First of all, I love the discussion! And I agree with both sides.

If I need a miracle worker, someone who is a GOD at what he does to pull my hide out of the fire, then I don't care how nice he is (well, I do, but I over look it). As long as he can do what I need done, awesome. I will hide him in the back room away from the common folk, and let him work.

This is the exception, not the rule.

Part of the daily grind for a DBA, in my experience, is dealing with frustrated people. You have to have excellent technical skills to find and fix the issues and you have to deal with the users and clients having the issues. I have seen a client (who was paying us a lot of money to mind his data) almost pull the contract over the way a DBA treated one of his people. The client called the OnCall DBA at 2 am with a permission issue, he could not log in. Turns out he was trying to log into the wrong server, honest mistake but frustrating, but the DBA tore into him for 15 minutes on how his stupidity was unforgivable ending the call with a string of profanity.

That is why I think that people skills are very, very important. Each situation is different and there is a place for the Sheldon Coopers of the world, but it is not client facing.

Jim