Engineering advancement inherently means becoming management
Not necessarily, at the company I work for, they have two advancement tracks for engineers: management and individual contributor. The individual contributor track goes something like associate engineer -> engineer -> senior engineer -> principal engineer with a bunch of different sub-tiers in those with raises associated with them. Yeah, you cap out at principal engineer, but at that point, you have a good salary and equity and would be considered a success by most metrics.
Yes any work is going to require collaboration, but that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of social skills. Even the most socially awkward person can explain technical requirements to a colleague and ask them to implement them. There’s a difference between communication skills and social skills, and success in academics requires good communication skills.
I’m not saying social skills aren’t valuable, I’m just saying they aren’t required to succeed in this current capitalist economy.
That may be true for some lines of work like sales, but something like software engineering is closer to 10% social ability and 90% technical ability.
If you want to ever move up in your career that’ll have to change because engineering advancement inherently means becoming management.
The unfortunate reality is that we live in a collaborative world and if you can’t collaborate then you will not go far.
It doesn’t matter if you’re the smartest person in the world if you’re also the most easily ignored.
One person can only do so much especially when they’re competing with people who aren’t alone.
Not necessarily, at the company I work for, they have two advancement tracks for engineers: management and individual contributor. The individual contributor track goes something like associate engineer -> engineer -> senior engineer -> principal engineer with a bunch of different sub-tiers in those with raises associated with them. Yeah, you cap out at principal engineer, but at that point, you have a good salary and equity and would be considered a success by most metrics.
Yes any work is going to require collaboration, but that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of social skills. Even the most socially awkward person can explain technical requirements to a colleague and ask them to implement them. There’s a difference between communication skills and social skills, and success in academics requires good communication skills.
I’m not saying social skills aren’t valuable, I’m just saying they aren’t required to succeed in this current capitalist economy.