[svckr]

I totally agree and – let me address my pet peeve here – let's stop using the word soft skill in 2020.

At least where I come from, the term has often been used to (successfully) diminish skills that I'd consider essential.

Unless you're happy to have someone above you handle any and all communication, so that you can disappear behind your screens, you need to be able to communicate effectively. For us "effective" can mean "Geek Boy" language/jargon, but in most other cases we have to step it up. But you knew that already :)

[twic]

> At least where I come from, the term has often been used to (successfully) diminish skills that I'd consider essential.

I have never, ever, seen this happen. I have seen lots of people complaining about it on twitter, though.

Can you give us three concrete examples of times people have used the term to discount soft skills?

[Normal_gaussian]

tbh I find "soft" incredibly descriptive. Calling its complement "hard" is perhaps problematic (implying easy vs hard).

Soft as a word feels like the skills. They are wooly, malleable, and many other adjectives of imprecise application to the topic at hand!

[IMTDb]

> At least where I come from, the term has often been used to (successfully) diminish skills that I'd consider essential.

From where I come from, people obsessed by soft skills are those that hardly have any "hard skills" to talk about.

It's like you either are demonstrably good in your craft OR you have "lots of soft skills". You can never have both because :

- If you have neither hard nor soft skills, you should be fired - and no ont wants that

- If you have both hard and soft skills, you should be promoted - and no one wants that either

So "soft skills" are used as a modulator to keep the status quo. And the best thing is that you dont need to really grade/score/assess them, just tell the employees to "work on them".