I've been interviewing candidates for mid-level engineering roles, and I'm starting to see a pattern: the ones with impressive technical stacks often struggle with basic communication. Last week, a candidate solved a complex system design problem flawlessly, but when I asked her to walk me through her thought process, she froze. Is this just a hiring artifact, or are we actually undervaluing soft skills in technical education? I've worked with enough brilliant coders who can't write a clear email to think there's something systematic here, but I'm genuinely torn — maybe in a remote-first world, asynchronous written communication matters more than ever, or maybe technical depth truly compensates for softer gaps. What's your experience been like on the job?