The most important skill for software engineers in 2026

Communication is now the most important skill for software engineers.

On Reddit, Twitter, and Threads, much of the AI talks among engineers revolve around the hard skills: prompt tricks to accomplish X, best MCPs for Y, and so on. We're not obsessing enough over the human component.

AI coding agents have gotten very, very good. A year ago, I'd reach out to Cursor hesitantly for MVPs or quick fixes. Today, I use Claude Code for almost all non-trivial programming tasks and estimate to spend well over $5,000 on Claude Code this year.

One thing with coding agents is that the better the spec, the better their output will be. But getting a good spec is hard.

In real life, tickets rarely contain all the requirements. To do so, you might need to:

• Ask questions that reveal assumptions people didn't know they had
• Facilite trade-off discussions
• Push back on scope without burning bridges
• Make calls on things nobody thought to specify

Doing these things well used to be optional for individual contributors. In some teams, you could thrive being an average communicator but excellent coder. Now, it's starting to feel like a non-negotiable.

Software engineers are problem solvers. We believe that every problem has a solution, a "best practice". But working with people is messy.

Unfortunately, we won't be able to AI our way into better communication skills. Good communication requires empathy, and we can all use a little more of that.