Alex,
.. actually, I'm an engineer who was perverted by being a pilot .. and a pilot who, likewise, suffered at the hands of boring engineers ... come to think of it, at times I'm not quite sure what I am. Mind you, many others have no hesitation in suggesting various answers to that question .. but that's entirely another matter ..
In fact, the poor guy who drew the short straw and got me to train as an intake airline FO didn't know what had hit him .. fortunately he had a good sense of humour and perservered so here I am still ...
But I concur with your thoughts ... 100 percent.
Well, maybe 99.9 percent.
A lot of sim training work suggests to me that the "legend in his own mind" is a menace and that the better breed of pilot is one who
(a) follows SOPs unless there is a very pressing and sensible reason to do otherwise
(b) doesn't do non-standard things without a good deal of thought and consideration, being well aware that a lot of armchair philosophy went into developing most SOPs.
(c) always considers the need to be able to explain his/her action(s) at a later time