"Today's essential technical skills gradually-or sometimes abruptly-become obsolete. Tools change. Frameworks fall out of favor. Architectures that once seemed modern begin to look dated. This isn't new, but it is accelerating. The half-life of technical skills keeps shrinking. In the 1980s, it took ten years for half of what you knew to become outdated. Today, it is four years, and will soon fall below two years according to a Stanford professor."
"Soft skills behave differently. When someone learns how to collaborate effectively, make better decisions, facilitate discussions, or lead others, those skills don't fade. Instead, they become part of how that person works. Learning how to learn is a good example. Once someone develops that capability, it stays with them. The same is true for decision-making, leadership, and collaboration. These skills can continue to improve, but they don't become irrelevant. Over the life of a team-or a career-that difference matters."
Technical skills in product development decay rapidly as tools, frameworks, and architectures change, shortening the half-life of technical knowledge from about ten years to around four years and approaching two. Technical capabilities remain necessary but are rarely durable. Soft skills such as collaboration, decision-making, facilitation, leadership, and learning how to learn persist and often strengthen over time, becoming part of how people work. These transferable skills provide sustained value across teams and careers. A product demo that displayed clinically inappropriate placeholder text (suggesting Saltine crackers for a fussy newborn) highlights risks when technical work lacks domain knowledge and communication.
Read at Mountaingoatsoftware
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