Something in my comment triggered people to think I'm saying that communication skills aren't important or worth bothering with, so obviously there's room for improvement there.

But that's kind of beside the point isn't it? If you've spent years of your life learning specific skills to offer some benefit to society, and suddenly the society decides they need far fewer people with those skills (and thus don't want to employ you), that just fundamentally has to suck for a lot of people.

Saying "cheer up, you can just compensate with this other skill" is just ignoring that fundamental reality. And I think we've all met people who were diligent and technically competent but "a bit weird", but found a refuge in tech (note: I'm not necessarily talking about "assholes" here). Those people are going to have an even harder time, and that's not because of their "toxic" identification with their job (i.e. source of income and primary form of service to society).

And I hesitate to mention this, but I don't feel I'm in this situation. I just see it happening to people in my industry and worry about the future.