This just in: there's bias based on appearance. Outside of SV, being the wrong skin tone, wrong gender, not pretty enough, too pretty, not tall enough, etc are all attributes that have been unfairly affecting workers, since, well, forever.
If you're a brilliant programmer, but an asshole and proud of it (or unaware of it), then yes, you will not get far on your skills alone.
Whether we like it or not, we are all part of a society, and those who choose to rebel against that, well, that's thier choice and accept the consequences. (Follow up: you can't really hide behind remote work if you lack social skills. Possibly, but not very likely.)
EDIT: Snark removal.
Email especially. I work with 10 different countries, and programmers from England respond differently to my word choices than programmers from China, Japan, Holland, or India.
I find I have to be painfully concise and free from humor, idiom or analogy. It's tough!
I'd not think that unless I was working with Vulcans from Star Trek. It's foolish to expect engineers to be immune from the messier irrational aspects of human interaction. I think perhaps some 'engineer types' confuse the concepts of how something should be and how it actually is. They think they should be judged solely on the quality of their work, so they mistakenly believe they will be judged so. Confusing that which should be and that which is.
The same could be said about most non-customer facing jobs. But I would expect beauty and age-based bigotry to be relevant everywhere in the world.