The bimodal distribution of effort is really true, although people flip from one side to the other based on circumstances. Companies want people who (a) give a shit, but (b) are willing to subordinate their own career goals (including the long-term goal of becoming really good at engineering) to corporate objectives for a long (more than 3 months) period of time. The reality is that such people don't exist. People who give a shit won't let their skills atrophy just because a manager needs grunt work.

You have the goof-offs that you described who have (b) but not (a), and the self-executive types who have (a) but not (b). The people who seem to have (a) and (b) just have different career agendas. They want to entrench themselves and gain social power. Often, they're psychopaths. They're a lot more ruinous to companies than the outspoken and self-executive types that dinosaurs call "prima donnas".