soft skills overrated?

Soft skills don't measure anyone's technical ability, but if you can't effectively communicate who will take the time to understand you. Most developers are quite arrogant and do not understand how to compromise with the business side. That usually leads to both sides competing with one another instead of working together. Learning how to compromise and give a little, allows both sides to profit. The only way a highly technical person with poor soft skills can advance is to have a manager that sees it and goes to bat for him/her. I don't see any other way for the person with poor soft-skills to get noticed. So to answer the question--No they are not overrated.

Consider I used to have excellent "hard skills" with IDMS Cobol which is almost useless today. My soft skills like being able to get along with people, communicate etc. are still useful today.