Soft skills like communication and teamwork are often called essential, but I've seen brilliant engineers with terrible people skills thrive in technical roles for years. If you're exceptional at your craft, does mastering office politics and networking really move the needle, or is it just corporate fluff? In my last job, the most 'soft-skilled' manager was promoted while his technical projects kept failing—so I'm leaning toward NO right now, but I've also met devs whose careers stalled because they couldn't articulate ideas. What do you actually think: are soft skills overrated or the real career lever, especially when hard skills get you in the door?