If you're going to be this sort of fierce nerd, make sure you come from money, because you're getting fired if you pursue these traits in the workplace.
FWIW, this isn't my experience at all. There's a difference between being an asshole and the contrarian bent+ relatively-minor rough edges Graham describes. The essay touches on this, by saying that it's become a lot easier to thrive as this sort of person than it used to be. In particular, you need to find your way to a field and role where results matter more than glad-handing and ego-stroking, and where the subjectivity and discretion of measuring those results is minimized. This used to be vanishingly rare, but in my perception (and experience), it no longer is.
In my case, my fatal flaw career-wise wasn't abrasiveness or asshole-ish behavior, but a strong aversion to promoting my work or any of the other non-goal tasks required to advance in an organization. I hate every minute I have to spend making it clear that I'm productive instead of just _being_ productive.
However, this is almost unavoidable in most organizations that aren't tiny. You either have to "manage your brand" and play politics, or you have to make sure that you're fitting a squishy, inherently-subjective rubric. At a bare minimum, you need to craft a presentation of your output at performance review time, and hope your interpretation of the rubric matches the decision-makers'.
My solution was to find a company with fairly objective and well-defined measures of output[1], where there's more than enough impact to go around. You can't avoid having people skills to get things done, but I don't mind using my people skills in service of getting shit done instead of internal organizational BS.
[1] This does not mean that we're tolerant of assholes. We've fired people for being pathological "brilliant jerks", though everyone I've come into close personal contact with is well above the jerk bar. What this does is separate "are you toxic in a way that hurts your coworkers or the company" from "what is your output", allowing people who are awkward and well-intentioned to thrive on one axis and grow on the other. This is in contrast to the usual case, where measuring output is polluted by interpersonal skills that are not related to output, and being awkward means your work isn't recognized either.
> It's hard to be independent-minded without being somewhat socially awkward, because conventional beliefs are so often mistaken, or at least arbitrary. No one who was both independent-minded and ambitious would want to waste the effort it takes to fit in
Or maybe you keep quitting jobs, because you are the precocious one who can always see why things aren't working well long before anyone else. Yet nobody wants your feedback because it's too something. Too fierce, or scary because it's predictive, or they're just annoyed that you have no social skills.
And socially maybe the people at work can keep you in check without firing you, because you can't respond well in a socially-clever environment for example, no matter how amazing your insights.
