I will go out on a limb and say:
* The typical engineering/CS students I met at college had a noticeable lower emotional and social intelligence than the average student. Obviously there are exceptions. The kid with the best social skills could have been an electrical engineer, while the worst maybe was a finance major. But there was definitely a distinction.
And the effect feeds off of each other. Many people are under-socialized in high school but break out of their shell in college. I'd like to go out a limb again and say the opportunity for this is less for CS/engineering students.
I went to a large state university. Engineers/programmers at my school really tended to be exclusive. Like there was an engineering floor in my freshman dorm and they all kept to themselves. The few engineers I'd run into at parties would sometimes joke about not hanging out with his peers. I had a pretty diverse group of friends in college but very rarely ran into them outside of my math classes.
People learn their social and emotional intelligence from their peers. With CS/engineering groups, there's aren't many tribal leaders to learn from.
* It's pretty evident that Google execs are having trouble understanding how others perceive them:
Eric Schmidt recently suggested to a group of reporters that Google's culture was the strong hand that kept it from engaging in anticompetitive behavior: "If somehow we went into a room with the evil light, and we announced an evil strategy, we would be destroyed," he said. "There is a fundamental trust relationship between Google and its users." He shared similar comments, according to Wired, with Varney's predecessor at the Justice Department, who apparently was floored that "trust" was Schmidt's legal justification for pushing through the Yahoo/Google deal.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/21/technology/obama_google.fort...
BTW if you have a CS/engineer background and have good EQ/SQ, props to you! I truly believe people with a diverse skill set have a tremendous advantage. The people who rise to the top of Hollywood don't tend to be the pure artists but business/artist (or artist/business).
I don't think introverts have a less diverse skill set than extroverts either. It's harder for extroverts to perceive an introvert's skill set so it's highly likely that you're probably just unaware. I'd say the majority of business leaders are actually introverts.
I know many introverts with very good social and emotional skills. Likewise, I know many extroverts who are terrible in this regard.
Q: How can you tell the difference between an introverted engineer and an extroverted engineer?
A: The extroverted engineer looks at your shoes when he's talking to you.
We laughed.