Are you a prima donna programmer? I’ve certainly met people like this article describes, but I don’t see it as being something exclusive to hackers. A lot of bright people learn early on that “teamwork” really means “doing all the work”, and that impacts the way they function in groups later in life. I personally hate working on group projects, simply because in school, I was the smart one who’d always get assigned to the groups with the worst students. The teacher had good intentions (obviously hoping the others would benefit from my help), but in the end the others would always be more than willing to let me do all the work. And I’d have to do it, since otherwise my grade would suffer. I imagine that a lot of those “prima donna programmers” had similar experiences. You get tired of carrying the team, and sometimes you just want to do things your way and know that they’ll be done right. That said, I have had some positive team experiences here at work, but the best ones have always been where I had complete control over my area of the project. It’s just hard for me to give that up.