[mgkimsal]

"Writing code in your free time is different than writing code for a business on a team.... Managers and Sr. Devs have a very keen awareness of when they run into 'that guy'. No one likes them and they are toxic to projects. Managers and Sr. Devs want to be completing projects and not defending why they are using XYZ technology.... 'That guy' has a good technical ability but no business sense and usually ends up being let go."

Sometimes 'that guy' is calling out the emperor has no clothes, and no one likes to hear that either. 'that guy' probably has business sense too, but perhaps not political savvy, which you're seeming to put above actual dollars and cents business sense.

'that guy' may in fact have come up with a way to get a 14 hour process down to 30 minutes, but it would offend people who spent 2 months building the 14 hour process. Or 'that guy' might suggest some technology that costs 20% of what's being paid now by using vendor Y, but then the manager who's getting some freebies from a friend for pushing the business to use vendor X instead of vendor Y.

No doubt, sometimes you get truly 'toxic' people. Sometimes you're getting people upsetting the apple cart, and the rest of the team is invested so much in the current apple cart that no amount of business-oriented justification will overcome NIH, and eventually 'that guy' will either get on board with 'the company line', or will leave, possibly to a competitor that's more open to continual improvement vs protecting the status quo from "that guy".