A software engineer without "soft skills" is 0.1x engineer.
We all know this guy.
The one that you make sure to never talk to customer. The one you always need to ensure you approach carefully. The one who's "not good with people."
Yeah, that guy.
Software engineering is fundamentally a team sport. Even if he is very fast at typing in and recalling algorithms from memory, he'll make the entire org around him 1/10 as effective.
@raiderrobert I agree with you, but I encourage you to use the term "interpersonal skills", or "political acumen", or some phrase like that. "Soft skills" as a phrase is specifically designed to make it sound like they are skills that are lesser-than. (I do thank you for putting in scare-quotes to hint at that point).
Meanwhile, this reminds me of an anecdote from my undergraduate. Names are changed in next post to protect the innocent & guilty:
Cc: @wwahammy
My undergraduate (≈1992) had only 1 class w/ group project—“Software Engineering”.
1 student, John, considered himself what he'd now call “10x”. His team struggled. In final weeks,he sat in lab alone for days & wrote the whole software system.
In final review, Professor (correctly) said John was the biggest problem on that team w/ pithy review: “Don't write software like a fighter pilot”.
John's not-getting-it response: “At least a fighter pilot has a wingman!” 🤦
Robert Roskam
Bradley M. Kühn