Re:Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills
by retinaros on Sunday January 18, 2026 @04:37PM
(#46672396)
you can be better and decide not to do it because you dgaf
Re:Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills
by UK-Al05 on Sunday January 18, 2026 @06:43PM
(#46673384)
Intelligence scales with social skills.
Unless you have a condition like autism which allows skewed development, which a lot software engineers do have.
Re:Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills
by robocat on Tuesday January 20, 2026 @11:01PM
(#46700935)
To add - their comment about socially prickly smart devs (my paraphrase) makes me think they are referencing the mad genius stereotype (crazy artist, Aspie developer, etcetera).
Are rudeness and crazyness markers of intelligence? is Terry Davis a good or bad example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105215
This is a B-player myth.
High intelligence makes you better at soft skills. People are complex, and it takes intelligence to intuit the patterns of soft skills.
It is true that if you have high skills that a business needs, you can choose to ignore many internal norms.
And also as your status goes up, the more you don't need to care about signaling, and some people do counter-signalling. I always think of this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/lifestyle/article-9233455/Prince...
Unfortunately it is also true that some people think that acting badly will give them cred (reversing the causality that having cred permits bad behaviour). Was Sam-Bankman-Fried acting that cryptic appearance? Do executives also model their behaviour by rewatching The Apprentice or Gordon Ramsay?