[Eumenes]

This is HR speak and from my experience, "technical" people talking about these topics tend to be overcompensating for lack of competency, or interest, in their domain. Its objectively easier to talk about this stuff all day vs coding or being knee deep in the guts of systems. My last job was big on this and many engineers with high "EQ" were rapidly promoted into middle management roles. Lets just say, the promotions were short lived because a "reduction in force" followed. This isn't an excuse to be a jerk, but the industry has over indexed on HR/psychology talk and real hardcore technologists don't give a shit. Fortunately many of these firms are super upfront about these things, like on their career page, or if you feel inclined, look at their leaders/manages on linkedin - they put this stuff on blast all over their profiles. A little research goes a long way.

[sherilm]

I wrote a piece on this exact point and how much you should actually worry about EQ:

Technical and cognitive skills are clearly "threshold factors" that cannot be ignored— they get you in the game and let you keep playing it. While they might not be sufficient, they sure are a necessary condition for success in most domains.

In order to stand out on your EQ skills you have to be first competitive on your technical/cognitive skills. It will be tough to compete just on your social skillset.

EQ is probably not a differentiator at lower levels and early stages of your career. Technical chops, cognitive skills and execution will probably help you stand out more. It's only when you move on to the managerial and executive ranks that EI/EQ starts becoming a differentiator, what Goleman calls a "discriminating competency".

Even at higher levels, EQ is not a given. Where it can probably make the most impact is in avoiding pitfalls once you get there, what researchers call “leadership derailment", rather than being an active mechanism in reaching there.

More here: "Misled and Oversold on Emotional Intelligence" https://www.leadingsapiens.com/ei-vs-iq-misperceptions/

[psunavy03]

Just because a person lacks social skills does not mean social skills magically become unimportant. For all technologists like to brag about their world being black-and-white and that technical chops are the be-all and end-all, this is only true in very specific roles. For everything else, you have to deal with actual human beings, and in this case "this is the way I am, get over it" is generally a very poor strategy.