I've personally been hired to clean up at least two of his codebases after he finds the next shiny object. Much like his prose, they flow beautifully and end up doing very little substantive work.

I'd rather someone that knows that their shit stinks for X number of reasons than one that thought theirs was a work of art. My favorite question to ask a mid to senior interviewee is what do they hate or what would they change about the framework, language, or technology that we're hiring for and why. If they're unable to answer that, yet they give dozens of reasons why they hate Java over C# or what-have-you then I usually assume they don't have enough experience or have pigeon-holed themselves into some specific task and will flail if you start to steer out of their comfort zone. Eric seems to have dug himself a very successful hole. Good for him, but I wouldn't trust him to work on a business application that's core to the monetary success of a company. I'm sure he makes great homepages though.