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Forget Learning To Code, Bosses Value Collaboration and Communication (fastcompany.com)
The top priority for developing talent is to train for soft skills, according to LinkedIn's 2018 Workplace Learning Report which surveyed more than 4,000 professionals. From a report: The report found that while automation is requiring workers to maintain technical fluency across roles, the rise of machine-led tasks makes it necessary for them to do what machines can't, which is to be adaptable, critical thinkers who can lead and communicate well.
... I hope that the surgeon has good communication skills when he has to tell your family that you died since he doesn't know what to do with a scalpel. I've noticed lately that incompetents usually try to promote soft skills when they know that they are lacking hard skills. In fact, I can tell a person is incompetent because they say that soft skills are the most important. It's not guaranteed but it's a red flag.
This is basically an unsubstantiated conclusion drawn from misrepresented data.
The study suffers from a similar fallacy of generalising the ungeneralisable that various "successful people" often do when attributing success to methods which are highly subjective and circumstantial... the only difference here is is a study that generalises the opinion of 4000 "professionals" who are active members of linked-in by considering them to be a representative group of the whole - they are anything but, who the fuck has time for that shit, the real professionals are not arsing around on linked-in - those people are doing work for their employees that does not involve recruitment.
The Divas are not team players either and if they won't follow the direction SET by the manager, then they are definitely not worth the trouble that they create.
Guess which two I'm trying to get rid of?
The divas because you'd rather have control than anything else. Did I guess right?
Now we know who one of the two divas is.
Right, so a bunch of dumbasses can tell the coder to try stupid shit, and then blame the coder for becoming upset and un-collaborative, eh?
Like this guy? He was give a simple task of drawing 7 red lines, all mutually perpendicular, 2 of them green and the rest transparent. Instead of just getting the job done, he became argumentative and uncooperative. Would you want a guy like that on your team?
I know it's frustrating to be the strongest technically and not get promoted, but the strongest technical contributor isn't necessarily the best manager.
I lead a hardware development group and I don't do that much development myself anymore these days. What I spend my time on is:
1. Setting development priorities (we don't have enough resources, so I need to find the least-bad solution)
2. Hand-holding engineers having interpersonal problems
3. Shielding my team from organizational politics
4. Fighting my peer managers to get development resources for my team's projects
5. Promoting our group and our development ideas to upper management
6. Evaluating the contributions of the various technical folks on my team and trying to fairly distribute my (very) limited raise pool.
7. Doing hands-on hardware development.
As you can see, this isn't necessarily a good for the best technical engineer. Soft skills go a long, long way.
5% of their employees who can actually get the job done. This will involve having hard skills like coding, thinking, and knowing how to actually back up your hard drive.
Once they have those 5% of hard-skill employees doing 95% of their department's actual work, they will then hire 95% more employees to pad out their workforce with soft tasks like PR, product development, HR, sub-level managers, and other overhead.
The boss will use these soft-skill hires to demonstrate that they are successfully building an organization and will be promoted. The 5% of hard skill workers will never be promoted because they will be overworked, grumpy, and their colleagues will resent their capability. They will eventually leave for new jobs, retire, or be let go. The 95% of soft-skill employees will remain (or just churn over) and will eventually grow to 100% soft-skill employees as the hard-skill workers leave.
The department will then die as its output plummets. A new potential boss will recognize the opportunity to fill the void and the cycle will repeat.
This is the life cycle of all professional organizations.
I think the expert showed great restraint. I wish I could suffer fools as kindly - of course, because I don't, employees in my dev groups don't have to deal with fools often, or for long, either as co-workers or as outside collaborators.
One part of my managerial role is to cut through this crap and tell other managers (and sometimes my own bosses) to take a long walk on a short pier (politely at first, not so politely if they persist in the theater of the absurd); one part of my technical role is to recognize this crap without having to bother team members who are actually doing productive work.
Unfortunately, that video is too reminiscent of a bunch of meetings I've been involved in my 40 years in software development.
The Divas are not team players either and if they won't follow the direction SET by the manager, then they are definitely not worth the trouble that they create.
Its likely that you are the real problem. If the divas are the top devs (and likely they are, otherwise they wouldn't be divas) then they likely should be the ones setting the technical direction of the project and not you. You are likely setting a bad course and won't take a hint when they tell you so. So instead of saying, "maybe I'm in the wrong here", you label them "assholes". Perhaps you are the real problem and not the divas. Perhaps they are only divas when a manager without their technical skills tries to "set the direction" in the wrong way. Just a thought...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
When you survey them, LinkedIn's professional managers say they want "soft skills". When you check their job requirements, they want you to be have "hard skills" (including N years of experience in their specific environment). When you check who is actually working for them, you find people who are cheap and have little in the way of skills (soft or hard) beyond checking StackExchange.