Underrated Soft Skills: Charisma

Soft skills vs. technical work and corporate politics

• Some engineers resent the growing emphasis on communication/charisma, seeing it as empowering “ladder climbers” and weakening technical rigor and product quality.
• Others argue this is just how businesses work: revenue, hiring, firing, and reorgs are necessary; engineers who ignore this reality limit their careers.
• A middle view: the “MBA vs. engineer” dichotomy is false; healthy orgs cultivate people who understand both tech and business.

What is charisma? Likability, influence, manipulation

• Several commenters think the article conflates charisma with likability or being “pleasant to work with.”
• Charisma is framed by some as the ability to make others adopt your goals and feel good about it; likability alone is just agreeableness.
• Others emphasize that charisma is morally neutral and easily used for manipulation or deception; comparisons are made to gaslighting and political demagogues.

Is charisma learnable?

• One camp: charisma is innate and rare; you can’t really teach it, only observe its effects.
• Another camp strongly disagrees, citing “The Charisma Myth” and similar material, claiming exercises can noticeably improve presence, confidence, and social ease if practiced consistently.
• A recurring idea: real charisma is hard to fake because people are highly attuned to authenticity; internal state changes drive external cues.

Neurodiversity, trauma, and resistance to soft skills

• Some note many engineers have autism, ADHD, anxiety, or social trauma; “just be charismatic” ignores deep emotional barriers.
• Interest in technical mastery is sometimes described as a coping mechanism or “safe space” after negative social experiences.
• For advice to stick, commenters say it must address emotional roots, not just provide social “how‑to” tips.

Charisma in practice: leadership, acting, and work relationships

• Actors and directors discuss charisma as presence, commitment, and genuine focus on others; “acting is reacting” more than pushing energy outward.
• In teams, charisma is linked to consensus‑building, persuasion, and making collaboration smoother, but it doesn’t guarantee being a good coworker.
• Several share practical heuristics: be genuinely interested, frame things positively, avoid constant criticism, and don’t try to “fake” body language you can’t read.

Critiques of the article and framing

• Some think the piece is basically “how to play the corporate game,” not how to be a good engineer.
• Others appreciate it as pragmatic career advice, even if it tacitly accepts dysfunctional orgs.
• A minority dismiss the whole topic as “influencer/sales tricks for grifters” and argue we should be designing systems that minimize primate‑politics rather than optimizing for them.