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> in the software industry today, I think technical skills have been undervalued

Is there a particular niche in the industry that you've seen this? I've almost universally seen the opposite.

The closest thing I can think of is that someone who truly only has technical skills will usually be limited to IC levels, whereas someone who also has soft skills becomes a better candidate for senior and staff positions. The thing is, that's because soft skills are an actual requirement for those roles. The purpose to them is to herd cats, and someone who communicates poorly or doesn't seek out opportunities to do so won't get them.

With that said, I don't think I've been in any tech focused company where technical skills aren't valued, and continued growth unappreciated. It's more a case that they're considered table stakes, and having strong soft skills is where you stand out.

I am mostly talking about what you just pointed out. The fact that soft skills are required to move up is evidence that technical skills are required less the more responsibility you get. There is a minimum bar requirement at entry level, and maybe one or two more levels before it gets taken for granted and rarely becomes an expectation for the higher positions that pay more. The more experienced engineers spend less time on code, and this is justified because they want people to be a "force multiplier" by becoming managers, essentially.

Engineers get a tiny slice of the app and the majority of the time is spent on tasks that could be done by anybody else who didn't spend 10+ years studying and practicing computer science. Promotions are about managing a bunch of engineers that each get a tiny slice of the engineering. I would love to see promotions based on learning more technical skills and for this "track" to go all the way up the chain of responsibilities until you are responsible for coding hundreds of thousands of lines of code at a time. Ironically if I tried to build a company like that I would end up doing exactly what I am complaining about.

Unless you're RMS level weird orgs use "soft skills" as cover in the same vein as "bad culture fit" for likeability, politik and empire building.

That said, imo the "technical skills are required less the more responsibility you get" mindset is the root of much dysfunction in tech companies... it's how we ended up suffering the car assembly line cargo cult in an industry where ~10 engineers can make Whatsapp ($$$$) when not laden with ceremony and theater.

> The more experienced engineers spend less time on code, and this is justified because they want people to be a "force multiplier" by becoming managers, essentially.

I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the higher level roles are (or ought to be).

Experienced engineers spend less time on code because the code doesn't live in a vacuum. Changes require planning. Requests for features usually come from people who either don't understand what they're asking for, or don't realize there's a different and better way to achieve the same outcome with less effort. Junior developers need mentorship and review to grow.

If those things don't appeal, that's fine. They still need doing, and the people doing them need a good amount of technical skill- usually the more the better, though the phrase architecture astronaut comes to mind.

There are some organizations that revolve around pure technical competency, but none of the ones I can think of are businesses- mostly, it's open source projects run by their BDFL founders like Linux, that sort of thing.

I agree to a certain extent, mainly that it is a matter of appeal and it's about finding the right match, etc. That said, I can't help but think there is value being lost by thinking engineers need to scale their productivity by managing more people rather than by managing more software.

Software is inherently about automation and abstraction, and the possibilities are limitless as we are witnessing with recent AI breakthroughs. If more engineers had the opportunity to optimize their expertise throughout their career they could produce advanced solutions adding orders of magnitude more value.

It has to do with the nature of software and how you can build an intricate system with whatever properties you want, but instead companies like to use popular frameworks and slice their product into tiny fragments that they can divide among their army of low level engineers, so of course they need a proportional amount of managers as well.

Hmm...programming is also one of those skills you can "pick up." Lots of people do.

To _really_ be successful, most folks need to develop a combination of "hard" and "soft" skills. The "soft" skills are neither easier nor less important. And strong "soft" skills make it SO much easier to leverage those "hard" skills.

By that measure almost anything could be picked up, but then it loses all meaning. I'm sure people can just pick up quantum physics if you just get the books and start reading.

I think the distinction here is the difference between learning how to use Jira or your calendar app, versus learning C++. One will take you years to achieve to a degree of professional competency while the other is a matter of just doing it a few times and getting into the habit of it.

I agree you need both soft and hard skills though, to me it's just a matter of how much time your spending your 8 hours on, and it seems so many software companies are happy having their engineers spending less than 20% of their time on technical matters.

Yeah, learning JIRA or your calendar app is straightforward. Learning to work effectively with other people, whether as a member of a team or leading a team, can be remarkably nuanced and can take years of work and improvement to get really effective at it.

Working on large projects is a team sport. Expect to spend as much time (or more) working with others as just writing code.

I mean, it's ok to not worry about soft skills and focus your time and effort entirely on coding, but ultimately that limits the scope of what you can do.

I would say that being "ok" at managing or planning is easy but being very good at both those skills is extremely hard, so hard that you cannot achieve it with effort alone.