
How to Deal With Brilliant Jerks You Work With - rohunati
http://www.wired.com/2014/02/smart-jerks-old-people-hard-things-company/
======
rdl
The good argument against hiring experienced people is that they will be
highly opinionated about how they did things before. (Plus, the purely
practical concerns around cost and availability) I don't think this closely
correlates to age -- a 45 year old consultant who has done short engagements
at hundreds of small companies (qsa or something like that) has entirely
different characteristics than someone who ran a specific function at one
successful company right out of college and nothing else. I'd actually argue
the 45yo in that case is less likely to be an "old person" than the 24yo! In a
less pathological case, certain roles are probably more likely to make people
into jerks (or select for jerks to retain) than other roles.

The argument for is time, and that you might really want those opinions. It
just doesn't mesh well with "everyone is equal, we are doing something new, so
everyone contributes ideas" way of thinking at the earliest stages, and it is
possible the conventional wisdom (or at least the version embodied in the
experienced employee) will either be wrong in general, or at least wrong for
your specific case now. It is probably more important that "experienced"
people be polite and reasonable than that "brilliant" people be polite and
reasonable, actually.

The biggest jerks seem to be people who have had one or two early successes
and little or no failure.

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peterwwillis
Holy shit. I would never work with/for this writer.

In example one, the writer refuses to take responsibility for the fact that
they had unrealistic expectations and encouraged unhealthy behavior. If a guy
works for 72 hours straight, you don't _reward him for that_ , you tell him to
take 3 days off and get some sleep, because nobody can be productive at a pace
like that. At the very least it's incredibly unhealthy for the employee.

In the second example the writer basically is suggesting that you should fire
people who speak out against the company. What a ridiculous notion! If your
culture is so bad you're producing "heretics", you should probably take a
serious review at what you're doing to cause such behavior, and why you
couldn't detect and rein it in before they "went public" with their concerns.

In the third example, again, before the "jerk" can "destroy" communication
"across the team", why didn't somebody notice and maybe have a talk with this
chap? Why not work out counseling, or find new ways to work with the person?
There are a lot of avenues available to improve communication between
employees. "The pound" is a failure to deal with the communication issue.

The ageism of the rest of his post is just the nail in the coffin. Instead of
adapting your culture to support different viewpoints, he suggests filtering
out anyone who doesn't think the same. Instead of providing a facility for all
employees to come to consensus and work together productively, he suggests you
should simply be cautious that the old person could be more politically-savvy
than you - essentially, to be 'on your guard' around them. And the idea that
an old person has some specific knowledge you need is not only irrational, it
ignores the real reason 'old' people have an advantage: they may not have
_specific_ knowledge you need, but they have [probably] failed more, which
gives them the experience of knowing what doesn't work (in their experience),
and to a smaller extent, what does.

Dealing with "geniuses" should be the same as dealing with regular people. If
you take an active role in caring about your employees and their experience in
your company, you'll find out before problems come to a head, and be able to
work out solutions that help everyone. (Or you could just fire anyone that
causes you problems, which seems to be his suggestion)

~~~
0013411101
>Holy shit. I would never work with/for this writer.

The writer is Ben Horowitz:

>Ben Horowitz is cofounder and partner of Andreessen Horowitz.

Therefore there is a good chance that if you work at a successful Valley
startup you are indirectly working for this guy and making him even more
disgustingly wealthy from your labour.

~~~
peterwwillis
I don't really care who is becoming wealthy from what. But I will certainly
take a more critical look at any company I think of joining that has this guy
as a backer.

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0013411101
Jesus Christ, is that top picture of a hellish working environment typical? I
have a panic attack just looking at it.

Does anyone happen to know what company that is so I know to avoid them like
the plague?

EDIT: OK, figured it out, it is Pivotal[0]. I have absolutely no idea what
they actually _do_ based on their website, exactly as I would expect for the
kind of company that would have that sort of office.

[0]: [http://www.gopivotal.com/](http://www.gopivotal.com/)

~~~
segmondy
Hey, if most people were able to study/learn in school like that, why can't
they work like that? Just saying. I've pretty much accepted my fate. I will
sit on the floor or in circles or in that format, just pay me and pay me well.

~~~
0013411101
Because I demand more respect than that from my employer. It is a layout
designed to cram the max number of people into the cheapest space. These
people are shoulder to shoulder. You have zero privacy and anything you do on
your screen 2 other people are going to inevitably see it. In that way it is
also your employer enforcing their will on you- you will feel embarrassed to
take a perfectly normal break to look at Facebook or Twitter or whatever.

I also dislike that a lot of the spaces there are for people with laptops. I
personally would never accept a company laptop. It implies that your employer
wants you to work at home or on travel. Fuck that. I want a desktop, and I
will work for you when I am in the office. If you want me to work at any other
time, pay me to come in.

Stand up for yourself. Start-up culture is increasingly bullshit and toxic,
luckily I am getting out in a few weeks and do not intend to return.

~~~
azth
> Start-up culture is increasingly bullshit and toxic

Does that apply mainly to SV, or have you had/seen similar experiences
elsewhere?

------
h1karu
I love remote companies because they can afford to give their employees the
freedom to have drug habits or kids who demand a lot of attention or whatever
else. There's no pressure to "keep up appearances" so as long as his
communication on git and hipchat is professional and his code quality is high.

In real offices there is too much wasteful drama/noise around 'perceived
slackness' that often does not correlate with the actual facts. In a remote
environment everyone is being judged on the same time-scale by the same exact
criteria which has nothing to do with their age, sex, lifestyle choices, sleep
habits, etc.

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morgante
> Most executives can be pricks, dicks, a-holes, or a variety of other profane
> nouns at times. Being dramatically impolite can be used to improve clarity
> or emphasize an important lesson.

I hate that such behavior is considered normal and acceptable.

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patmcguire
Didn't Ben Horowitz basically publish this already as Old People?
[http://www.bhorowitz.com/old_people](http://www.bhorowitz.com/old_people)

~~~
fhd2
Wow, that one is even worse, pure ageism. He might as well write about "when
to hire female people" etc. Somewhat sad that "culture" is mostly a
meaningless buzzword these days, used mainly to exclude people you don't like.

~~~
0013411101
And yet people will listen to this guy because he is a VC and will create
cargo cult leadership to hang off his every word.

~~~
rdl
Ben being a VC is a bad reason to give him credibility. His experience at loud
cloud and ops ware (and then HP), and generally being smart, is why I find him
interesting.

If you read the book, there were only a few fairly badly communicated or
stupid parts, and they made a lot more sense in context (it is partially
biographical, so he includes mistakes and why they were mistakes).

The "old people" is one of those which made more sense in context. It was a
bad idea to let it be pulled out like this, imo.

------
dbbolton
>It turned out that Arthur was bipolar and had two significant drug problems.

Then it's very likely that his extremely productive coding marathons were
during manic episodes and/or while abusing stimulants. Certainly not something
you would want to bank on either way.

My dad was bipolar and also one of the hardest-working men I knew (even during
waves of depression). He actually had a couple (prescription) drug problems
too. But when he started up a manic episode, it was still abundantly obvious.
Basically what's described in the article- seemingly endless pools of energy
and stamina despite little to no sleep, _always_ working on or planning some
kind of project (for my dad, it was usually some kind of restoration), and
never relaxing.

I think he was probably an exception to the rule, because when he was
depressed and taking heavy doses of benzodiazepines, he still managed to get
his fair share done. I'm not a psychiatrist and I don't know Arthur, but I'd
guess both his absences and drug use stemmed from his depression.

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subdane
Ben's perspective is strongly influenced by his experiences at Netscape and
Loudcloud and looking for and funding rocket ships. Are these cultural
artifacts - working w/ jerks, hiring young, working 72 hours in a row - the
inevitable outcome of venture funded tech? Are there strong counter examples?

~~~
rdl
If you look at a lot of other highly creative disciplines (art, music, etc),
the non linear performance (by person, task, and time) is also common.
Temperament, drugs, etc might be factors.

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e40
_Why do we need senior people at all? The short answer is time. Hiring someone
who has already done what you are trying to do can radically speed up time to
success. But won’t they just ruin the culture? This question must be taken
seriously. However, bringing in the right kind of experience at the right time
can mean the difference between bankruptcy and glory._

Wow, that's offensive.

~~~
kenkam
Senior as in age? Or senior as in someone who has the experience?

I interpreted it as the latter... although I live in England and when people
mention senior I think of people who has experience.

~~~
grahamburger
The paragraph heading said 'Old People.' Particularly poignant for me - my dad
is highly experienced but was recently laid off and has been searching for a
job in the tech sector for months. Ageism in tech is brutal.

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itsatrapnooo
Ignoring the out of place second half of the article...

Whats most troublesome to me about this article is in the first example.

> On his third day, we gave him a project that was scheduled to take one
> month. Arthur completed the project in three days with nearly flawless
> quality. More specifically, he completed the project in seventy-two hours:
> No stops, no sleep, nothing but coding. In his first quarter on the job, he
> was the best employee we had and we immediately promoted him.

This is the monkey getting his hand caught in the jar. This is Chewbacca
thinking with his stomach and getting hung upside down by Ewoks.

Behavior like Arthur's is unsustainable. The human energy to stay up for 72
hours writing code has to come from somewhere. Burnout in these sort of cases
is inevitable.

Why oh why would you promote someone like this before waiting for them to
display an ability to be consistent? We should see these sort of things as red
flags. Instead, the dream of having a programmer that can get month-long
projects done in three days is too sweet too ignore. It's ironic that his
downfall was giving in to drugs, which provide short term gains at long term
costs -- the company was guilty of the same, with Arthur as their drug

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Eduard
The first example read like _the employee was diagnosed with bipolar disorder,
so we fired him_. Ouch. Try to be supportive and help at least once. Then
reconsider. Else, the jerk is on you.

~~~
warfangle
Not only that, but bipolar disorder is a _protected class_ under the ADA. Drug
addiction not so much. But that's why your company has mental health included
in its health plan.

It does, doesn't it?

Sheesh.

