> everyone silently hates those people

What? No.

I don’t have a good sense for this. Having friends and colleagues and a partner with the focus and attention span for it is invaluable. Like it or not, power dynamics are real. And teams with someone tuned into their social dynamics can work better than one purely technical and aloof.

Just because one doesn’t have a sense for a thing doesn’t make that thing despicable.

I think he's talking about people who respond to the professor's questions in lecture.

Or worse, ask pointless questions just to prove they understand the content.

As the other child of this comment said, I’m not talking about being socially aware. I’m talking about people who are so obnoxious they turn everything into a competition so they can validate their own ego, quite the opposite of being socially aware. Lectures aren’t a competition of who said what.