I've been managing teams for eight years, and I keep seeing soft skills like communication and adaptability decide who gets promoted—technical ability only gets you in the door. But a few colleagues argue that in fields like software engineering, deep technical expertise matters far more, and soft skills are just a nice-to-have that can be learned on the job. That makes me wonder: if you could only hire for one trait in a new grad, would you pick raw intelligence or emotional intelligence? I lean toward soft skills because they affect every interaction, yet I'm not sure if that's just my bias from dealing with so many cross-functional projects.