usually the "difficult" people who are the most talented

If you get in as a corporate lemming and can learn to deal with these labeled people, it pays off a ton. I remember one guy that used to get a bad rep because he was not the best at communication, especially e-mails. If I had to guess he had some of one of the -tisms. He was in charge of equipment, let's just generalize it and say server config. The thing is, all you had to do was take the time to go talk to him in person, and you'd realize he was actually insanely good at his job. He could whip up some script to do something in 15 minutes that my peers would hire outside vendors and take weeks to do. All it took to look really good at my job was going my their office every Friday for a couple hours, chatting with guys about things we needed, etc. I don't understand it at times, I've always had social issues, but actual socialites people skills in the workplace are shit.