Soft skills have value. I saw an amazing dev let go because he lacked the soft skills to explain his project to upper management in a way they could understand and care about.
A month after he left, those same managers told us to build the thing that just went in the trash when he was let go. So they did care, it was valuable, but he struggled with the communication and it cost him his job, and created a ton of work for all of us who are left.
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" is a book published in 1936 and talks about people who have better soft skills being more successful than those with better technical skills in the same field. This isn't anything new.
Soft skills have value. I saw an amazing dev let go because he lacked the soft skills to explain his project to upper management in a way they could understand and care about.
A month after he left, those same managers told us to build the thing that just went in the trash when he was let go. So they did care, it was valuable, but he struggled with the communication and it cost him his job, and created a ton of work for all of us who are left.