[throwaway13337]

I don't see why you cannot be both.

How is it hard to have empathy and interest in solving problems and yet still a deep love and interest in the underlying tech you use?

I feel I am in this category. I would venture to guess that a broad array of useful developers do as well.

Siloing people like this creates an artificial construct wherein people feel they need to fit.

For what it's worth, I would definitely not hire the OP after his speech about being more interested in using a new tech to solve my problems than solving my problems.

[Retric]

They rarely overlap. If you’re trying to solve arbitrary problems efficiently whatever tools you know are unlikely to be the best fit. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to be more productive learning something new.