About the role of soft skills in the software development world

the topic that sawing metal and, say, planning your time are, in principle, two different tasks. Back in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries, Henry Ford automated processes. Then people did not look at soft skills, everyone decided that a person needs to be taught something narrowly focused. And now, many employers choose people, in my opinion, in most cases, it is for soft skills. Personally, I had such cases when a person shows himself to be a very cool specialist, he is a really strong techie, knows Linux well, is a great developer, but it is impossible to agree with him. Question! Are soft skills now hard skills? Can they be equalized?