About them people skills

" If you don’t have or don’t learn the people skills, even if you’re a superstar engineer you won’t advance. You have to be able to interact with people as a person does, not as a engineer. Even if your juniors can’t design their way out of a paper bag, be supportive; help them, don’t complain they can’t design. If your superiors won’t listen to your excellent ideas on how to improve process and/or save big $$, explain it to them once and then move on; don’t dwell on how foolish they are. At some point you’ll be given leadership responsibilities. If you don’t think you have the people skills, ask for training in them. You may not get it, but at least it will show initiative and that you care about self-improvement. Being a good leader isn’t about rewarding good performance or punishing bad performance, you need to inspire your team. " (cribbed and modified from a Quora post)  -- applicable to any technically related career. Coder, Architect, Designer, Engineer.