You need both kinds for a good product. Both of these types add something the other is not interested in adding. The most value I ever added was joining a company filled with type X (purposefully avoiding which one) as a type Y and going on a binge of doing incredibly valuable work that had been left as "low hanging fruit" because nobody thought it interesting and/or important enough to give it a good look.

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.

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.

This reminds me of the product-infrastructure spectrum of dev specialization. [1]

[1] https://www.michellelim.org/writing/stop-using-frontend-back...

It's an amazing feeling when you read someone's written words about something you've been thinking of yourself.

customer-focus has the nice property of limiting my perfectionism to the threshold of meeting their need.

My technology-focus projects are unlimited and therefore never satisfied.