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by kenhwang 3098 days ago
engineer w/only soft skills = management. Managers have their value too, but you can't only have managers.
2 comments

I'd infinitely prefer a manager with at least some hard skills than one with none. My most frustrating managers were the ones you describe, because they just weren't at all qualified to make decisions about what we were doing. I don't think I'm alone among engineers in that opinion.
Preferring a manager with hard skills is like preferring an engineer with soft skills. It makes everything so much smoother. Similarly, I'd argue that a manager with only soft skills is as frustrating to work with as an engineer with only hard skills. They're functional, but it's not anywhere near ideal.
Completely agree, and I'd posit that if you have you never faced a manager with ONLY hard skills and no soft skills, you're lucky. They're miserable to work for. I worked for one who was promoted because he was really, really good at ServiceNow (the service du jour of our company), and he literally thought management was threatening people until he got his way....

...until he was forced out when none of the departments succeeded, that is.