Trossie
"I've flown with a lot of people from a very big range of backgrounds and you know what, as long as they haven't had too big a head, most of them are great!"
No.
Unless you have been extraordinarily unlucky, you have sat next to a range of characters from a wide range of backgrounds whilst the aircraft purveyed you effortlessly from place to place doing 95% of the workload for you. The only time a civilian pilot in a modern airliner "flys" is when the autopilot/engines die and gives the aircraft back to you as a pile of ****e.
That is when you find out if ex-military are any better or worse.
With any luck, you and I will never find out.
What you are talking about is whether we are any more or less pleasant to spend time with in the cockpit whilst we eke out our careers waiting for that one moment where we earn all the money they pay us for.
I'm not saying we are better, but ask the passengers who ended up in the Hudson, or the ones who ended up in the Atlantic.