Soft skills like communication and teamwork are often called 'essential' in job postings, but I've seen companies hire purely on technical ability and then force everyone into endless training workshops that feel like a band-aid. My last team lead had zero empathy but could code circles around anyone, yet our projects still failed because nobody felt safe raising concerns early. Is it fair to say that soft skills are actually harder to teach than hard skills, or are we just bad at measuring them? I'd argue that if a workplace doesn't naturally reward collaboration, no amount of role-playing exercises will fix it—but maybe I'm cynical because I've sat through too many 'active listening' seminars that changed nothing.