Strange - I usually associate "soft skills" more with leadership, people skills etc.
And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly. The employees sorta need to pick them up from experience.
And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly. The employees sorta need to pick them up from experience.
If you can think critically are you going to get past the HR filters and convince them you are the recruit willing to take a deal that will descend into just a little worse than unemployment? (So your empty shell of a life after they spit you out is devoid of any unused benefits.)
If you want to openly think critically in corporate employment, step 1 is becoming irreplaceable so they can't replace you when you become inconvenient at step 2.
An easier tactic, (employed by the best corporate game theorists that I've encountered) is following directions like a total Svejk, this leads employers to think you lack critical thinking skills. Then more resources are allocated and eventually you have a whole empire of minions.
Hence all the worry about "bus factors"
It is a hard lesson, but no-one is irreplaceable. Even if it means an entire product/group fails, if you are inconvenient you are gone. Organisations are not rational actors.
> following directions like a total Svejk
I love that book. It would be nice to seen a version in a corporate setting. Instead of a war it could be some behemoth company doing a massive pivot to the cloud, rewriting every bit of business logic in ruby, etc, and its lowly minion who is forever avoiding work with mandatory training courses, and who never pays for lunch because they appear at the smallest meeting which has corporate catering.
Why can't you teach them directly?
Imagine a classroom of employees head down silently circling multiple choice worksheets "circle the correct two characteristics of creativity in each set". That's how we'd "teach". Even worse, we'd probably pick the class teachers by who did the best on the last generation of social skills worksheets.
Meanwhile the creative or socially skilled are going to tend to not have corporate jobs. Or they'll demand more than minimal money.
For the same reason that you can't learn riding a bicycle from a book.
Libraries have books with that very title.