[jzoch]

I think they can be taught. By setting out to teach rather than boast about experience, ive seen senior developers instilling better soft-skills in new grads. A lot of new grads just aren't thinking about this stuff as much as the tech but once you take them under your wing and walk them through how the presentation of an idea will let it be received better regardless of technical merit they begin to see it.

It may take 10 years to blindly learn these skills but with a single, good mentor you can learn it quickly. I think most senior developers dont have the patience nor the transparency to lay this out though. Its a very honest conversation to have with someone - "Hey that idea you had is a good one but your presentation of it is problematic. Here is how you can make people more likely to see your point of view" is not as sexy as debating microservice vs monolith.

[marta_morena_28]

I would argue: There is NO shortcut for experience. But not all experience is created equal. Telling someone HOW to do things right (we are talking soft skills, for hard skills its a bit different), is not helpful. You need to expose them to situations where they have weaknesses, and then coach them how to overcome the problems they face. I.e. there is a fine line between "telling people what to do", which is ineffective short-term and contraproductive long-term; and "exposing people to situations that make them behave wrong", which is the most effective learning tool, that doesn't have drawbacks, outside of the short-term (because you know that this person will not do the job right, but you also know they are not going to do it wrong another time, plus they will learn how to recognize other similar situations and avoid making this mistake there as well).

The best thing universities can do is to instill an understanding of soft skills in people. They should come out of university knowing:

* How important soft skills are

* That they are the differentiator between senior and junior

* How to best learn them (don't hunt highest pay, hunt highest experience gain)

* etc.