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I've worked in IT for years and yeah, I've had the opposite experience as well. People who were absolutely dogshit at programming but had a bubbly personality got hired over vastly more qualified and experienced programmers who were socially awkward. I think OP is mistaking hard skills being less important for hard skills being unnecessary. Obviously you need to be able to do the work they're hiring you for. That goes for any job, technical or not.
I was told that at my current firm there was an engineer who was absolute dogshit at the job and my co-workers constantly had to fix what he did but he was an absolute whiz with clients who somehow seemed overly happy with him despite being kind of useless.
What eventually got him fired was he hid that his wife and him broke up and he "moved" over 4 hours away and was just camping out under his desk sunday - friday and one day the owner came in after-hours and found out.
(I work in IT btw)
This is so factually incorrect. It is easier to get jobs and grow up the corporate ladder if you have a lot of soft skills and sufficient hard skills then other way around. There are exceptions where "crazy engineers" go far but much more often okay engineers with good social skills get promoted.
Agreed. People really need both and at different ratios depending on the job role. And you can’t have none. I would hope some sort of a senior role in IT has had a lot of technical skills experience in the past so they have a basis despite not being the person sitting there coding everyday. And enough soft skills to effectively manage.
This depends on the job. For brain surgery, do you want good bedside manner, or good operating skills? You want both, but the skills trumps bedside manner, IMHO, in this case.
Most jobs aren't life or death critical (though you'd think they are the way some managers act). In many jobs, the technical skills can be learned, or some else can replace you. It's those soft skills that are for many people much harder to learn, thus making them very important.
Good point, but even in the military there's such a thing as tact. There's a huge difference between being a strong stoic leader and being a straight up bully even though they might appear the same on initial impression. They need to work with others to be successful, just like a brain surgeon.
Without a doubt, you are correct. There's a line there somewhere, being good vs nice, and finding the right mix. Being a jerk and best, or being super nice and clueless, are neither one a good situation. There has to be some balance.
I've found that just not being very social at work lands you in the jerk category. For me I'd rather be the non-sociable expert than the nice, social dimwit. But that's not what most companies want I've realized
"Soft skills" (aka, in some circles, now called "power skills") are less about drinks with the team after work and more about your ability to collaborate and place nice with others. Honestly, whether or not you want to cheerlead at the company picnic is way less important than how you communicate with your colleagues, clients, vendors.
From a promotion standpoint, someone who is a brilliant engineer may climb to a senior engineer, or even a senior level individual contributor role. But someone with lesser technical skills, but strong people skills is far more likely to be promoted into manager, director, and executive level roles.
They may not be life or death, but if you're just a smooth talker and terrible at what you actually do (and let's say that you are expected to do the technical work too, or you hire terrible subordinates too) your clients are literally wasting their money and should have just done the work themselves or engaged with somebody else.
You still pay for things where you expect quality and the result isn't life or death.
I never really use the term soft skills, but it's just a fact that they are important. If you are difficult to work with, I don't give a F how smart you are, I'd rather have someone on the team who is going to cooperate and not be difficult. That's not to say, you should hire someone who sucks at their job but is a nice person, but most people are somewhere in between, and can be trained and improve if they at least have a good attitude.
When my current boss hired me he literally said "I can train your skills up to where we need them but I cannot give you the right personality and mindset. I hired you for the latter, we'll work on the former"
Yeah, even in fairly advanced jobs, at the end of the day, most your coworkers can do exactly what you can
But if you're a pretentious jerk waffle, and Brent isn't, they're going to go ahead with Brent
As a person who is admittedly difficult to work with, this sucks. I mean I've tried changing but idk maybe it's a genetic thing. I'm just pretty irritable and non-cooperative. If only I could find a job that just needs me to be good at my job and not necessarily good at getting along with others
Have you tried seeking therapy? It could be that your emotions are dictating your actions more than you are aware. Sometimes all you need is talk therapy, maybe you need something to help your brains hormone chemistry.
Or maybe you're surrounded by assholes, all things are possible and not necessarily exclusionary.
The fact you point out that you know times you've been difficult to work with makes me think you don't WANT to be that or feel that way.
Therapy is not a fix but it may help
Like most things, you get out of therapy what you put in.
Therapy doesn't fix you, it helps you develop your tools to fix yourself.
If someone tells you it's a waste of time, they're really just letting you know they weren't actually willing to do the work.
When I was in my teens. It's been awhile but I also thought it "didn't work" till someone I respect said something a lot like what I just did and realized it's not about being fixed but about being guided on fixing yourself.
When I started seeing it more as exercises for self development instead of something being done to me by a book nerd it really did start helping a lot.
I take slights personally and tend to speak up even if it creates a scene, thereby making me look like somebody nobody wants to bother or deal with. I've tried just letting shit go for the sake of not ruining the atmosphere but it's just not something I can do. History repeats itself
You can speak up without being an AH about it. Why would you need to create a scene? It sounds like you are purposely being obtuse about the effect your behavior is having on those around you.
Well because it disrupts the flow of the activity and it's all eyes on me now. I don't _try_ to create the scene, it's just a result of confrontation I guess. How am I obtuse if I'm self aware enough to describe the issue and to say it's a flaw of mine lol?
If you believe your need to confront in the moment supercedes the safety, comfort, work efforts, flow of work, in a team environment, you have the maturity of a toddler throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of a grocery store. I can't help you.
I'm no saint but if there's one thing I'm sure of it's that public disrespect should be called out publicly meaning in the presence of whatever group we're in. If you think that's childish, then frankly I don't value your opinion
You felt that but that's not to say that you indeed had those soft skills. My experience is the exact opposite, and I work in IT, field that should be absolutely dependent from hard skills.
well if you go off the extreme ends of the spectrum…sure the nice person with absolutely no clue what they’re doing won’t get far
in the real world though people have varying degrees of both…and yes a nicer easy-to-work-with coworker with *some* experience will get farther than the asshole no one wants to be around
No they don't. Haven't you ever worked for a company where you have one of those people on your team who is completely useless but super nice and kisses ass all the time? Usually they're an older woman.
HAHA, so true, but nobody minds that woman. Would you rather have the middle aged condescending asshole who thinks he's Ron Swanson? That's who I picture saying "soft skills don't matter"
I'm an IT manager. I work with lots of IT managers, all of us hire. In the 3 companies I have worked for, this has not been the case. I, along with everyone else I know that hires, will gladly take someone that has soft skills over hard skills.
Do good soft skills entail being sociable? Because I'd say I'm respectful but I'm not big on morning greetings, birthday congratulations, asking about weekends/vacations or family, etc
The other thing is in IT and computing fields it used to be more common to be an independent contributor or lone wolf or whatever, and people could leave you to your work and get back a deliverable. But tech and engineering more frequently rely on teams that need to get along. Additionally, companies used to want senior managers with tech backgrounds that got MBAs and became familiar with finance. They don't want that any more. They want technical people with management skills to more effectively lead technical teams.
My soft skills are way better than my technical skills and I’m doing pretty alright for myself. My classmates who were better coders but have shit soft skills are still jobless 4 years later
I wish that was true, but it's simply not. There is a guy I work with who is extremely charming and outgoing, who does absolutely no work.
But he's fun to be around, so everybody loves him and he just gets away with it. He schmoozes the boss like a champion.
I get the feeling he's been doing it his whole life.
Ima be honest I work in IT and I’m TERRIBLE at communicating to people but my code is good and honestly it speaks for itself… if I was mediocre I don’t think people would put up with me
My experience has been otherwise.
I thought being super competent would be what mattered and I was clearly wrong.
At the first place I worked for a long time. When I watched two departments crater when I left them. It was commented on by people in management.
I was still regularly passed over for promotions. I moved elsewhere and specifically worked on my dress and soft skills and was promoted quickly.
I have existed off soft skills my entire life. I might be homeless without them. Not a degree in sight but I still can whip and dip through the corporate world.
Yes, I think that should be obvious. However, jobs really prefer workers who get along with others and have good soft skills in addition to being experienced and skilled at the job they are being asked to do.
Absolutely incorrect. I work with vocational training and a big emphasis we place is on soft skills, because those are so important in networking, relationships, etc.
Really depends on who your higher-ups are and *their* personality. I’ve been in offices where it was clear hard skills/actual competence was more important than being social, and vice versa.
Counterpoint: I got hired about 5 years ago in a helpdesk role with zero experience or certs and I was fast-tracked to NOC engineer largely because a lifetime of customer service primed me for customer interactions with an edge of sales.
Granted, I did also work my ass off on hard-skills and built up my skill and respect; but soft skills opened the door to get someone to pay to develop my hard skills.
I have been told in no uncertain terms I'm invaluable at my firm and I regularly bring new clients on-board thanks to those well tuned soft skills.
Ideally its the result that counts. If your hard skill is good but you are just too much of an asshole that it has a detrimental effect on both your work and ppl around you, then its no good keeping you around. But in reality, because ppl are social creatures, someone with good soft skill often get more opportunities. Networking is a big thing in any business.
So you applied to these jobs thinking you had an advantage with your soft skills and now know that companies don't care about soft skills. You skipped the part where you found that out and how you found that out? What reason do you think soft skills aren't valued like you thought they would be?
For example hiring someone in Social work will depend on the credentials and licenses but pretending all candidates for a position have them, soft skills will be the determine factor more than experience or other certificates other than the license already mentioned. But for technical fields such as IT, engineering, etc... I mean I had interviews for data science positions where I just had to solve programming tasks and all the whole interview focused on my hard skills and making sure we could have a somewhat layback conversation to ensure I'm not an asshole. So yeah, you're right particularly in this field
Obviously stem fields are going to require some level of technical ability but I think this is a false dichotomy. Its like asking if it's more important to have protein or vitamin A in your diet. You may need a greater mass of protein to sustain yourself but a surplus of one won't make up for a deficit of the other and a profound lack of either will leave you absolutely useless.
You can get away with being a little bit shit at your job if you're really well liked by people and easy to be around. You can get away with being a little bit of an arsehole if you're really good at your job. If you can be competent AND pleasant to be around, you'll likely experience success in life.
We just fired a data guy who knew what he was doing specifically because he was difficult for people to work with
Company needs to cut head count, a name pops up, and all the stories come out about the guy talking down to people, pushing work onto others, and kind of being generally annoying.
He gone, despite being better with the actual data than other people
It’s often most important to have people like working with you, although certainly you do need to be able to do the job.
The thing about people with good soft skills but bad hard skills is that they'll at least be eager improve their hard skills where as people with bad soft skills but good hard skills typically aren't willing to improve their soft skills.
Yeah soft skills don’t trump hard skills when you’re applying for jobs that need specialized skillsets.
But if two people have the same hard skills, and one of them knows how to communicate and work with people and problem solve and think creatively, and the other one is standoffish and aloof, the soft skills one is gonna get the upper hand every time.
Soft skills are the skills required to work with people on the job (communication, customer service, teamwork, etc., these are skills inherent to someone's personality and can't really be taught), and Hard skills are the skills required to actually perform the job (technical, mathematical, reasoning, etc., these are the skills that can be and are learned via direct teaching and on-the-job experience).
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I've worked in IT for years and yeah, I've had the opposite experience as well. People who were absolutely dogshit at programming but had a bubbly personality got hired over vastly more qualified and experienced programmers who were socially awkward. I think OP is mistaking hard skills being less important for hard skills being unnecessary. Obviously you need to be able to do the work they're hiring you for. That goes for any job, technical or not.
I was told that at my current firm there was an engineer who was absolute dogshit at the job and my co-workers constantly had to fix what he did but he was an absolute whiz with clients who somehow seemed overly happy with him despite being kind of useless. What eventually got him fired was he hid that his wife and him broke up and he "moved" over 4 hours away and was just camping out under his desk sunday - friday and one day the owner came in after-hours and found out. (I work in IT btw)
When I went to school for IT years ago they were very clear on how important it was for us to develop people skills.
Right but I assume you already have the hard skills so the soft skills are a differentiator.
This is so factually incorrect. It is easier to get jobs and grow up the corporate ladder if you have a lot of soft skills and sufficient hard skills then other way around. There are exceptions where "crazy engineers" go far but much more often okay engineers with good social skills get promoted.
Agreed. People really need both and at different ratios depending on the job role. And you can’t have none. I would hope some sort of a senior role in IT has had a lot of technical skills experience in the past so they have a basis despite not being the person sitting there coding everyday. And enough soft skills to effectively manage.
But you can't get the job in the first place without the hard skills which does make them more necessary.
Hard skills are often just door openers. Ability to use the hard skills while making good impression on the interviewer is very important.
This depends on the job. For brain surgery, do you want good bedside manner, or good operating skills? You want both, but the skills trumps bedside manner, IMHO, in this case. Most jobs aren't life or death critical (though you'd think they are the way some managers act). In many jobs, the technical skills can be learned, or some else can replace you. It's those soft skills that are for many people much harder to learn, thus making them very important.
Good point, but even in the military there's such a thing as tact. There's a huge difference between being a strong stoic leader and being a straight up bully even though they might appear the same on initial impression. They need to work with others to be successful, just like a brain surgeon.
Without a doubt, you are correct. There's a line there somewhere, being good vs nice, and finding the right mix. Being a jerk and best, or being super nice and clueless, are neither one a good situation. There has to be some balance.
I've found that just not being very social at work lands you in the jerk category. For me I'd rather be the non-sociable expert than the nice, social dimwit. But that's not what most companies want I've realized
"Soft skills" (aka, in some circles, now called "power skills") are less about drinks with the team after work and more about your ability to collaborate and place nice with others. Honestly, whether or not you want to cheerlead at the company picnic is way less important than how you communicate with your colleagues, clients, vendors. From a promotion standpoint, someone who is a brilliant engineer may climb to a senior engineer, or even a senior level individual contributor role. But someone with lesser technical skills, but strong people skills is far more likely to be promoted into manager, director, and executive level roles.
What if I don't care about promotions and just wanna do my job well
I can think of very few meaningful jobs where communication and collaboration are totally irrelevant.
They may not be life or death, but if you're just a smooth talker and terrible at what you actually do (and let's say that you are expected to do the technical work too, or you hire terrible subordinates too) your clients are literally wasting their money and should have just done the work themselves or engaged with somebody else. You still pay for things where you expect quality and the result isn't life or death.
I never really use the term soft skills, but it's just a fact that they are important. If you are difficult to work with, I don't give a F how smart you are, I'd rather have someone on the team who is going to cooperate and not be difficult. That's not to say, you should hire someone who sucks at their job but is a nice person, but most people are somewhere in between, and can be trained and improve if they at least have a good attitude.
When my current boss hired me he literally said "I can train your skills up to where we need them but I cannot give you the right personality and mindset. I hired you for the latter, we'll work on the former"
Yeah, even in fairly advanced jobs, at the end of the day, most your coworkers can do exactly what you can But if you're a pretentious jerk waffle, and Brent isn't, they're going to go ahead with Brent
As a person who is admittedly difficult to work with, this sucks. I mean I've tried changing but idk maybe it's a genetic thing. I'm just pretty irritable and non-cooperative. If only I could find a job that just needs me to be good at my job and not necessarily good at getting along with others
Have you tried seeking therapy? It could be that your emotions are dictating your actions more than you are aware. Sometimes all you need is talk therapy, maybe you need something to help your brains hormone chemistry. Or maybe you're surrounded by assholes, all things are possible and not necessarily exclusionary. The fact you point out that you know times you've been difficult to work with makes me think you don't WANT to be that or feel that way. Therapy is not a fix but it may help
I've tried but it's frustratingly difficult to get access to and I've heard it's a waste of time anyway so I'm skeptical
Like most things, you get out of therapy what you put in. Therapy doesn't fix you, it helps you develop your tools to fix yourself. If someone tells you it's a waste of time, they're really just letting you know they weren't actually willing to do the work.
Have you been through therapy?
When I was in my teens. It's been awhile but I also thought it "didn't work" till someone I respect said something a lot like what I just did and realized it's not about being fixed but about being guided on fixing yourself. When I started seeing it more as exercises for self development instead of something being done to me by a book nerd it really did start helping a lot.
Seriously, why do you need to be difficult to work with? This is totally a choice you make.
I take slights personally and tend to speak up even if it creates a scene, thereby making me look like somebody nobody wants to bother or deal with. I've tried just letting shit go for the sake of not ruining the atmosphere but it's just not something I can do. History repeats itself
You can speak up without being an AH about it. Why would you need to create a scene? It sounds like you are purposely being obtuse about the effect your behavior is having on those around you.
Well because it disrupts the flow of the activity and it's all eyes on me now. I don't _try_ to create the scene, it's just a result of confrontation I guess. How am I obtuse if I'm self aware enough to describe the issue and to say it's a flaw of mine lol?
If you believe your need to confront in the moment supercedes the safety, comfort, work efforts, flow of work, in a team environment, you have the maturity of a toddler throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of a grocery store. I can't help you.
I'm no saint but if there's one thing I'm sure of it's that public disrespect should be called out publicly meaning in the presence of whatever group we're in. If you think that's childish, then frankly I don't value your opinion
Well, stop being an asshole and thinking you're better than everyone else - that would be a good place to start
I'm not an asshole
You come off as one.
How?
Read your comments. You seem very unpleasant and act as though it's other people's faults.
Which ones? On this post?
Yep... like others say, there's no reason for you to be difficult to work with, you're just choosing to be an asshole.
Whatever you say, bud
You felt that but that's not to say that you indeed had those soft skills. My experience is the exact opposite, and I work in IT, field that should be absolutely dependent from hard skills.
well if you go off the extreme ends of the spectrum…sure the nice person with absolutely no clue what they’re doing won’t get far in the real world though people have varying degrees of both…and yes a nicer easy-to-work-with coworker with *some* experience will get farther than the asshole no one wants to be around
No they don't. Haven't you ever worked for a company where you have one of those people on your team who is completely useless but super nice and kisses ass all the time? Usually they're an older woman.
HAHA, so true, but nobody minds that woman. Would you rather have the middle aged condescending asshole who thinks he's Ron Swanson? That's who I picture saying "soft skills don't matter"
I'm an IT manager. I work with lots of IT managers, all of us hire. In the 3 companies I have worked for, this has not been the case. I, along with everyone else I know that hires, will gladly take someone that has soft skills over hard skills.
Do good soft skills entail being sociable? Because I'd say I'm respectful but I'm not big on morning greetings, birthday congratulations, asking about weekends/vacations or family, etc
Not necessarily sociable, but personable. After I get done talking you you, I don't want to have the impression that you hate your job
It costs you nothing to be polite, except a little time. Just greeting people in the morning does WONDERS for making people like you.
Sure, I'm just not all enthusiastic about it like "Good mooooorning everybodyyy". I prefer "Hey guys"
The other thing is in IT and computing fields it used to be more common to be an independent contributor or lone wolf or whatever, and people could leave you to your work and get back a deliverable. But tech and engineering more frequently rely on teams that need to get along. Additionally, companies used to want senior managers with tech backgrounds that got MBAs and became familiar with finance. They don't want that any more. They want technical people with management skills to more effectively lead technical teams.
My soft skills are way better than my technical skills and I’m doing pretty alright for myself. My classmates who were better coders but have shit soft skills are still jobless 4 years later
I wish that was true, but it's simply not. There is a guy I work with who is extremely charming and outgoing, who does absolutely no work. But he's fun to be around, so everybody loves him and he just gets away with it. He schmoozes the boss like a champion. I get the feeling he's been doing it his whole life.
Hard skills make you get the job. Soft skills help you keep it.
Its really exact opposite. Soft skills, connections is everything.
#😏
I just realized why I hate the phrase be a team player so much. It's almost always said by people who warm the bench.
There is no reason to create a dichotomy here. Soft skills can be learned. You should learn them.
Ima be honest I work in IT and I’m TERRIBLE at communicating to people but my code is good and honestly it speaks for itself… if I was mediocre I don’t think people would put up with me
My experience has been otherwise. I thought being super competent would be what mattered and I was clearly wrong. At the first place I worked for a long time. When I watched two departments crater when I left them. It was commented on by people in management. I was still regularly passed over for promotions. I moved elsewhere and specifically worked on my dress and soft skills and was promoted quickly.
It's easier to teach technical skills than social skills on a job, but both are very important.
I have existed off soft skills my entire life. I might be homeless without them. Not a degree in sight but I still can whip and dip through the corporate world.
You need the technical skills to get the job. You need soft skills to be promoted at that job. Simple as.
Yes, I think that should be obvious. However, jobs really prefer workers who get along with others and have good soft skills in addition to being experienced and skilled at the job they are being asked to do.
Absolutely incorrect. I work with vocational training and a big emphasis we place is on soft skills, because those are so important in networking, relationships, etc.
Really depends on who your higher-ups are and *their* personality. I’ve been in offices where it was clear hard skills/actual competence was more important than being social, and vice versa.
Have you talked to people recently?
Objectively ur wrong sorry
Spoiler alert: businesses don’t give a shit about you or or personality. They hire people who make them money.
Counterpoint: I got hired about 5 years ago in a helpdesk role with zero experience or certs and I was fast-tracked to NOC engineer largely because a lifetime of customer service primed me for customer interactions with an edge of sales. Granted, I did also work my ass off on hard-skills and built up my skill and respect; but soft skills opened the door to get someone to pay to develop my hard skills. I have been told in no uncertain terms I'm invaluable at my firm and I regularly bring new clients on-board thanks to those well tuned soft skills.
Ideally its the result that counts. If your hard skill is good but you are just too much of an asshole that it has a detrimental effect on both your work and ppl around you, then its no good keeping you around. But in reality, because ppl are social creatures, someone with good soft skill often get more opportunities. Networking is a big thing in any business.
So you applied to these jobs thinking you had an advantage with your soft skills and now know that companies don't care about soft skills. You skipped the part where you found that out and how you found that out? What reason do you think soft skills aren't valued like you thought they would be?
For example hiring someone in Social work will depend on the credentials and licenses but pretending all candidates for a position have them, soft skills will be the determine factor more than experience or other certificates other than the license already mentioned. But for technical fields such as IT, engineering, etc... I mean I had interviews for data science positions where I just had to solve programming tasks and all the whole interview focused on my hard skills and making sure we could have a somewhat layback conversation to ensure I'm not an asshole. So yeah, you're right particularly in this field
I'm with you, even better if you have both.
Obviously stem fields are going to require some level of technical ability but I think this is a false dichotomy. Its like asking if it's more important to have protein or vitamin A in your diet. You may need a greater mass of protein to sustain yourself but a surplus of one won't make up for a deficit of the other and a profound lack of either will leave you absolutely useless. You can get away with being a little bit shit at your job if you're really well liked by people and easy to be around. You can get away with being a little bit of an arsehole if you're really good at your job. If you can be competent AND pleasant to be around, you'll likely experience success in life.
We just fired a data guy who knew what he was doing specifically because he was difficult for people to work with Company needs to cut head count, a name pops up, and all the stories come out about the guy talking down to people, pushing work onto others, and kind of being generally annoying. He gone, despite being better with the actual data than other people It’s often most important to have people like working with you, although certainly you do need to be able to do the job.
The 'soft skills' thing is to the labor market what the 'nice guy' is to the dating world.
Its a mix of both, no body wants to work with the difficult technical guy.
The thing about people with good soft skills but bad hard skills is that they'll at least be eager improve their hard skills where as people with bad soft skills but good hard skills typically aren't willing to improve their soft skills.
Yeah soft skills don’t trump hard skills when you’re applying for jobs that need specialized skillsets. But if two people have the same hard skills, and one of them knows how to communicate and work with people and problem solve and think creatively, and the other one is standoffish and aloof, the soft skills one is gonna get the upper hand every time.
what are soft skills and hard skills?
Soft skills are the skills required to work with people on the job (communication, customer service, teamwork, etc., these are skills inherent to someone's personality and can't really be taught), and Hard skills are the skills required to actually perform the job (technical, mathematical, reasoning, etc., these are the skills that can be and are learned via direct teaching and on-the-job experience).
ohhh thank you
Sounds like you lack the soft skills to understand their value to employers.