Generally if you have good skills people will want to network with you, unless you're anti-social or have some other personality issues. Keep in mind that technical skills are just one component in a good coworker.
This comment reveals another problem - if a person is not interested in networking for the sake of it, they're slapped with the "anti-social" or "personality disorder" labels.
Anecdotally, some of the best engineers I've worked with despise the networking culture and prefer to keep to themselves, while some of the most "social" and "networking" people were grifters who didn't have much skill, but knew how to appear like they do.
> Generally if you have good skills people will want to network with you, unless you're anti-social or have some other personality issues.
Not really. In my experience that is the exception rather than the rule. Especially because most people will have no way to know you have good skills if they don't already know you.
I would put it this way: in these times of massive layoffs, if you're a programmer and you don't network, you're doing it wrong. There are exceptions, e.g. for genius types, but the rest of us better be social.
Anecdotally, some of the best engineers I've worked with despise the networking culture and prefer to keep to themselves, while some of the most "social" and "networking" people were grifters who didn't have much skill, but knew how to appear like they do.