I see a lot of people who don't do well because they think everyone else is an idiot, often simply because they aren't hackers or don't spend all of their time knowing every thing that ends up on Slashdot, Freshmeat, or whatever other fora hackers read every 15 minutes of the day. Even the original post has the sub-text that everyone else is an idiot, and it's a bad place to start.

I don't really beleive that "hackers" as a group don't do well in a corporate environment. I know quite a few very smart one who do. I think that the same people you point to who would not do well in the corporate world would also have a lot of problems in other areas in life where they have to deal with people, and they just happen to be hackers. It's not that hackers and the corporate work environment don't mix, I think, so much as the notion that the people you think of simply don't like playing nice with other people.

These people have the mixed-up idea that they have to solve all the world's problems, or that everything has to exist in black-and-white terms, and they can't function outside of that. Operating under these absolutes makes them tread all over the thing that really solves problems: people. Of course, this problem extends beyond the work environment for these people.

I often blame these things on the misguided notion that a good hacker should have more respect, more say, or more anything simple because he is a hacker. Maybe they've just read a bunch of Ayn Rand, Dilbert is verbatim from Scott Adams real life experiences, or they have always been treated with deference in school because they were so smart. When it comes to the corporate environment, being smart doesn't get you much because there is a lot of dull, banal, repetitive work to do. These people doesn't realize that there is an entire cast of other people ensuring they have a desk to sit at, a chair to sit in, power for their desk lamps and computers, that he gets paid on time and the appropriate amount of money goes to various social withholdings, and so on. The hacker is just part of the machine, and not necessarily even the most important part no matter how highly they esteem themselves. Plenty of companies run by smart techies haven't gone anywhere. Hackers aren't the magic ingredient.

Whatever situation you are in, you have to deal with the people around you no matter how or why they got to the positions they did. Not only that, you have to deal with them in a way that you can be effective and continue to be effective. I've seen a lot of people who simply can't do that.

I think it would be more productive to look at the people who are hackers and have been successful in the corporate world so you can figure out what they did to make it all work. Continuing to beleive that hackers and work don't mix simply perpetuates the stereotype and admits defeat. It's not useful to anyone, and harmful to a lot.