You have frontline and backline chemists as well. Some chemists needs to be able to talk to less technical jobs, but other chemists specializes on improving the process or other technical skills.

So it isn't laymen/specialists, you have many many layers with people dumbing it down a bit in every step. Telling the specialists at the bottom of those layers that they need to be able to talk to the top of the layers is just nonsense. You need to be able to talk to people who are less technical than you, and to people who are more technical than you, so the layer above and below you, but that is it. It can help to be able to bridge more layers, but it isn't that important.

The problem with programming is that almost all those layers have the same name: software engineer.