[arctangent]

I agree with your assessment.

I've always thought that a "hacker" operates at a higher level of abstraction and/or with a broader base of knowledge to draw upon (especially from unrelated fields) than does a mere "doer".

I think there's a need for both types of people in any large team, so one type isn't necessarily better than another in all circumstances.

However, in a small team (or startup) I think hackers are much more valuable due to their generalist nature. You can always hire code monkeys later to patch edge-case bugs and polish things up :-)

Disclaimer: I'm a hacker, so maybe I'm biased...