AnonTechie writes "In business, intelligence is always a critical element in any employee, because what we do is difficult and complex and the competitors are filled with extremely smart people. However, intelligence isn't the only important quality. Being effective in a company also means working hard, being reliable, and being an excellent member of the team. Companies where people with diverse backgrounds and work styles can succeed have significant advantages in recruiting and retaining top talent over those that don't."
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Deal With the Brilliant Jerks You Work With
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(Score: 5, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 28 2014, @03:14AM
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789
(Score: 5, Funny) by Nerdfest on Friday February 28 2014, @03:40AM
Sadly, I'm not even that brilliant.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Daniel Dvorkin on Friday February 28 2014, @12:51PM
Which is generally true who think they're brilliant jerks: most of them are just jerks, and thinking they're brilliant is part of their jerkiness.
I've worked with a whole lot of very smart people over the years, who had the usual range of personality types, from jerks to saints and everything in between--and a select few I'd say were truly brilliant, who were without exception also really likeable. This is too small a sample size from which to draw conclusions, but there it is.
Pipedot [pipedot.org]:Soylent [dev.soylentnews.org]::BSD:Linux
(Score: 1) by similar_name on Friday February 28 2014, @02:09PM
On the other hand, people are people and defining brilliance is difficult. Jerks also may not lack instinct, but have instincts that are not compatible with those around them.
Where can I vote for ACs to be Anonymous Cows? It should always be plural
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday February 28 2014, @01:04PM
I'd also like to thanks those who modded this informative. This is really starting to feel like home :)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lx on Friday February 28 2014, @03:42AM
Repent and change your jerkish ways. Being a jerk is about how you treat others not about who you are.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @04:32AM
You think you can make people change because you say so? This is how you treat others? Guess what: you're the jerk.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Asshole on Friday February 28 2014, @05:01PM
In my experience, people who spout this nonsense are trying to control you for their own jerkish agenda. Don't fall for such bullshit and call it out as soon as you detect it! It's the only way they learn.
Make sure you're in good with management too or they will try and defeat you with accusations of verbal abuse!
(Score: 2) by TheloniousToady on Friday February 28 2014, @09:31AM
But when they start calling us "insecure", that's when we *really* know they're bewildered. Those others often get brilliance and insecurity confused. Personally, I think *they're* the ones who are insecure.
(Note to any humor-impaired modders: the above was satire, not flamebait.)
(Score: 1) by JeanCroix on Friday February 28 2014, @09:55AM
(Score: 1) by ikanreed on Friday February 28 2014, @01:06PM
I'm just a jerk.
(Score: 1) by Zipf on Friday February 28 2014, @11:21PM
I am pretty sure I am the brilliant jerk. Didn't start that way. I like my peers. I like learning, the dialectic process, teaching, presenting, exploring. But I have come to view my boss as someone not in-the-know. I like my job and the topic. I keep four books (canonical and new) next to the toilet at home, read the latest research online, refine my knowledge of the available tools with my weekend hobbies. When I try to share interesting research, I get lines like, "you don't know this topic, I was doing this topic when you were in high school." When I was in high school I was doing research in physics, chemistry, building interfaces for search engines... hell when I was in high school, I was probably doing more interesting stuff ... ahh but then the jerk kicks in. Last week I was tasked with unfactorizing my code. But what if we needed to apply it to another product? "What other product?" he retorts, "this will be easier for the software guys to implement. Also, shorten the variable names and eliminate descriptions from the document." How the hell can this guy be my manager? I get so busy doing things wrong, which is actually fairly difficult, that I feel like I struggle to contribute to the firm. Does he want to focus on minutiae because he is afraid of running out of projects? .. gotta run... I gotta make sure the program doesn't print to STDERR should it throw opening a file because obviously redirection is an innovation. *sigh* I try to keep my attitudes private... and he has made it easy by forbidding me from speaking with others in the firm... Any advice from the veterans -- on how to take it?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by crutchy on Friday February 28 2014, @03:28AM
do your job for a lower salary than your competitor
it's not rocket science
why do you think US jobs are going offshore to Chinese and Indians?
it has little to do with smarts
anyone who really think they're smarter than their competition is stupid
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Friday February 28 2014, @01:51PM
Welcome to the race to the bottom.
How about - do your job at a higher quality than your competitor?
(Score: 0) by crutchy on Friday February 28 2014, @06:44PM
There will always be someone that is both cheaper and better than you or I... always.
There's nothing wrong with the pursuit of perfection, but if at any point you assume you are better than everyone else such that you can demand a higher salary, you might be surprised when you lose your job to cheaper labour.
I realise inflation is a reality, but it's not a good reality.
We all like to increase our standard of living, which requires ever increasing salaries, but in business labour is simply an expense, and in tough times expenses are cut. If you are an employer and you find someone to do a job at a lower cost than what you're paying, you would be stupid not to look into it.
The problem for Americans (and Eurpoeans and Australians, etc) is that in this increasingly globalised world without commercial borders, as skills are tending to balnce, standards of living need to balance too. There are some extremely smart and hard working Chinese out there who will always offer a better service than anyone expecting a high standard of living because these Chinese workers have come from low standards of living (by comparison).
It isn't so much a race to the bottom, but a great global equalisation. You can fight it, but you can't win.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @04:25AM
Business...intelligence? You must be joking. It doesn't take intelligence to scam fools out of their money. People are shockingly easy to manipulate through advertising. Tell them SoylentNews Is People often enough and pretty soon they'll believe it.
No and no. Business means selling things to people. That's not difficult or complex or smart. Seriously, it's not rocket science or quantum physics.
Team players with diverse backgrounds? Oh so you mean you want the black people and the white people to work together without shouting racial slurs at each other? Maybe you should start treating them like people and give them common goals to strive toward, instead of treating them like diverse sources of diversity for the sake of diversity. Constantly reminding the team of its diversity undermines team solidarity and prevents it from functioning as a team. Only a true jerk of a leader would undermine team solidarity in the name of diversity.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday February 28 2014, @12:51PM
Team players with diverse backgrounds? Oh so you mean you want the black people and the white people to work together without shouting racial slurs at each other?
That's not the only kind of diversity. "Diverse backgrounds" can refer to industries. A team made up of only people who have only worked in your industry will probably not be as innovative as a team made up of people who have worked in other industries during their careers.
For instance, suppose you are an auto manufacturer. Do you want to only hire engineers who are fresh out of college, and experience engineers who have only worked at other auto companies? Or should you hire some engineers who have worked in different industries, such as aerospace, consumer electronics, medical devices, construction equipment, marine diesel engines, etc.? If you do the latter, your team will probably come up with solutions to problems that a team that's never been outside the auto industry would ever be likely to think of, because of their exposure to those other fields and the solutions found in those fields to similar problems. The former team would tend to always do things the traditional way, rather than looking at out-of-the-box solutions or techniques.
(Score: 1) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 28 2014, @03:33PM
No and no. Business means selling things to people. That's not difficult or complex or smart. Seriously, it's not rocket science...
Well, if your business is selling rockets then it actually is rocket science.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @04:44AM
There's no other explanation than drugs. It can't possibly be that their work is unappreciated or their coworkers are morons. It's always drugs. Drugs are bad. People who do drugs are jerks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @09:11AM
Next time, remember Poe's law
(Score: 2, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Friday February 28 2014, @04:52AM
Yes sir, Mister Website, sir!
*gunfire*
(will Soylent ever have Javascript for posting and viewing?)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:07AM
Genocide solves all problems.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 28 2014, @06:39AM
I recently had to manage a Brilliant Jerk. Took 80% of my personal energy every day to get him to work well with others. It made me cranky and took a toll on my health and family life. But I told myself it was worth it because we were working on a ground-breaking product that would sweep the market. Then during a critical meeting with potential early adopters he went completely off the rails and freaked everybody the hell out. It turned out he suffered from the most severe form of bipolar disorder and had stopped taking his meds a year earlier. I had to call his parents and tell them to come get him (he's a 40-yr old man). Worst part is while I was locking him out of our systems I discovered his code was nearly worthless--it looked like the Winchester mansion; I had to rip it all out and rewrite everything. So all the suffering I had put myself and everyone else through had been for nothing.
So I have a different perspective on the meme of the Brilliant Jerk. Next time I'll insta-fire his ass and get somebody else. Nobody's that fucking brilliant.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Friday February 28 2014, @07:42AM
There's a very simple way of dealing with brilliant jerks: don't hire them. People who can't work well in a team are rarely useful, and they'd have to be pretty exceptional to offset the productivity loss that the people around them suffer. It's only worth it if you have a team containing one brilliant jerk and a few dozen drooling morons (who cause a net productivity gain when they work less), and in that case you'd be better off firing the whole team and getting a handful of moderately competent people who work well together.
One of the things I've seen repeatedly since I came to Cambridge is that the people who, judged on their achievements over a period of decades, truly deserve to be called brilliant, are usually the ones that collaborate the best. They understand that someone else can often find the thing that's obviously (although not to them) wrong with their first idea, which leads them to the second or third iteration, which becomes the one that they're famous for.
When we hire new people, the top criterion is 'would you like to work with this person?' We expect that new people will do good work, but will also make everyone else's work a little bit better as a result of their interactions. People who can only do the first are much less valuable.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @08:44AM
Very well put :)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by khakipuce on Friday February 28 2014, @09:16AM
The problem seems to be that a lot of the people doing the hiring cannot tell the difference between genuinely good and bluff and bluster. They are the same people who think a gold plated gizmo, or something with an expensive logo is better than one that doesn't have these things.
So along come two candidates, one who is quiet, considerate, thoughtful and one who is objectionable, loud, massively opinionated and, just like the sports-car* they want to buy they hire the obnoxious one. Turns out to just be loud, noisy and keeps breaking down...
*obligatory car analogy
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @10:11AM
Depending on your goals, thise things may be better. For example, if the main reason you buy your sound system is not to have the best sound, but to impress your audiophile friend, then buying those monster cables may well be the right choice.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 28 2014, @12:23PM
Exactly. And if your goal in interviewing is to get a job with a manager who's a clueless moron, then being able to bullshit a lot will help you a lot more than being highly competent.
If companies don't like this, then maybe they should learn to do a better job hiring good managers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheRaven on Friday February 28 2014, @10:20AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday February 28 2014, @11:34AM
I've seen organizations in which the prospective employee's would-be boss has absolutely no say in whether somebody is hired. Heck, I've been in that exact position: the CEO of a startup I was working for hired his drinking buddy, came in the next day and told me "Guess what? You have a new person in your department. He's arriving in 30 minutes." (Leaving me minimal time to scrounge up a computer for him to use.) The employee in question not only had no skills in the job the CEO had hired him to do, he had never claimed to have those skills.
Needless to say, I'd already begun making plans to move on from that company.
Every task is easy if somebody else is doing it.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 28 2014, @12:05PM
What you're saying is true, but it's not foolproof. Often a candidate can interview well, pass tests, and still turn out to be a nightmare. They can even show up with a strong portfolio, and turn out to be a nightmare. The point I was trying to make, and the lesson that I learned the hard way, is that if a hire turns out to be a brilliant jerk it's not worth the time and trouble to try to get them to work out. Fire them and try again. That might sound harsh, but I have a company to run and products to get out the door and the livelihoods of everyone else in the organization depend on that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gander on Friday February 28 2014, @10:08AM
Alas, there is a trend to be looking for "superstar" employees of all stripes. Companies have this perception that if they just hire A players, regardless of how poor their people skills are, and how inflated their self-worth, that the business will benefit from them.
Bullshit. Every one of these people turn out to be far more damaging to the organization. Yet the number of job postings looking for "rockstar" status people astounds.
(Score: 1) by skullz on Friday February 28 2014, @12:00PM
That's why I put "uber guru ninja pirate" on my resume, so they know I'm not one of "those".
(Score: 2) by ticho on Friday February 28 2014, @01:22PM
Really? I have *checks the front page* "a Swarm of Circus Midgets" in mine. :-)
(Score: 1) by rev0lt on Friday February 28 2014, @10:56PM
Most companies looking for "rockstars" are startups. They need to ship product to appease investors, even if it is a working prototype. Genuine rockstars won't last in this kind of environment, because sooner or later they will get bored with their work and move on. But while that doesn't happen, they really build the product together and are able to push it to the next level. That will give management time to actually build a good, cohesive team that can either gradually rewrite the platform or maintain the good bits, while keeping business deadlines and pleasing investors.
I'm astonished no post I've seen mentions this, since it is pretty old hat if you manage development teams.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by BradleyAndersen on Friday February 28 2014, @11:33AM
this.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday February 28 2014, @08:40AM
My basic view on "Brilliant Jerks" is that the primary effect of their jerkiness is to mask their lack of brilliance. There's this idea floating around of "He has no social skills, but he can write code. He must be one of those crazy genius types I keep hearing about that made Silicon Valley what it is today." But the vast majority of the truly smart people actually *do* have social skills, and it makes a big difference.
Consider, for instance, what wouldn't have happened if Dennis Ritchie had been a jerk rather than the humble and friendly guy he was. Chances are, he wouldn't have buddied up with Ken Thompson on a project that they were basically doing for the fun of it that turned into Unix. And then he wouldn't have been able to get Brian Kernighan involved in creating what is arguably the most influential programming language of all time.
Every task is easy if somebody else is doing it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by webcommando on Friday February 28 2014, @09:26AM
"There's this idea floating around of "He has no social skills, but he can write code. He must be one of those crazy genius types I keep hearing about that made Silicon Valley what it is today." But the vast majority of the truly smart people actually *do* have social skills, and it makes a big difference."
Anecdote time: I have the distinct pleasure of working in an industry--medical devices--that requires deep domain knowledge, attention to detail, and ability to truly collaborate to get something done. Everyone of the excellent people I work with are really good team players and conscientious. Even the ones who are rough around the edges take input well and try to evolve.
Of course, we are resource strapped and leverage partners who work and hire to the Silicon Valley ideals. We think they can move "faster" and are "leaner". When I get into it, the brilliance is skin deep--cool looking ideas, average execution by cutting corners, and often a team who we have to educate about their own customer's needs (not kidding on that). Of course the product is always "ready" (look a time to market savings!) but takes a year with a huge investment of our team's time to make it safe for using in a real clinical environment. I'll take my ordinary team over companies leveraging "brilliant jerks".
(obviously, I've also worked with start-ups and smaller companies that are just as passionate and knowledgeable as my team and are a joy to work with.)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @11:31AM
We have a brilliant Jerk here. What his code does is not brilliant, but the way he obfuscates it is. Encryption, nonsensical variable names, NO comments whatsoever, etc. He can walk around being a condescending jerk because he's not trying to be promoted, he's just saving up for retirement.
But its hard to decide whether or not to hate him or like him for that, because the company is willing to let him have them by the balls because they take penny-pinching to the extreme. From the company's perspective, it would cost too much money to make him rewrite and roll out his code while his existing code already works.
It should be mentioned in passing that my employer is the type of company to apply band-aid fix on top of band-aid fix on top of band-aid fix because short-term profits are more important than long-term stability.
-- Ethanol-fueled
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 28 2014, @12:40PM
It should be mentioned in passing that my employer is the type of company to apply band-aid fix on top of band-aid fix on top of band-aid fix because short-term profits are more important than long-term stability.
What other kind of company is there these days?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @05:30PM
"My basic view on "Brilliant Jerks" is that the primary effect of their jerkiness is to mask their lack of brilliance. There's this idea floating around of "He has no social skills, but he can write code. He must be one of those crazy genius types I keep hearing about that made Silicon Valley what it is today." But the vast majority of the truly smart people actually *do* have social skills, and it makes a big difference."
How about humans are complex and their behavior is complex, and that generalizations rarely apply to everyone?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @01:00PM
I was 90% sure this was going to turn into a my clean PC story.
(Score: 1) by rev0lt on Friday February 28 2014, @10:45PM
I discovered his code was nearly worthless--it looked like the Winchester mansion
There is this thing called "code reviews". It is a good practice to know what everybody is doing and how the product is going. Try googling it.
I recently had to manage a Brilliant Jerk.
Well, if you weren't looking at the actual code and the quality of the result (or delegating someone trustworthy to do it), you weren't really managing it, were you?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by moondrake on Friday February 28 2014, @06:39AM
Though I am working in science, not business, it is my experience that there are many people who are not brilliant at all. Usually, these are the same people that claim that "what we are doing is difficult and complex" and are generally full of themselves.
Perhaps all the real smart people are in business...
That said, I found it easier to deal with stupid jerks compared to brilliant ones, but that could be just me.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @10:04AM
But what I'm doing is complex: It has an imaginary part.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday February 28 2014, @11:12AM
Clearly, you've never been involved with business! The defining characteristics of most people in management, at least the ones that I've met:
1. Gut instincts trumping evidence and demonstrable fact.
1A. Personal friendships and perceptions are more important for determining compensation and promotions than getting things done or improving the company's bottom line.
2. Ruthlessness and callousness bordering on psychopathy. A Machiavellian streak that would have them sell out or backstab their best friend if it would give them a leg up.
3. A sense of entitlement that allows them to not think about all those people that actually do work in an organization.
But unusually smart? Not at all. Some actual evidence:
- SAT scores by major [statisticbrain.com], business majors have an average SAT of 999 out of 1600, while physics majors have an average SAT of 1269 out of 1600.
- Estimated IQ by profession [iqcomparisonsite.com]. The smart people in the world tend to cluster in medicine, science, engineering, law, and academia, while managers are, on the whole, slightly above mediocre. (Another favorite finding from that list: It turns out that secretaries are often smarter than their bosses, which matches my real-life experience as well)
Every task is easy if somebody else is doing it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by clone141166 on Friday February 28 2014, @07:29AM
How come every time I read one of these how-to-manage-a-business articles the conclusion that is drawn is always along the line of "if they're a pain, just fire them". After all people are just disposable resources anyway, right?
Maybe it's the managers that really need firing, seeing as they were the ones who decided to hire these "brilliant" but problematic employees in the first place. Surely they must have performed interviews and checked references, and realised to some extent what they were getting themselves into. They were happy enough to exploit the situation while the outcome was positive (having an employee work 72 hours straight should have been a huge red flag for anyone). Even after things turned negative, managerial greed to exploit them again prevented them from taking immediate action, allowing the employee to linger on in the hopes that they could be exploited again, until the situation became so bad that they had no choice but to terminate them.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by nightsky30 on Friday February 28 2014, @09:06AM
I've seen situations where some of the management knew the history of said employee candidate. They voiced their warnings against hiring that person, and another manager hired that jerk anyway. In those cases, both the jerk employee and manager aught to be fired. People with these narcissistic, "I'm brilliant and you're not" attitudes ruin the company by killing current and future business. Nobody wants to work with them. The hiring manager's argument is, "Oh, but he's talented at...!!!". But that does you no good when your other employees leave the company, or your customer refuses to continue with your services due to issues caused by the AssHat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @10:51AM
> Maybe it's the managers that really need firing
I told my boss that the guy she wanted to hire had brought a gun to the office at his last job. She hired him anyway. Brilliant.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Friday February 28 2014, @11:05AM
What's the problem with a gun in the office? Unless you are a bank or something it shouldn't be a problem. I'm sure if you ask him not to shoot you when he gets fired that it would put a smile on his face, lol.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Taibhsear on Friday February 28 2014, @11:09AM
Was his last job a security guard?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2014, @11:18AM
I have worked with an asshole who is really good at the bluff and bluster and can mimic being excellent until his work is reviewed. Then it all becomes clear. He should not be in IT.
Many people who appear to be great but are just good liars. The main problem is that these people are hard to get rid of. The best you can do is minimise how much damage they can do.
(Score: 2, Informative) by skullz on Friday February 28 2014, @12:21PM
After reading the article (shocking, I know) the common thread seems to be: we don't listen to our people. The genius who had substance abuse problems and was bipolar, for example. Did they even TRY to get him some help? His genius was so great that they put up with poor working habits for months but no one bothered to sit down and talk to him and see if they could help him out? The fact that he was willing to work 72 hours non-stop on his first task should have been a red flag. You know someone has issues when they do that.
And the person complaining (the "heretic") that this and that is wrong and management is an idiot? Maybe she is right? I mean, damn, you say she is super-duper-uber-smart and then you don't listen when she says something is broken? Seriously?
To summarize the article: we want tame "genius", the kind that does whatever stupid task we set set in front of you and doesn't actually think. Thanks, Wired. Great article.
(Score: 1) by infodragon on Friday February 28 2014, @01:45PM
Think Hugh Grant with a reasonable knowledge of software development and the ear of management. No matter how brilliant the next guy is, unless he has the charming wit capable of graciously apologizing for cheating on his wife with a hooker, no one will be able to convince management of anything unless they get Hugh's buy-in. No matter how over run a project is, the charm turns on and all the techno-drivel wrapped in charming words trumps any rational explanation every time.
What makes him a Jerk is that he knows he's wrong but maliciously charms is way out of any accountability. He is just brilliant enough to produce results marginally acceptable that from his charming mouth sound heroic.
The only way I've found around this is to either leave or produce absolutely startling results and keep your mouth shut. The latter only works if management has a level of brilliance rarely seen and you have the patience and discipline to keep your mouth shut.
When you are noticed focus on the results and only the results. Anything else and Hugh charms his way into claiming some/all of the credit. If you focus on results and let him try to take credit, then challenge him on the details. His charming wit turns dark and you have the upper hand. Do not engage in anything but results! Stick to results and challenging his remarks when he is wrong and you are an EXPERT in the subject matter.
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 1) by skullz on Friday February 28 2014, @05:19PM
Wow.
[virtual hug] infodragon [/virtual hug]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by mrkaos on Friday February 28 2014, @11:27PM
This has to be the best book on this subject and has great tips on how to handle and, not be one of these types of people.
Personally I find it easier to 'fess up what it is about myself that is considered 'jerkish' behaviour than to try and change it in other people, they won't. Now-a-days I really check out the hiring staff as they are usually the one who are responsible for hiring the jerk in the first place. Hard questions like 'how do you handle conflict' and 'what do you do about bullies' are great ways to flesh this stuff out - blank looks means go elsewhere - they have no idea.
It's endemic though, so unfortunately, you have to figure out ways to deal with jerks using emotional intelligence instead of IQ. Some of the results can be entertaining and some can reveal darker behaviour which will reveal how bad they are to all or get themselves fired.
I'm really happy I don't have to deal with any of them now though!!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.