Yep. Good and clear communication is also a neat trick to not being hated by technical managers, stakeholders and other teammates.
The older I get, I find this more important than technical skills. Technical skills are fixable by training, mentoring, or simply asking me.
I've seen bad communication causing delays, misunderstandings of business needs, developers who can't level up, and, in the extreme, fights between team members.
While this is a very good start and me having that skill helped me a lot, we should not forget that many PMs and all sorts of managers simply love changing requirements after just one call with the CEO or the finance department.
...And then they "forget" to tell you that they changed the requirements. And have not written down that anywhere.
...And then that happens 4 more times.
...And then a month later it's the engineer's fault that he's not part of the hive mind and does not read thoughts.
So I don't disagree, communication and other soft skills are certainly invaluable. But they don't filter out bad manager actors.
The older I get, I find this more important than technical skills. Technical skills are fixable by training, mentoring, or simply asking me.
I've seen bad communication causing delays, misunderstandings of business needs, developers who can't level up, and, in the extreme, fights between team members.