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Comment by ZephyrBlu | Hacker News Reader

I think "soft skills" disguises what these skills generally are and their importance in the context of an organization.

Things like navigating an org, knowing how to make asks that have a high % of being accepted, writing things for a specific audience and keeping conversations on track are all very important "soft skills" that are completely hidden by the "soft skills" label.

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Right. The "soft skills" that make you popular and likeable with your peers are seriously disjoint from the "soft skills" that show you're in tune with management's (possibly unstated) priorities and know how to navigate them and know where the actual decision-making power centers are (and aren't). Sometimes, these skills are antagonistic to each other.

Trying to munge these all together under one label seems counterfactual. Certainly, they're very different sets of skills: the former are social, the latter overtly political.

Where can I learn more about these practical, important, or less thought about "soft skills" (like ZephyrBlu's interesting examples) more effectively? I feel like I've encountered these points (e.g. writing for a specific audience) through separate online posts at disparate times. But, is there a definitive, more comprehensive resource detailing all of these soft skills and more? I realize that I'm basically looking for a career panacea, so maybe it doesn't exist. Even if it existed, should I even spend my time reading it—as someone very early in their career—versus actually making the mistakes myself, learning from it, and internalizing it?

Through self improvement literature! The problem is there’s a lot of bad self improvement literature out there.

You are also right that a lot of it can only be approximately taught, because the process of internalizing the skills has a lot to do with figuring out how to work with your own personality.

Well, through the small fraction of self-improvement literature (or courses) that isn't garbage. But it will take lots of time and energy to discern which is which.

The more trustworthy and time-efficient way is from coworkers/ mentors/ friends.

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