Should we prioritize soft skills over technical ability when hiring junior engineers?
I've hired and trained over forty junior engineers in the last five years, and I keep noticing a pattern: the ones who succeed aren't always the ones with the best grades. In my experience, soft skills like communication and teamwork often matter more than technical ability. We structure interviews to test coding problems, but shouldn't we also evaluate how well someone can explain their ideas to a non-technical stakeholder?