[rosser]

That "soft skills are more valuable than hard" is not what I read in that article. It sounds more to me like degrees in STEM correlate less well with success at Google than people expected. Not "negatively" — "less positively", and merely less positively than people anticipated. So what was the "wrong" here? People's assumptions. This is my surprised face.

But I'm probably biased to read it more generously than someone else might be; I was a philosophy major in undergrad, and actively repudiate the ludicrous notion that a broader, more liberal education is somehow wasteful. So YMMV.

EDIT: Look at it this way: you can be the most brilliant technologist in the history of ever. If you're impossible to work with, you're a liability, not an asset. You drive away anyone who tries to work with you, and/or your bus factor is, give or take, ∞.

Once again, "if you're arguing against that, then you're part of the problem."

[lhnz]

This 'brilliant technologist that is impossible to work with' mythos needs to die. The majority of us are normal people and don't deserve to be stereotyped in this way.

A broader, more liberal education isn't a waste, but I don't think that such a thing would lead anybody to call out nerds for social deficiencies while singing one's own praises. If it does, then yes, that is a shocking waste of an education.

Not being able to see this and trying to throw people under the bus with unfair stereotypes in order to get ahead is just as bad as having strong hard skills but being devoid of empathy. (It is practically a mirror image: having strong soft skills but being devoid of empathy.)

[rosser]

You're misconstruing my position. Yes, the rockstar asshole is rare, but I've worked with enough of them to know how destructive they are to the morale of the team. I was also once tasked with rewriting years of a rockstar asshole's code in months because said rockstar asshole left in a huff over not being treated the way he wanted, and no-one else had ever touched his deliberately impenetrable code. (All function and variable names were one or two letters, &c. But up until that point, he was just so productive, the employer put up with his behavior, and ignored the turnover on the rest of the team — which, miraculously, changed dramatically after he left. Go figure.)

So I'll freely own that I may have a small chip there. But at the same time, while the plural of anecdote isn't data, an existence proof is an existence proof.

[lhnz]

I don't think we disagree but I do think you're absolving the sins of social assholes because of the sins of asocial assholes.

I've met rockstar asshole programmer's before, but I think it is overblown -- I do not think there are as many as everybody thinks there are. Far more often I've met great engineers that were well-rounded, kind and decent people. And yet the myth persists...

[rosser]

I'm not absolving anyone of anything, and I'm curious what I might have said to suggest I am. I've met far more, as you say, "social assholes", and been thrown under buses by them far more often than by technical folk, of whatever caliber socialization they had to offer.

[lhnz]

  > I'm not absolving anyone of anything,
  > and I'm curious what I might have said
  > to suggest I am.

The whole 'hard and soft skills in tech' conversation depends on uncritically swallowing the belief that technically-minded people are naturally less empathetic.

This perspective is utilised by people that want to raise their own position in relation.

I'm not suggesting you're purposefully letting people off the hook -- I guess the term 'absolving' made it seem conscious. What I'm saying is that people in tech are normal, and so the whole conversation about bringing empathy and other soft skills into tech is fundamentally disrespectful and abusive, and that people are doing this for selfish reasons.

Honestly, to me, the whole conversation about people in tech feels corrupted by ridiculous caricatures: 'The Tech Bro', 'The Socially Unaware Autist', 'The Rockstar Asshole', etc. This isn't a normal state of affairs: it's an effect of the constant tech tabloid media cycles. We're basically left with a mess of unreflective stereotypes that distort everything they touch.

[quotemstr]

Absolutely right. Tech people have always been soft targets: just look at the awful nerdface of The Big Bang Theory. Most tech people are, in reality, just ordinary people doing what they love. While of course there are programmers who embody the "brilliant asshole" stereotype, there are managers who embody the Patrick Bateman and Bill Lumbergh stereotypes.

Let's agree to just treat people as people and stop with this idea, implicit the whole conversation, that we need to value people who aren't technical more because they automatically possess skills that these technical nerds lack.

[rosser]

> The whole 'hard and soft skills in tech' conversation depends on uncritically swallowing the belief that technically-minded people are naturally less empathetic.

Well, sure. If that's a premise you bring to the discussion, your position makes sense. And to the extent it is, I reject it (as a generalization), too.

It's also, however, the first I've ever heard of its being a premise to the discussion, so I hope you'll understand why I wasn't discussing this as if it were.

[PoachedSausage]

The problem we have is that fewer and fewer people are choosing to pursue hard engineering skills, partly because they're, well, hard and partly because soft skills seem to provide an equal or better living. I have nothing against philosophers, musicians and poets, I spent most of today being entertained by them on the radio, but without the hard skills the comforts of civilisation like running water, electricity and internet will disappear.

[rosser]

It's, again, anecdotal, and no small amount of confirmation bias, but I've been a technologist for over 20 years now. In all that time, most of my favorite technical colleagues, including their "hard" skills, were film majors, sociologists, historians, &c.

You do not need a STEM degree to be an outstanding technologist, or even a competent one. Far and away, the most valuable skill for this kind of work is critical thinking, and I've never seen classes teaching that offered outside the "liberal arts".

[quotemstr]

The bridge designer imagining failure modes for a new bridge design isn't critical thinking, but the liberal arts autoethnography about the colonial etiology of Daft Punk, that's critical thinking?

Reality is the opposite of your assertion: critical thinking is largely dead outside STEM, and that's because only in STEM does reality punish you for indulging sweet-sounding nonsense.

I've also met good developers over the course of over 20 years writing software. Many of them had no degree or an irrelevant degree. I respect them tremendously, but they're exceptions.

The kind of thinking that today's liberal arts departments encourage is contrary to the rigor needed to solve real engineering problems, and it's rare that you find in a single individual both a knack for the cold logic of engineering and the social sensitivity needed to succeed in a world of post-modern, post-logic quicksand.

[rosser]

No, "critical thinking" is evaluating ideas and arguments, including one's own, for flaws. That you conflate it with engineering further suggests that you don't actually know what it is, and continue to over-value the "hard" skills beyond their (admittedly incredible and irreplaceable) worth.

It also tells me we are utterly talking past one another here. I have better things to do with my afternoon than refute yet more straw-men.

[quotemstr]

I'm sure the engineers reading your comment appreciate your suggestion that the many late nights they've spent finding flaws in their proposals and those of others were all some kind of fever dream.

It's amazing that the academic departments that talk up their critical thinking in the most produce nothing that resembles a workable theory of the world.

Maybe what you wrote was true at one time, but these days, "evaluating ideas...for flaws" in large parts of academia is the process of finding logical contortions that, in the death-of-the-author spirit, twist texts and make them say the opposite of what they say. It's essentially formalized trolling.

That mode of thought has no business getting into the same building as real engineering.

[emmelaich]

Perhaps you're thinking of 'critical theory' and its cousins.

Critical Theory is about the opposite of critical thinking.

[rosser]

> I'm sure the engineers reading your comment appreciate your suggestion they the many late nights they've spent finding flaws in their proposals and those of others were all some kind of fever dream.

> ...but these days, "evaluating ideas...for flaws" is the process of finding logical contortions that, in the death-of-the-author spirit, twist texts and make them say the opposite of what they say.

Wow.

[PoachedSausage]

From what I have seen critical thinking, as a natural aptitude is quite rare. You can probably encourage it, but I doubt it can really be taught, even if those in authority wanted it.

[oceanghost]

You've locked onto the exact reason here. The incentives are all wrong.

Learn how to work people like a psychopath manager? Unlimited earning potential. Learn hard skills? Pigeonholed as "too valuable" to promote while being taken advantage of by those psychopaths until you connect enough dots to expose them or are deemed no longer necessary to their evil plan.

[quotemstr]

> if you're arguing against that, then you're part of the problem

That's in incredibly dangerous and irresponsible thing to write. We need to entertain all arguments, not enshrine some things in untouchable dogma. Calling people personally awful for stating an argument --- instead of addressing the argument --- is the reason that today's public discourse is bonkers.

The line I quoted above turns disagreement into a witch hunt.

[Viliam1234]

>> if you're arguing against that, then you're part of the problem

> That's in incredibly dangerous and irresponsible thing to write.

Also quite ironic, in context of an article advising to "make sure that everyone’s voice is heard, and that important warnings don’t get lost because someone didn’t feel safe saying so". Because this is how the warnings get silenced.

[rosser]

When "the problem" is over-valuing hard skills, and under-valuing soft skills, which is TFA's thesis (and mine, for purposes of this discussion), then it's rather less a "witch hunt" — which is speciously hyperbolic language in the first place, and the use of which, I submit, is far more contributory to the state of "discourse", such as it is.

I also, you'd do well to note, never called anyone "personally awful" (more specious hyperbole, hmm?). I said, paraphrased, that certain behaviors and positions are contributory to ("part of") "the problem", which we've already established is pretty narrowly defined.

[quotemstr]

No. You don't get to do that. You don't get to call people "the problem" just for making an argument. You don't get to just declare yourself the victor by impugning the character of your opponent. If this style of argumentation is what "soft skills" in tech means, we're heading to a dark place.

[chandanrai]

Technology and technologists are to solve the problems, they're not the problem or a part of it.

I have spent more than a decade working with brilliant technologists but haven't found anyone impossible to work with. As in technology, I have found some compatibility issues among/with technologists, but that can be worked out.

Also I have seen some technologists are unable to put forth a strong defense verbal or written when accused wrongly and thus becoming aunt Sally, people find them easier to put blame on.