I don't think good people skills are that rare, at least no more rarer than really good technical skills.
I think this perception is due that if you are hiring someone with experience in software, you already perform a selection on who will apply, you'll typically get people with "some" technical skills so the people you'll see with people skills are the ones with some intersection of both.
Also good technical skills aren't that easy to discriminate in the length of an interview. Its much easier to discriminate people skills since you are putting people in a stressful situation that is all about dealing with people.
Finally, a lot of the people with both technical skills and some people skills will avoid widget factories type of environments. If they started out of college, they probably got a programming job in a widget place, their perspective is the lowly ranked employee, its unlikely they appreciated the experience in comparison. Once they found a more enjoyable position, they probably won't go back to that type of environment. They won't even apply.
I think this perception is due that if you are hiring someone with experience in software, you already perform a selection on who will apply, you'll typically get people with "some" technical skills so the people you'll see with people skills are the ones with some intersection of both.
Also good technical skills aren't that easy to discriminate in the length of an interview. Its much easier to discriminate people skills since you are putting people in a stressful situation that is all about dealing with people.
Finally, a lot of the people with both technical skills and some people skills will avoid widget factories type of environments. If they started out of college, they probably got a programming job in a widget place, their perspective is the lowly ranked employee, its unlikely they appreciated the experience in comparison. Once they found a more enjoyable position, they probably won't go back to that type of environment. They won't even apply.