Much has been made of the need for IT pros to demonstrate soft skills, but a backlash against their importance is brewing. Much has been made of the need for IT professionals to demonstrate soft skills—the ability to communicate, negotiate, and win friends and influence people. CIOs and IT hiring managers have been beating the soft skills drum for years. They realize a friendly, customer-focused IT staff promotes collaboration with business units, delivers projects and services more effectively, and helps to bury the propeller-head image that persists in IT. More positions in IT departments—from help desk technician to business analyst to outsourcing relationship manager—require refined soft skills. Today, there’s even more pressure on IT professionals to be personable and persuasive, and to exhibit keen emotional intelligence. In an April 2009 column for Computerworld, Robert Half Technology Executive Director Dave Willmer wrote that IT professionals who possess solid technical and soft skills have a distinct edge in the job market over those who are strong only on the technical side. Hardcore techies resent that thinking, and I sense a growing backlash among them toward this emphasis on soft skills. For instance, when I interviewed Catherine Kaputa for my blog on IT professionals’ personal branding hangups, she said that when she speaks at tech companies about the importance of personal branding and soft skills in career management, she gets resistance from some technical employees, who tell her that they went into IT so that they could work independently. A reader left a comment on my blog that reinforces Kaputa’s observation. The reader, who goes by QuestingElf, notes that many IT professionals view soft skills as “a guise for ‘technical incompetence.'” QuestingElf continues: If you have to reach for the soft skills of cajoling and persuasion, maybe you don’t have what it takes to hack it in IT. Let us remember that some folks in technical fields like IT pride themselves on NOT having social skills. This has been clarified and verified by Reeves and Nass over at Stanford who say they can always count on someone in their seminars proclaiming, “I got into engineering precisely because I do not want to be evaluated on my social skills.” I have to admit that the misanthrope in me admires the anti-social attitude that QuestingElf expresses and its inherent intellectual machismo. The IT professionals QuestingElf is talking about apparently measure their masculinity by their technical prowess. (I am not judging that.) To them, the need for soft skills is a sign of technical impotence. I wonder, are IT professionals now reclaiming their inner geek? Is this geek pride they’re professing in Stanford seminars and in discussion forums on the Web evidence of a growing revolt against the importance of soft skills in their field? Inquiring minds want to know, so leave your comments below. Related content opinion Career Advice: Parting Words By Meridith Levinson Apr 11, 2012 2 mins Careers opinion IT Salaries: 10 Cities Where IT Professionals Earn the Most IT staffing firm CyberCoders recently released its ranking of the 10 cities where IT salaries are highest. CIO.com compares this latest salary data with IT salary surveys from other sources. By Meridith Levinson Apr 03, 2012 3 mins Salaries IT Jobs Careers opinion How Project Managers Can Negotiate Higher Salaries The Project Management Institute's latest salary survey is chockfull of specific, reliable data that project managers can use to negotiate higher salaries. Here's an example of how they might use the data in their own salary negotiations. By Meridith Levinson Mar 21, 2012 3 mins Salaries Project Management Tools Careers opinion Why IT Managers Need to Address Skills Shortages in Their Organizations IT managers know that skills shortages in their organizations negatively impact business operations, yetdue to budget and time constraintsthey do little to address IT skills gaps. Is there any way to fix this problem? By Meridith Levinson Mar 16, 2012 3 mins IT Skills Careers IT Leadership Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe