Howard Roark: my take.
His great desire is to bring wonderful things into existence. His other desire is to live with personal integrity. His dilemma is how to survive.
His approach is… experimental. At first, quite bumbling. But he learns from his mistakes. That is the mark of a superior man.
He is, arguably, an asshole. But he’s up against assholes, so there’s a moral equivalence as far as that goes. Maybe he should learn some empathy, you might say. But from whom? His selfishness and insensitivity are just him treating others as he has been treated by others. And if he seems more selfish than the rest in what he says, it’s only because he’s much more candid. He says out loud what other people pretend not to believe. He chooses naked egotism over hypocrisy.
He lacks negotiation skills… at first. But through trial and error he figures it out. He’s a learner. Much more interesting than - for example - John Galt. More human. He’s got a character arc and everything.
He’s perfectly capable of working with others as equals, but only if they’re worthy others. For everyone else, he needs to develop political skills to keep them at bay. That trial scene is a breakthrough. He recognizes the practical importance of rhetoric, and he hijacks the minds of the jury with a textbook perfect reframing maneuver.
At that point, he could have led a revolution. But Rand didn’t have the guts to write that scenario.
One of Rand’s better works, by a particular standard. Atlas Shrugged really does have serious drawbacks as literature. But The Fountainhead is more a proper novel.