it semi-sarcastically but you don't seem to disagree?

It doesn't seem to me like "soft skills" are particularly in need to be valued more than they currently are. I would argue that the opposite is often true -- perfectly good developers being undervalued because they aren't assertive enough to "sell themselves".

>I'm happy to report that most places I worked at valued "soft skills" much more than "hard skills" during hiring.

varies a lot per company. But places lately have definitely skewed towards "hard skills". Training in my industry was always a joke, but they basically want 5YOE out of college these days. IDK if I would have gotten hired at any of my previous roles if this mentality was present 8 years ago.

That is because the people with soft skills that are paid well need people to get things done, so they go and hire cheap people with hard skills. That is how it works at every single company, the people with soft skills are paid the best and rule over those with hard skills.

The problem is, so many "soft skills" are things you can claim to have—and maybe even think you have—but can't actually be meaningfully tested in an interview setting.

Things like leadership, creativity, collaboration, ability (and drive) to learn new things quickly.

Basically the only ones you have a chance at demonstrating in an interview are communication (within limited parameters) and problem-solving (assuming the hiring team knows how to put together a problem that's well-calibrated for the type of candidate they actually want). And even those can easily be thrown off by the extremely high pressure of an interview.