[IMTDb]

> At least where I come from, the term has often been used to (successfully) diminish skills that I'd consider essential.

From where I come from, people obsessed by soft skills are those that hardly have any "hard skills" to talk about.

It's like you either are demonstrably good in your craft OR you have "lots of soft skills". You can never have both because :

- If you have neither hard nor soft skills, you should be fired - and no ont wants that

- If you have both hard and soft skills, you should be promoted - and no one wants that either

So "soft skills" are used as a modulator to keep the status quo. And the best thing is that you dont need to really grade/score/assess them, just tell the employees to "work on them".