Originally Posted by mithawk
Engineering is another field that can pay quite well, particularly for exceptional programmers, and does not require strong social skills.

And notice how quickly the goalposts have moved. We're no longer talking about giftedness and the wealthy, we're now talking about the white-collar middle-class.

It's probably worth pointing out at this juncture that IT and engineering managers require strong social skills, and in fact those ranks are more often those with higher social skills, with technical skills that are lower than average among their peers.

This is partly because management roles self-select for the lesser performers, because the really great technical people would consider a middle-management role to be like death from a thousand paper cuts.