[disillusion]

It depends on the situation, I think.

As a frontend developer who's in concurrent agile, multidisciplinary projects, the people skills and the ability to connect development with design are an absolute requirement. Being able to float in between the disciplines, catching potential problems and iterating together to make the end result more then the sum of its parts is invaluable. A strictly development scrum with a heavy development lead demands less people skills of its developers.

In my opinion, a good frontend developer writes high quality code and works well with other developers. A great frontend developer also works well with other disciplines and enables them to put more ambition in a project, while minimizing the extra amount of work this generates.