[bigiain]

You don't intentionally choose weak engineers, but a strong engineer working on the wrong thing because they can't communicate effectively is less useful than a slightly less strong engineer who's always doing the thing that's actually needed.

This hold true as pretty much every level. A junior engineer who will never say "No, I don't understand, can you explain that to me again please?" and spends days/weeks writing code that doesn't meet a requirement is less productive than someone who'll talk to you to understand properly before starting to code. A senior engineer or technical cofounder who can't communicate well with customers will be much less effective in solving real customer problems or finding product/market fit.

Being a great engineer isn't just about writing good code, its about writing the right code - and to know what that is you need good communication skills.

[DarylZero]

Whether someone will ask for help at the appropriate time is really not shown by how good they are at talking in an interview.

Asking for help is more about humility and willingness to look dumb, than about being gregarious or chatty or socially open.

[mercutio2]

You can categorize "humility and willingness to possibly be perceived as dumb" as non-communication skills, but in my mind they are:

A) the most important indicators of likely success on the team B) very correlated with comfort in speaking

If I can't get you to talk at all when you're uncomfortable, you're unlikely to tell me you don't understand in the often uncomfortable iterating on a feature process.

It's possible to be gregarious AND be unable to ever admit that you lack critical information, which is why interviews, for me, are mostly about asking questions until we get to the point you don't know/don't understand, and see how you work with me from there on.

What a lot of people who get stressed about interviews don't realize, though, is that WHERE PRECISELY you reach your limits is unimportant. It's that you engage thoughtfully, without getting overly defensive, and don't bullshit. Not about whether you got the right answer at any given spot.