I don't think this and other so-called "soft" skills are undervalued by engineers themselves. A good writer/communicator brings immediate value to any engineeri

I don't think this and other so-called "soft" skills are undervalued by engineers themselves. A good writer/communicator brings immediate value to any engineering team and will be treated as such, usually. It's the pointy heads and the business side of the operation who don't value it, because it's not sexy. IT and software engineering are abstract to them, so when they don't see "hands on keyboards" (writing code), they think no work is being done. Software engineering will remain in its infancy as a "profession" until software engineers themselves organize and better assert their own professional standards. Writing and iterating over documentation is an ISO standard that is ignored 99% of the time. If you ignore your professional standards, you are not a professional, no matter your title or your salary or even your field of work.