One thing that surprised me is this: for people with technical jobs--programmers, engineers, research scientists--very few of these things matter at all. You only need two things to possess social capital in technical fields: first you need to be aware of current political and business news (like look at the Google News front page and business page daily); and second you need to know at least three good restaurants to eat at in your neighborhood and at least three good restaurants to eat at in your office's neighborhood. And that is all.

You mean, of the things they looked at, that is all. If you want to succeed in engineering management (instead of as a low-level grunt engineer), you need to read Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat. This book is vitally important for anyone hoping to understand the social dynamics of large organizations.