> And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly.

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.

> step 1 is becoming irreplaceable so they can't replace you when you become inconvenient

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.

>>> 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.

Hence all the worry about "bus factors"

Indeed, quite odd to describe "soft skill" as critical thinking skills, ie cognitive skills. soft skill typically is social skill, the type of nebulous skill that while it may have value leaves huge room to interpretation.

The way I see it, critical thinking has a social aspect because an individual has to communicate those thoughts, or else how would we know they're critically thinking?

The way you see it, you could put there physics, engineering or any other hard skill just because you have to communicate what you've learned.

> And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly.

Why can't you teach them directly?

What we define as "teach" in the west is specifically designed to produce and select interchangeable factory drones with no social skills or creativity. Consider the K12 stereotype of filling out arithmetic worksheets or conjugation of foreign language verbs. Then we stack rank the kids by obedience to authority which usually anti-correlates with creativity and social skills to determine their educational path, and eventually give the "winners" jobs where their management are confused why they have no social skills and no creativity.

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.

>Why can't you teach them directly?

For the same reason that you can't learn riding a bicycle from a book.

Funnily enough, this along with failure is exactly how my learned. My family was not exactly "present" to help.

Libraries have books with that very title.