This is a bizarre article. The author seems to think that being a doctor, a lawyer, a management consultant or a dentist requires some kind of advanced interpe

This is a bizarre article. The author seems to think that being a doctor, a lawyer, a management consultant or a dentist requires some kind of advanced interpersonal skills but this is not true at all. The primary thing that qualifies to you become one of those is detailed technical knowledge and analytical skills, not too different from being a software engineer or a plumber. Virtually no one tries to become a doctor and drops out either at pre-med or in medical school because they realize they can't hack the social part of the job. There's a big difference between a job requiring social interactions and a job where you're primarily judged by social and interpersonal skills. If you place most jobs on the technical knowledge to the social skill spectrum, those jobs would be near the far technical end. The author also seems to think that there was ever a point in time where social skills weren't extremely important. Management always paid very well and it's by definition a job that requires social skills. Jobs requiring primarily social skills and not much else are on a decline and also the types of social skills required in the marketplace have changed dramatically. The internet as a medium massively increases connectivity and discoverability, obsoleting a lot of shallower social skills, like comfort with making introductions and being a low-level connector because it's easier to find the people you need and verify their trustworthiness without having to rely on a connector. On the other hand, it's probably easier to build a truly massive network and those skills are probably valuable, even if they aren't similar to traditional social skills. One major trend I see is that being book smart is more important than ever because more interaction is taking place over online and face-to-face interactions are becoming less necessary. This means understanding the medium and technology is more important than natural face-to-face social skills we learn when we're younger and also the ability to communicate concisely and precisely and the ability to predict its impact ahead of time are more important. Also the world is more complicated and simple technical knowledge is very easy to look up and learn - this makes advanced analytical and learning skills more important than simple, rote, static knowledge. Being a well-adjusted, normal, sociable and outgoing person, which I think most people would associate with "social skills" speaking colloquially, is less important than it has been for a while. The kind of social skills that get you paid well are more like the social skills that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have in abundance. The other trend is that women are increasingly outperforming men at school, resulting in more book smart women. That bodes well for women, much more than the author's bizarre insistence that social skills are suddenly more important and that somehow women have better social skills than men, both of which are really questionable assertions.