I'd say one aspect of having good social skills is getting along with people you have nothing in common with, but the bulk of what it means to have good social

I'd say one aspect of having good social skills is getting along with people you have nothing in common with, but the bulk of what it means to have good social skills is still just having good social skills. Being able to communicate, being able to listen, being able to put your thoughts into words that convey your meaning to other people with minimal misunderstanding while remaining concise. Being socially self-aware and having some minimal ability to read the people that you're interacting with, regardless of whether or not those people like the same TV shows or video games or whatever. Personally, I think it's easier to get along with people I have a lot in common with, but that's the extent of it. It's a teensy bit easier because at least we have things to make small talk about. Us having stuff in common doesn't have anything to do with how we approach problems or how rational we are or how we work together in a group though. It doesn't have anything to do with our respective social and emotional hangups, which are bound to be different despite us having the same tastes in some form of entertainment. It doesn't have anything to do with how well I can articulate the problem I'm having to that other person, or how well that person can draw meaning from what I told them, come up with a solution, communicate it back to me, and then iterate with me on that solution during a conversation. I think that for a lot of people in the tech world, especially those still in their teens and 20s, the biggest social impediment that they perceive in themselves is that they have no idea how to interact with someone who's not like them. They think that if they can somehow overcome that, that they'll be golden, because they assume that they do great with the people who are like them. But that's rarely the case IME. It's just less obvious to them that they do just as poorly dealing with their own peer group, because things get papered over with fun small talk that they misinterpret as succeeding at socializing and communicating.