This is the core of it. So much of business, engineering and product design is about navigating a network graph of people to discover requirements, coordinate expertise and make things happen in the real world.

I know many engineers would prefer to just focus on engineering, but creating something meaningful for people means working with and through people. Even the most hands-off, self-service SaaS products depend on this.

Take an extreme case like Minecraft, where a single person behind a computer created a billion-dollar company. I'd argue that even here a significant part of that success came from Notch's very active involvement in the community.