[gofreddygo]

Not my experience at all. The very notable engineers I know didn't do their most notable work because of engineering or coding skills. Instead it was finding interesting problems and making a start or thinking a bit differently about something and doing something about it and being approachable and available all along that made a difference.

If all they did was code all the time, write code for fun and interacted mostly with other similar people, they probably wouldn't be the first choice for these projects.