It varies from day to day and person to person, but "the task level, where coding gets done" is not really where I spend much of my working time. Much more of

It varies from day to day and person to person, but "the task level, where coding gets done" is not really where I spend much of my working time. Much more of my time is figuring out how things work and then getting agreement on changes. So that consideration elevates the value of social skills, but it's not obvious what that means in practice. Nerds with poor social skills can fail for all the usual reasons, #1 being big ego. But if we respect our colleagues' intelligence, then it can be helpful when we nerds are socially "naive" enough to take comments at face value without the usual human instinct of treating them as moves in a complex game. Another social skill is clear communication, and that is rare. But I've found it uncorrelated with nerdiness -- maths and engineering types are occasionally good at it, because they are good at pinning down concepts. But artsy types can also be good at it. I'd say lawyers are the best overall.