I 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?