alt Hacker NewsI have no experience with the military and very little with working in academia, but a lot with commercial work, and I've seen it work many times. Clearly those people wouldn't be the ones talking to customers or leading teams, but it's worth a lot to have someone that can tackle hard problems.
I'm not at all saying that you can only have one or the other, or that soft skills don't matter at all. It's just my experience that output matters a lot more than people say in these types of conversations.
To me looks a lot more like the cliche Diva in music - are you really going to not work with someone extremely talented just because they're difficult to work with and you wouldn't want to hang out with them?
> it's worth a lot to have someone that can tackle hard problems
Oh, absolutely. My point is those personalities are almost common in the military and academia. They’re rarer in commerce because there aren’t that many niches where hard problems exist independent of peoples’ preferences. (As in, choosing how to scope the hard problem is part of what makes it hard. And the scoping that works best isn’t going to be found in isolation from customers and others working on the problem.)