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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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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(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?