
Brilliant Jerks in Engineering - dmit
http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-11-13/brilliant-jerks.html
======
grandalf
The situation I've encountered is a jerk who was actually fairly mediocre in
his abilities but whose bully characteristics and brash confidence had led
many of the non-technical people in the company to believe he was extremely
skilled.

I think one reason people become bullies is because they know they can't back
up their decisions with skill. Linus is brash, but is quite able to work well
with people and has the results to prove it.

Most people who adopt bully tactics are simply doing it for tactical reasons
to hide their own weaknesses.

The myth of "brilliant jerks" is harmful because it lets any jerk pretend he's
doing it because he's brilliant, when chances are he's just afraid of being
unmasked as mediocre.

As a corollary, engineering culture should be very open to every member of the
team learning and being very open to lessons learned (read: mistakes made) in
the process. Bullies often intimidate by criticizing others' decisions, which
creates an atmosphere of fear that prevents rational thought and stifles group
learning.

~~~
MBCook
This is certainly a problem I’ve seen. One employee was hated by almost all
the technical people because he was a jackass and couldn’t work with others.
He wanted everything done his way and wasn’t interested in the opinions of
others (except as they may bolster how great his ideas were).

The truth is he wasn’t very good, at least not to the degree he tried to
present.

Some of management loved him because he worked so hard. He was always there,
always the one holding things together.

The truth was he was doing that because his methods were shoddy enough that
things were always falling apart. He didn’t want others working on stuff
because that would either lose his control/power or people would see how bad
things really were.

In the end it became too much. As the company grew and things were done
without him it became clear just how little he actually accomplished. New
employee worked as well and were easy to get along with, not hostile to help.

But we had to suffer with him sabotaging things and dealing with his outbursts
for YEARS.

~~~
vikascoder
There are Jerks and Non-Jerks. Also Brilliant Folks and Averae Joes(?). I dont
know why we tend to club two different qualities and consider them as a single
entity. The question should be, "This employee is a jerk, what to do about it"
rather than, "This employee is a brilliant jerk, should we tolerate it". There
are enough brilliant people who are excellent human beings with no failings
and plenty of mediocre bullies. The employee should conform to common sense
behaviour which is compliant to their corporate culture like most tech workers
do.

~~~
MBCook
The problem is non-brilliant jerks are usually a lot easier to get rid of.
They can be replaced.

When the jerk is brilliant and necessary (or at least perceived so) management
can be much more hesitant. ‘Yes he’s horrible but we can’t operate without
him’ or ‘we don’t have the slack to pick up that work’ or ‘it will take too
long to train someone new right now’.

They get extra excuses that a medium or low performer wouldn’t.

~~~
s73ver_
Sadly, that extends to behavior far worse than being a jerk.

~~~
MBCook
WAY too true.

------
luckydude
I've been a smart jerk, dunno about brilliant but positive about the jerk
part. More in the selfless camp, I cared about the company (Sun) a lot and ran
rough shod over anyone who got in the way of my quest to make the company
better.

I definitely hurt some people and, as a young guy, felt that making the
company better trumped all of that. And I was a little clueless, I had ADD and
no treatment and had no idea that communication happened non-verbally, just
wasn't a thin g for me.

What made it better was when I added compassion and empathy to my thought
process. Instead of barging into someone's office and yelling at them that
their code was broken, I'd start with the people stuff. Ask if I could talk to
them, ask how they were doing, ask if they knew about this problem in their
code. More ask, less yelling. And in my head, i would ask myself is there
anything going on in this dude's life that is negative? Sick kid? Divorce?
Parent dieing?

I was still willing to come to the conclusion that the person sucked at
whatever chunk of code it was that was in the spotlight but it took me a lot
longer to get there because I was trying to see if there was something else
going on that caused the crappy code.

Dunno if that helps, I'm sure people told me to think like that but it took me
a while to get there. Maybe this shortens the path for someone else.

------
mars4rp
I am an Alice and I need some feedback as why is it a bad thing! I work in an
environment when very small percentage of people know what are they doing. and
people that know what is going on do not speak up because they are frustrated
and know probably nothing will change. in this environment I do speak up
whenever I get a chance and I've been in arguments with managers 3 4 level
above me. everybody else wants to be politicians and please everybody! but I
believe because no one wants to hurt other people's feelings we are in a shit
situation we are in.

why am I wrong ? should I care less like everybody else?

PS: where I currently work is wasting public money and I feel obligated to do
something as a Libertarian!

~~~
fhood
You are wrong because the vast majority of people take criticism personally.
It turns out that when you tell people they are wrong and present them with
reasons they are wrong, a surprising number of people double down. I'm sure
you have heard this before, but you have to make them think it was their idea.

Edit Source: I make this mistake all the god damn time, and never realize it
until the person breaks and finally snaps at me. The whole time I thought we
were just having a reasoned argument. I think that I am constructively
invalidating the other persons arguments, meanwhile they are feeling belittled
and defensive.

Edit edit: This is even worse if, like me, you think arguments are pretty much
the greatest most entertaining game it is possible to play.

~~~
an_d_rew
Agree totally.

In an idealized "intellectual-only" world, humans would be Spock-like and be
pure rational actors.

But we aren't, not even close. (And I would argue that that's a good thing,
but that discussion is waaaaay out of scope).

As soon as you accept that humans, including yourself, primarily make
_emotional_ decisions and not rational ones, it becomes easier to steer
decisions in a healthy manner.

~~~
johnsonjo
> In an idealized "intellectual-only" world, humans would be Spock-like and be
> pure rational actors.

I used to think more along these lines. I heard someone recently talk about
Spock and Captain Kirk and their approaches to different situations, and he
said that most people think Spock must always be right due to his logical
side. He then said that many times Kirk’s more human emotional approach
actually worked out better in the end. Obviously you need a balance. Things
should be logically thought out but sometimes you need to act out of empathy
and sympathy towards others even when it might not make that much sense.

~~~
EmanueleAina
Right. In my opinion it's even worse. The thing that piss me off about Spock
is that ignoring the emotional component is a very illogic thing to do. :)

------
1001101
Google has an interesting philosophy on this:

""" Cosgrove asked them to elaborate on the idea: "exile the knaves, but fight
for the divas."

Rosenberg said maintaining Google's collaborative culture requires weeding out
and getting rid of the knaves: Employees who lack integrity, who are jealous
of their peers, take credit for others' work, and think only of themselves.
"Nice humble engineers have a way of becoming insufferable when they think
they are the sole inventors of the world's next big thing," they write in
their book. "This is quite dangerous, as ego creates blind spots... Nip crazy
in the bud."

Divas, on the other hand, display "high exceptionalism," Rosenberg said. If
the divas are brilliant and doing a good job, they should be valued and
allowed to do their jobs. "As long as ... the divas' achievements outweigh the
collateral damage caused by their diva ways, you should fight for them."

"They will pay off your investment by doing interesting things," they write.
"...Remember that Steve Jobs was one of the greatest business divas the world
has ever known!" """ [1]

[1]
[http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/10/googles_...](http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/10/googles_eric_schmidt_and_jonathan_rosenberg_share_how_google_works_with_cleveland_clinics_dr_toby_cosgrove.html)

~~~
exelius
By all accounts I've heard from friends working at Google X, Sergey Brin is
the textbook definition of a "brilliant jerk". This probably has something to
do with it.

~~~
valuearb
Facebook has open floor plans not because they are effective at collaboration
or productive work environments, but because Mark Zuckerberg prefers being
able to see everyone at work.

Companies tend to be modeled around the strengths and weaknesses of their
founders.

~~~
exelius
Not disagreeing with you at all; simply pointing out there may be a good
reason why Google is more tolerant of brilliant jerks than other places. I do
have to say that most "brilliant jerks" don't end up being worth the time you
put into them because they're usually the first to jump ship when something
better comes along...

------
brandonhsiao
If someone does something wrong, Alice tells them plainly, and they get
offended, whose fault is it? Some people say it's Alice' fault for offending;
some say it's the person's fault for doing it wrong in the first place, and
for subsequently getting offended.

I think we're conflating is and ought here. It's probably a fact of reality
that most people aren't happy to be told they're wrong. But arguably people
_ought_ to accept the consequences of being wrong, e.g. feeling bad when
they're told.

I've talked to lots of startups in San Francisco. Most are failing, just due
to the nature of startups, but can survive if they reach a finite set of
straightforward goals. They've found product/market fit, they know what they
have to do, they just have to do it, and the correct 10,000 characters of code
input into a computer would solve all their business problems. There's often a
lot of handwringing about why they're failing: the process is wrong;
communication is wrong; something or other. But the largest reason they're
failing is that they're insufficiently good at technology. You know who'd be
really good at fixing that? A team of Alices.

I think Alices get too much flak. Bob is genuinely a toxic character. But if
your only fault is telling the truth, which offends people, and you're
otherwise excellent at your job--- there's a huge opportunity for twenty
Alices to get together, bypass the inefficiencies of being offended, and win
big. Tech has an obvious historical example.

Edit: I reread the description of Alice. All right, maybe don't _browbeat_
your point into others.

~~~
DavidWoof
Alice is so vaguely portrayed here that I think it's impossible to draw
conclusions, let alone call her a brilliant jerk.

As you mention, pointing out when things are wrong isn't being a jerk, it's
doing your damn job. "Having little empathy for others" isn't describing
behavior, so it's meaningless here. OK, "browbeating" might be bad, but what
does that mean anyway? Is she repeating the issue a month later after the
problem got ignored, or is she micromanaging it, or what? There's no
indication here. Whatever it means, Equifax could have used some browbeating
on security issues.

There's no indication about why people try to avoid working with her. Does
that refer to other developers, or does HR try to avoid her they go around
asking for donations for girl scouts or something? I don't see a real problem
with the latter. If somebody had reputation for pointing out problems in code,
I wouldn't be avoiding her, I'd be seeking her out.

------
AcerbicZero
Early on in my career (DevOps/Virtualization/SDN/etc) I landed a role as a
junior admin, a backfill for a more senior engineer who was moving up in the
organization, but staying on the same team. It could be said he landed
somewhere between "Alice" and "Bob", probably due to some mild autism. Without
getting into excessive detail, working with him was hard, but by far the most
rewarding, educational, and instructive years of my career. I learned more in
that short time from that one difficult engineer than the next 3 years
combined.

I'm not excusing his behavior, but if you're able to handle that style and
develop a functional relationship "brilliant but difficult" folks can be an
amazing resource. He's the Sr Infrastructure Architect for that organization
now, and they've never been doing better. His ability to be difficult but
brilliant keeps the overbearing management folks in check, and has allowed the
technology platform to move forward dramatically.

The one downside (other than the constant testing of my self esteem and
resolve) was that I let him teach me D&D and he was a pedantic dick of a GM.

~~~
mirceal
roll less than 10: you lose your job... :|

~~~
AcerbicZero
Lol, fortunately he wasn't my manager. The only time I rolled well was when it
didn't matter :(

------
bpicolo
This is a great article. It's a terrific opportunity for introspection.

I do however want to point out that some of these may be less about being an
insufferably relentless jerk than other pieces.

> He is late to meetings, ... then looks at his phone or laptop while ignoring
> everyone around him

This is also a pretty common indicator for ADHD. Not to say that excuses being
a "jerk", but there are people out there that have a fundamentally difficult
time tracking and arriving at meetings properly, and it's not always easy to
account for. It also goes hand in hand with a few other related issues here.
It's also somewhat common in the world of software.

I have some semblance of issue arriving at meetings properly, and it takes
sincere effort to correct for it. When I started my career (admittedly, not so
long ago) I definitely displayed more pieces of what is described as brilliant
jerk than I would like to have (though certainly nothing like gaslighting and
exploitation of others around me - more those things in line with adhd).

On the other hand, I spent 3 years working especially hard on self improvement
here, and I certainly appreciate the patience of those around me in helping me
realize my failures. It took me a year of effort to really avoid interrupting
others while talking - not as a matter of being a jerk, but simply because my
mind gets lost in conversation and feels the need to begin talking with less
cognizance than I wish I had that others were speaking. These days, I am quick
to apologize upon realizing I've interrupted, and ask the speaker to continue.
That's strictly worse than never interrupting, but it both publicly
acknowledges that I know this is a problem for me in conversation, and helps
move forward.

The best thing for some people who have some of these issues is to give them
honest, direct, and proactive feedback regarding it. They may well have no
idea the ways in which they're impacting those around them, and they may well
be surprisingly proactive in self-improvement upon being spoken to.

It's non-proactivity in self-improvement that you should be far less accepting
of, ADHD or not.

~~~
brendangregg
Good point about the meetings. With Bob, he's doing this on purpose to assert
dominance. If you ask Bob a direct question in this meeting, he'll ignore it
on purpose the first time and continue working on his phone/laptop, and make
you ask again, and plead for his attention. Making you beg is a way to
humiliate you in front of others, and to show that he's more important than
the others in the room. And the kicker: everyone in the room knows he's doing
this on purpose, but no one speaks up, because he's the rock star engineer
that we must tolerate. (Wrong.)

------
mamoswined
I was so Alice for much of my career. I know this is going to sound totally
cliche because this book get's recommended everywhere, but How to Win Friends
and Influence People really did help me.

~~~
crdoconnor
I prefer working with "Alices". It's refreshing to see people actually called
on their bullshit.

IMHO there's also a limit to how much you can spare everybody's feelings and
still be effective at that ^^. I think the OP believed that there isn't a
limit. I think he's wrong.

In a corporate environment, there's almost no value in actually being one
though. Linus Torvalds would almost never be promoted and would frequently be
unceremoniously terminated - as advocated for by Brendan Gregg.

~~~
mfringel
Do you like the act, or the result?

That is, do you like "seeing people actually called on their BS"? Or, do you
like people stop doing BS things as a result?

IMO, the latter is much more interesting than the former. Being a 100% Alice
guarantees the former, but does not guarantee the latter.

~~~
AstralStorm
Nothing guarantees the latter ever.

------
vemv
I'd add that from an engineering perspective, 'brilliant' jerks aren't even
that brilliant.

An actually intelligent person is happy to prove his thinking via truthful
argumentation (and unit tests, documentation, and so on), and also happy to
get his points refuted by similarly reasonable peers.

Anything other than that approach is noise.

~~~
lazyasciiart
Imagine that every time you implemented a new feature in your existing Java
codebase, everyone asked you to explain Java. Would you be happy to prove the
value of Java to your colleagues constantly? Would you start thinking that
your peers maybe weren't similarly reasonable to you? At what point does
explaining things become frustrating to you?

~~~
vemv
I think you should reword your question as it's not a realistic scenario.

Engineers freely choose to learn Java and apply to Java job postings, and if
that's not the case I doubt they'd be vocal against the "value" of Java.

~~~
lazyasciiart
You seem like you're imagining a very ideal world. I personally know many
engineers who joined a company for one reason, then the team/company began a
new project and migrated to Java. I have seen people argue about the choice of
underlying technology in code reviews. And if you think my specific scenario
was unrealistic, then perhaps attempt to understand it as a general example of
"something that is obvious to you and which you think you have explained
adequately in the past and should not need to explain again and again". If you
still can't understand it, then I think you may simply have never worked with
anyone who was at a significantly lower level of knowledge/comprehension than
yourself, and perhaps you just aren't capable of understanding the situation
without having been in it.

~~~
vemv
I see your point.

Still that's quite an extreme case. Devs regularly questioning a programming
language is not a code-review problem, or a should-I-be-a-jerk problem.

It's more like the problem that you escalate to the CTO (with argumentation!).
Or you can pick your battles and move to a saner company.

------
fizixer
Meanwhile management and executive positions are teeming with not-Brilliant
only-Jerks. It's the norm rather than the exception.

Totally makes sense.

~~~
sah2ed
Sounds like you are referring to _The Gervais Principle_ ?

[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-
the-office-according-to-the-office/)

------
davidkuhta
I found the line of questioning and discussion by the manager of the employee
he "told off" to be profound, yet succinct:

> 1\. Was it my intent to make his staff unproductive?

> 2\. Do you think you could have told my engineer what you needed to, in a
> way that left them feeling positive and motivated to fix it?

> Always do that in the future, please.

~~~
darethas
In my case, for most my teenage and short adult life I was always left
"feeling positive and motivated" except I would always fall back into the same
habits. I started to expect the gentleness and kindness. What I needed was a
good ass whooping. If I look back at my life in hindsight, I learned the most
when I was under the gun -- had to succeed, failure not an option -- not
"motivated" and "positively influenced"

Maybe there is a "non-asshole" way to do that, but there needs to be a place
for this in society as well. Some people respond to gentleness and nudges,
some don't.

The person I think back early in my career when I was an associate and my
first tech lead -- yes! he was the biggest asshole I met at that time -- but
it would be remiss of me to not admit that I learned and stretched more on his
team than I did the rest of my time at that company by a mile.

~~~
lazyasciiart
How are you defining 'motivated'? To me it seems like an oxymoron to be
motivated and not do anything.

------
loblollyboy
I would hire a brilliant jerk. Our company has 3. 2 of them I actually like,
they fit the likable jerk archetype (common in sitcoms, I think Bill Maher is
a good example), and they’re good. The other one is basically not interested
in human interaction. This offends people somehow, but I’d rather work w
someone who doesn’t want to talk to me than someone who I don’t want to talk
to.

------
dbcurtis
The real problem with jerks is that "you get what you role model". If you have
senior technical people acting like jerks and getting away with it, you have
junior people concluding that being a jerk is the way to get a leadership
position. That creates a toxic workplace over the long haul. Jerk-like
behavior is a performance management issue and managers that don't confront it
dig their own grave.

------
ryan_lane
I've worked with so many brilliant jerks. They're incredibly toxic. The Bob
example is bordering on sociopathic, or is a sociopath.

I've worked with someone who ticks almost all of the Bob traits. He would
actively try to get people fired who he didn't like, spending time gaslighting
everyone around them until enough people disliked his victim where it was
possible to fire them. He turned entire teams against each other, causing
organizational issues that lasted years after he was eventually fired.

The problem is that he was legitimately brilliant, and he was incredibly
productive. This made his gaslighting all the more effective. When we spoke
about things and people, people listened. He was charismatic, funny, and had a
long-standing reputation.

After firing this person, we found out he has a history of being abusive and
getting fired. It's hard to know this because he's in leadership positions in
a few important open source communities.

Thankfully this org is numerous years in my past and I've eventually moved
past the stress associated with it, but it's an experience that stuck with me
for a long time.

------
microcolonel
I have no problem working with jerks, as long as they're brilliant. Culture
fit _also_ means not hiring people who are going to scream bloody murder at a
disagreement, if your team is full of disagreeables.

~~~
ZoFreX
Being a jerk and disagreeing are orthogonal. You can be a jerk while agreeing
with someone, and be a not-jerk while disagreeing.

I'm curious, in reference to the post, how you would have no problem working
with a "Bob"? Is there really no behaviour there that would bother you in a
coworker?

~~~
bjt2n3904
> Being a jerk and disagreeing are orthogonal

In theory. In practice, it's much more difficult.

~~~
s73ver_
Not really. It's quite possible to do. The problem is that many in tech
haven't really tried to develop the skill. Part of that whole, "Soft skills
are useless in STEM; raw engineering prowess is all that matters!" mindset.

------
anad7
I feel that the Kotlin community definitely needs a "No Jerk approach". I've
recently been to a meet-up which was on the advantages of using Kotlin for
Android development, the speaker exhibited many characteristics from this
article.

1\. Bob interrupts others, and ignores their opinions (When people asked
questions, he downplayed them and in some cases declined to answer them)

2\. Bob bullies, humiliates, and oppresses individuals. With non-technical
people, he wins arguments by bamboozling them with irrelevant technical
detail, making them feel dumb (When asked about Coroutines he started
explaining irrelevant stuff like locks and guards and compiler level
instructions without actually answering the questions)

3\. Bob engages in displays of dominance in front of groups (He was quite
assertive that his language is better than Java, no one could convince him
otherwise)

4\. Bob is negative. He trash-talks other technologies, companies, and people
behind their backs (He trash talked Java)

5\. Bob manipulates and misleads. Sometimes he misleads subtly, by presenting
facts that are literally true in a way that is intentionally misleading. (He
mislead people into thinking that null checks were just wrong and should be
avoided altogether by writing code in Kotlin, he also indicated that writing
data objects was not possible in Java)

6\. Bob uses physical intimidation. Bob glares at those he doesn't like, and
may invade people's personal space. (He said that if his team member was
unwilling to learn Kotlin he was probably not worth his salt)

7\. Bob gives great talks – about himself.

8\. Bob refuses to change. (This was quite evident about him)

To sum up, he was arrogant and loved humiliating the audience, I and a few
others left the talk after 30 mins.

------
quickthrower2
I previously worked in a place with a Bob (who ticks 80% of the boxes there)
and it really is super-toxic. He got plenty of "gaslight" because he had
special treatment. He didn't need to follow the processes like everyone else.
He got cool work. Hence my 'previously worked'.

------
maehwasu
Jerk is often just a paraphrase for "mildly autistic."

I've had really good results hiring "jerks" and actually taking the time to
understand them as people, and then put them into positions to succeed.

Calling out others as jerks is very often a power play to gain social leverage
over people who aren't good at that game.

~~~
john_moscow
It really depends on your business model. Are you selling results, or
expectations/head count? Is the engineering work actually vital to company
success or is it mostly about maintaining a stable product that doesn't need
much change? So what may work for some businesses, would raise terrible issues
with others.

------
HumanDrivenDev
I've never come across this problem, at least not in software 'engineering'. I
have met the odd jerk from other departments, but 99% of people who try that
stuff will back down when you push back. Dealing with jerks is a good skill to
cultivate (one that I've only recently got the hang of).

------
throw2016
Either people are normal or they are not.

If you have a chip on your shoulder, always have something to prove or want
'revenge' on an unnamed whole because you were bullied in school you are
unlikely to work well with others and are going to be a liability in every
single context.

Either you are brilliant or you are a jerk. Being able to respect and work
well with others is a basic life skill.

Linus for instance respects and works well with thousands of people. Let's
have the same transparency that someone like Linus works under for other CEOs
before feeding into tabloid level sensationalist journalism that singles out
one in tens of thousands of interactions.

Just being able to write a software program or doing what you were trained to
do does not make anyone a genius and the vast majority of software is mundane.

------
pkaye
At one of my previous employers, we had one such jerk who was so bad that even
his manager quit in frustration. None of the other managers wanted to take him
in their team. This guy was technically bright but very hard to get along
with. He would intimidate everything into getting his way. At one point, none
of the engineers wanted to work with him. Management did warn him but it
didn't make a difference. So the company found a new manager and put this guy
under that poor soul. Eventually things were suddenly resolved when this jerk
verbally harassed a key technical lead who was ready to quit if that guy was
still around. If you look at this resume, he has a patchy work history of
short stints. But his is good technically so companies are lured by him.

------
wallace_f
>2\. Does the person target people who are less powerful than him/her?

YMMV but there is a problem in that leaders and brilliant-but-non-expendable
(for w/e reason) engineers can often be jerks themselves. So much so that they
use their power to write the narrative that the less-powerful was the jerk.

I know it is politically incorrect to say this kind of thing, but it certainly
does happen. This happened at NASA when engineeres voiced concerns of the
dangers of a foam strike. Management bullied them and the _groupthink_ culture
there made people side with authority. Then this caused the Challenger
disaster.

And let's be honest: get out of STEM and into something like politics, and
it's very sadly a significant part of the game.

------
btilly
This is not a new observation, but it is a worthwhile one.

I ran across it in [https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Computer-Programming-
Silve...](https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Computer-Programming-Silver-
Anniversary/dp/0932633420) in the form, "If you see a programmer trying to
become indispensable, fire him." Followed by a note written 25 years later
saying, "I have received more thanks for this piece of advice than anything
else that I have said." (Both quotes paraphrased from memory.)

------
organsnyder
This hits close to home for me. I've received feedback (never from
management—from peers) that I've exhibited some of the "brilliant jerk"
behavior (hopefully more Alice than Bob, but I'd rather not be a jerk at
all...). A few reflections I've had:

1\. Part of it is personality differences. I often default to taking a fairly
aggressive approach to discussions, and appreciate a spirited debate on the
merits of a particular issue. Depending on who I'm talking with, this can be a
good experience, as long as neither side is taking it personally—and I have
plenty of colleagues that seem to enjoy working with me. However, this rubs
some people the wrong way, and I can come off as domineering if I'm not
careful, especially to people that prefer to avoid confrontation. Of course,
how I am perceived by others is my own responsibility—but my default
personality seems to be more compatible with some people than others.

2\. When paired with a strong personality, I tend to take an approach to
balance them out. All of the times I've been called out for being too
negative, it's been when I've been working closely with a person that is
overwhelmingly positive. I feel that I tend to be more critical when I feel
that others are not properly vetting new ideas. On the flip-side, I've also
noticed that when I'm talking to someone more negative, I tend to take a more
positive approach, especially if I feel that they're ignoring the positives in
an idea or situation.

3\. I tend to be more harsh on people that I perceive as at or above my
level—I feel that honesty is something that everyone deserves from me, but I'm
direct to a fault. However, with people that I perceive as junior, I find I'm
naturally more diplomatic and constructive—I don't want to demoralize them,
and I am thankful to be able to play some small part in building someone
else's career. I need to remind myself that all people—even those that I
perceive as senior to me—benefit from affirmation and constructive feedback;
it's easy for me to underestimate the power of my words.

The hard part for me is to identify which parts of my personality are jerk-
like, and which parts—when channeled appropriately—are useful (a team lacking
critical voices is also going to be ineffective).

I fervently believe that the greatest challenge in our field is not
technical—it's interpersonal. Rarely do projects fail because of technical
reasons; instead, they fail because of communication breakdown, interpersonal
conflict, and other "soft" attributes. I hope that I can be part of the
solution, rather than the problem.

~~~
spenczar5
> The hard part for me is to identify which parts of my personality are jerk-
> like, and which parts—when channeled appropriately—are useful (a team
> lacking critical voices is also going to be ineffective).

I think this might be the wrong way to think about this stuff.

Different communication strategies appeal to _different listeners_. Rather
than analyzing yourself, saying "some parts of me are effective, others fail,"
I think it's more useful to analyze your interactions. You've almost certainly
had really productive, energizing debates with people in which everyone walked
away feeling glad that all the cards were laid on the table.

You've probably _also_ had really unproductive, demotivating debates in which
people felt attacked, unable to express themselves, and frustrated.

Here's the skill to work on: _before_ you start that debate, try to understand
the person you're talking with. How do they want to talk about this topic? Do
they do better with collaborative, friendly, "That's a good idea"-type
discussion, or with hard-edged debate? Now, mold your communication to _their_
style.

You said this yourself in your #2, but I want to triple-underline it. That's
_the whole job_ when you are communicating. It's all about finding ways to get
your point across as effectively as possible, which means it's _your job_ to
communicate the way _they_ will listen to.

This is hard! But it's worth it. You definitely don't want to just have one
way of communicating - that just makes you frustrated when people aren't
receptive to that style.

------
throwaway0071
I think Brendan must have worked with quite a lot of brilliant jerks in the
ZFS appliance days at Sun/Oracle. The Fishworks team was excellent but some of
the top heads were quite toxic.

------
LeeHwang
This really hit close to home.

I work with engineer whose is brilliant. We originally thought he was jerk,
but the bosses loved him because he was a 5x engineer with the ability to
handle huge cognitive loads, catch errors or conflicts in our large systems in
the planning phase.

It turns out he was neuro atypical, and was actually nice guy, it turned out
he was the one paying for friday pizzas not the boss. He was just too ahead of
us, and honestly we let our inferiority complexes and frustration color our
opinions of him.

------
sigi45
You have to understand one thing: A Brilliant Jerk is not brilliant.

He/She excels in one specific topic and perhaps never thought about excel in
all necessary skills. He/She is caught in her/his world and might not be able
to learn proper social skills. It is quite hard to change long lasting
behaviour.

I'm quite surprised how many adults stop evolving.

------
matt_wulfeck
This is one of the great examples of survivorship bias. You start to think
that all of the most brilliant people are jerks, but the reality is that all
of the non-brilliant jerks were fired long ago for crossing the line. The only
ones left are very very valuable -- and still should fired if they can't play
nice.

~~~
notyourday
... which is how you end up in a company with mediocre engineers, developing
mediocre products, sliding into mediocre abyss.

But at least while making those mediocre salaries they can all hate those
"brilliant jerks" that they fired.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
Funny you say this while commenting on an engineer's opinion from Netflix.
Believe it or not you can fire jerks and still be technologically innovative.

------
lazyasciiart
I have totally turned into an Alice recently. I am watching an important
project turn into a failure for no good reason at all, and I feel like I can
either just stop giving a shit about the outcome and go along with it, or I
can keep saying that this isn't going to work, and to recover we need to do x.

------
stuffedBelly
> coworkers become accomplices, and gaslight his abuse

Personally I think this is the worst part. It's much harder to deal with a
group of jerks and their like-minds. A group typically self-justifies their
behaviors and more likely to defy company policies. That's why bullies
typically come in packs.

------
notyourday
The hilarity of this advice in a single chart:

[http://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ERIC/prices/ericsso...](http://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ERIC/prices/ericsson-
lm-adr-stock-price-history)

~~~
sah2ed
I'm scratching my head as to the point you are trying to make. What's the
chart got to do with the topic?

~~~
notyourday
Look at the post that stared the thread. It has a picture.

------
NTDF9
I had a brilliant jerk at another job. One time, he just blabbered and
interrupted a junior engineer in a meeting so much, another senior engineer
stood up, took off his glasses and screamed loudly,

"Let the man talk, will ya?"

The room just went silent for a few moments after.

------
curtisblaine
> Bob interrupts others, and ignores their opinions

You don't know what a brilliant jerk is. Brilliant jerks never interrupt
anyone and listen to everyone. But they always find a way to do (and make
other people do) what's best for themselves.

------
cocktailpeanuts
Alice will make a great founder.

Alice, if you're listening, quit your job and go start your own company!

~~~
jack6e
So will Bob, if Apple is any indication.

------
kingkawn
Why should nothing ever feel bad?

~~~
csours
Why should everything be terrible forever?

The article is talking about people who are systematically bad for
organizations, not people who have a bad day sometimes.

~~~
alexashka
Things can be terrible because some people don't know how to act.

Things can also be terrible because some people don't know how to do the job
properly.

It is a lot easier to find a yes-man/woman than a brilliant anyone. Companies
are ruined by mediocrity far more than they're ruined by 'brilliant jerks'
bullying the company into non-existence.

Who'd you rather have as your surgeon - a brilliant jerk the nurses have to
put up with, or a nice guy/lady who screws up sometimes but will feel really
bad about it afterwards and will write you a hand-written apology.

I'll take the jerk every time.

~~~
csours
> _" a brilliant jerk the nurses have to put up with, or a nice guy/lady who
> screws up sometimes but will feel really bad about it afterwards and will
> write you a hand-written apology."_

The brilliant jerk will have set a precedent in the operating room that leads
to people not questioning their decisions, even when they are wrong, leading
to uncaught mistakes.

The most brilliant jerk will sometimes slip up. [0]

See also Crew Resource Management:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management)

0\. [https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-
gloss...](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-glossary-of-
human-computer-interaction/human-error-slips-and-mistakes)

~~~
alexashka
Great, we agree to hire people who are good at their job, and then train them
to be effective at communication with others.

I didn't see that in the article. All I saw was a witch hunt.

A witch hunt (aka don't hire them witches) because the witches are disturbing
the health of the village.

It's stone-age thinking - I've heard of a story about a brilliant jerk, his
name was Jesus Christ.

The irony of a Christian nation calling for excommunication of those most
resembling their savior is really something.

------
johansch
I've never actually come across an actually brilliant engineering person who
was also a jerk. Maybe they sometimes superficially seemed like a jerk at
first (particularly if you had a very thin skin), but not after you actually
made an effort to get to know them.

Most of the time though, the jerks just aren't even close to being brilliant.
I feel this jerk attitude is quite often something that is used to mask
ineptitude.

This is after 20 years, 7+ companies and quite close work with hundreds of
individuals (often in a managing position, so maybe they think I was the jerk
;P).

(In fact I feel like most of the "brilliant" people I have worked with have
actually been nicer than the average person.)

~~~
MartinCron
I've met the brilliant jerk (and depending on who you ask, I've _been_ the
brilliant jerk). It's a real thing.

One surprising thing is that it is possible for people to change, at least in
how they treat people. Once I was told I would have to interact with the
"brilliant jerk" and I complained and my manager said, "no, really, he has
CHANGED" and, miracle of miracles, he had.

I wish I knew exactly how and why he changed, my best guess is treatment for
clinical depression, which often surfaces as extreme irritability.

~~~
elijahwright
Amen and kudos for mentioning clinical depression as a thing that causes
extreme irritability.

I know a few Bobs. They are hard to deal with. They get promoted. And
eventually you might want to trade them out for a different Bob - which can
mean just flat out leaving an organization. They aren't likely to go, so that
means it's you.

------
alexanderstears
Hiring brilliant jerks is fundamentally a decision that comes down to the
specific situation and imo it should rest with the hiring manager.

Letting brilliant jerks ruin it for others is a management problem, not a
brilliant jerk problem.

However, professionalism is a two way street. Bobs and Alices that make
professional salaries can be expected to improve, though the professionals
that work with them should make some concessions.

One major problem with corporations / labor / the modern world is that the
demands on employees are extremely high. It makes sense - people want to work
in good jobs and corporations are paying for the labor and the corporations
have to make money so they have incentives to hire the best people for the
jobs.

Professional standards are very high - I'd say that most professionals in
America are in the top 20%-30% of multiple skill sets - communication,
leadership, self-directedness, tolerance for b.s, along with any domain
specific skills.

We don't have an environment that most people can succeed in. And solving it
would be good for people who struggle with some things or people who don't
want to focus their life around professional accountability/development.

The right question to ask isn't "is bob valuable" but more like "how can build
a company in that gets a single parent to manage Bob"?

~~~
edw519
_Letting brilliant jerks ruin it for others is a management problem, not a
brilliant jerk problem._

Great comment of an instance.

The class:

"Letting <anything> ruin it for others is a management problem, not an
<anything> problem."

I have rarely run into the "brilliant jerk" problem.

I have almost always run into the "incompetent manager" problem.

"Incompetent Managers in Engineering". Now there's an article I'd really like
to read.

~~~
watwut
There are people, including highly skilled, who are not jerks and are not
destroying anything to others. There are even people who are not jerks despite
management itself being evil.

Management has part of blame, but jerk is responsible for his own behavior.
Jerk is responsible for what strategies he choose to look brilliant. (And
people with autism don't count as jerks unless they are. Most of them are
willing to stop behavior when explained what the issue is directly.)

~~~
alexanderstears
You're right that productive people are productive _despite_ being jerks, _not
because_ they're jerks. And sure, cast as much judgement on jerks as you feel
is proper.

But most people are pretty set in their ways. Everyone who yells at cashiers
when they're 40 has done so before, they've probably faced some consequences
for their actions and the behavior persists so either you need to be more
persuasive than the totality of their lived experience or you can adjust your
sails.

If we can accept people who miss work for sick kids, we can accept jerks. But
we don't have to accept either. Everything is subservient to money. You can
simply pay for excellent people, but some corporations need to compete
elsewhere.

I wouldn't pay a jerk as much as a team player (all other things equal), but
for the right price I'd put up with the headaches. That's the right call for
me, it's not the right call for others. What's important is that corporations
and managers get creative about making things work for people.

~~~
watwut
Yes, old jerk have often been young jerks. But the reason why behaviour
escalates is that it is rewarded or at least tolerated. In an environment
where yelling at cashier is not socially accepted, yelling at cashier happen
less often. If senior cuts junior and then manager/leader address behavior and
let junior speak, then the team work entirely different then if leader makes
fun of half heard junior proposal.

1.) Many jerks are considered brilliant because they act like jerks, not
despite or in addition to. Acting like jerk makes people less likely to
question you, it makes your collegues look less capable if managent believes
your crap. It makes them more angry and less confident.

Association between jerk and brilliant does not help, I have seen (literally)
people finish complaint about bad behavior with "but he is great coder" over
dude they knew nothing about profesionally. Zero information. He acted
arrogant, therefore they assumed higher competence.

2.) Parent comment put all the blame on management and none on jerk. That is
not fair and amounts to blaming other tribe.

~~~
alexanderstears
I completely put all the blame of the costs of jerks on management and you
should too. Every jerk you work with was hired by management! Jerks don't
wonder around the street, finding their ways into offices and meeting rooms
and then start talking over people.

Management hires jerks and puts people into situations with the jerks they
hired.

------
whataretensors
This doesn't pass the Torvald test. i.e. Would your startup hire Linus if he
hadn't yet created linux and git?

~~~
vemv
\- Actual Linuses start up their own projects

\- A successful startup does not depend on miracles, geniuses and such.

------
HarryHirsch
Americans somehow not only manage to conflate use of bad words with mission-
hostile management, on top of that they don't even recognize mission-hostile
management when it doesn't use bad words. That saga with Torvalds and USB-3
was quite something.

~~~
sctb
Hand-wavey generalizations like this are not so good for Hacker News; please
refrain.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
bjornlouser
Reed Hastings looks like a brilliant jerk in that photo...

------
bjt2n3904
I'm not entirely sure I subscribe to this "behavior based" vs "merit based"
look at job performance.

Consider this criterion:

> 1\. After encountering the person, do people feel oppressed, humiliated or
> otherwise worse about themselves?

Bob and Mary are staunch members of <opposing political parties>. While they
never discuss it at work, Mary deeply resents the views Bob posts on social
media. During a code review, Bob is bluntly critical of Mary's code. Mary
perceives this to be related to their political differences, and feels
oppressed. Mary files a complaint with HR.

Bob claims he is being objective, and targeted for his political views. Others
are hesitant to criticize Mary's code, lest they be lumped into a "tolerance
witch hunt".

If you want to talk about performance, it should be objective, not subjective.
Anything else opens the door to drama. Yes, "jerks" create issues. But making
a rule that says "no jerks" will not solve those problems. It might even make
things worse.

~~~
sah2ed
> Bob and Mary are staunch members of <political party>. While they never
> discuss it at work, Mary deeply resents the views Bob posts on social media.

I'm assuming Bob and Mary are members of opposing political parties?

Even if that is not the case, is it really mandatory to friend/follow co-
workers' stream of consciousness on social media?

Wouldn't it be more productive (from Mary's perspective) to segment
professional from personal views by not _actively following_ someone who's
personal views she has disagreed with in the past, to keep all future
interactions focused on work-related topics?

~~~
bjt2n3904
Correct, I meant to say opposing political parties.

I suppose my point is: criticism and being a jerk are orthogonal in theory,
but in practice it's much more difficult.

Making a rule that says, you can get someone fired if they hurt your feelings
gives disproportionate power to anyone with thin skin.

------
forcedin2jerk
I once left the most toxic organization I could ever imagine. I was initially
very excited to work with people so experienced, but I slowly learned it was
just people experienced with being jerks for decades with minimal brilliance
to accompany. I turned into an Alice trying to deal with at-best-mediocre/at-
worst-negligent Bobs. The article has nailed things pretty accurately, except
that the ability of the Bobs was the poorest I’ve ever seen in about 10 years
of working. Every success of mine was accompanied by huge failures on their
part, and they felt extremely threatened, which really exacerbated things. The
worst strategy, which was effective for them, was to constantly spread
misinformation about their work, as well as mine, and to organize secret
meetings. This created a false perspective that they have a bigger picture in
mind, even though each lie fell apart weeks to months later.

If you find yourself in an environment where your Alice-jerkiness is forced to
grow significantly to deal with Bobs, you should leave if you can.

My fondest engineering experiences are working with Alices. I’ve worked with
kids fresh out of school that have made me a better engineer; debate is
healthy, and no one knows everything. When you encounter a situation with
people who refuse to accept that there are things they don’t innately know,
and are offended at the prospect of debate, you have Bob.

Another strategy of some Bobs, which wasn’t mentioned specifically, is for
Bobs to try and make Alices (really anyone who won’t submit to their egos, or
who work off of objective evidence) out to be Bobs to avoid arguments and to
make unilateral decisions that are not empiricallly driven. Not all Bobs are
like this, though, which is part of why the Brilliant Jerk archetype tends to
overfit, IMO.

Edit: these Bobs were “too experienced” for code review, pull requests, design
planning, and testing of any sort.

~~~
forcedin2jerk
Just so anyone reading can take something away that might be useful if they
find themselves in a similar situation... In the first one, I became a
hardcore Alice, specifically got promoted because of it, and the jerkiness on
all fronts accelerated. There are cultures where jerks thrive.

Another culture I’ve previously worked in appreciated people that could
“level” their brilliant jerks because management didn’t want to replace them
(growth stage -> acquisition). I’ve found sometimes people turn into brilliant
jerks, and it’s allowed/tolerated, in part due to compensation inequality.
These people were hired at a lower salary for whatever reasons, and in
exchange received freedom to be a brilliant jerk because they became hard to
replace at a certain price. The jerks in question were working their butts off
to move up, which never happened in any significant way. So there can
definitely be multiple sides as to why someone is behaving like a jerk.

