That alpha engineer is only going to make a successful system if they know how to work with others and produce maintainable code. For every one of the types of alpha engineers this article deifies there is at least one other alpha engineer that is difficult to work work, doesn't document their code and has a NIH attitude that refuses to incorporate the work of others even when suitable for the task at hand.

These guys are usually known as the BBM and are can appear to be awesome but by the time you realize their shortcomings ultimately make them impotent and their work irrelevant, it's too late.

I don't care how brilliant you are. If you don't produce maintainable code with well thought interfaces, your brilliant code is going to rot by itself after you are gone. Brilliant and productive programmers also exhibit empathy for other developers who will maintain and extend the code or build other systems to interface with the code written by the alpha coder.