For example, suppose your team generates and shares some kind of data. You want to change the wire format. You could just go ahead and do it, letting the chips fall where they may, but I think that's bad engineering/engineering management.
It'd be better to coordinate with the folks consuming the data. Can you make their migration easier? While you're making a breaking change, are there others that would make sense to roll in? Are there times when it'd be better/worse to roll out the new version? Being proactive about this sort of stuff seems like good engineering to me.
All of those things are people management, and I agree people management is an important skill to have if you want to work in a big company in particular it isn't related to engineering. A guy who is completely non-verbal but makes a solar panel that is 5% more efficient is a great engineer, perhaps not liked by those around him but still a great engineer.
Terry Davis was a great engineer and he had the worst commutation skills you could imagine.
For example, suppose your team generates and shares some kind of data. You want to change the wire format. You could just go ahead and do it, letting the chips fall where they may, but I think that's bad engineering/engineering management.
It'd be better to coordinate with the folks consuming the data. Can you make their migration easier? While you're making a breaking change, are there others that would make sense to roll in? Are there times when it'd be better/worse to roll out the new version? Being proactive about this sort of stuff seems like good engineering to me.