
What If Silicon Valley’s ‘Brilliant Jerks’ Are Just Jerks? - jpm_sd
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-29/what-if-silicon-valley-s-brilliant-jerks-are-just-regular-ones
======
KaiserPro
What if, and hear me out on this, we tell people off when they do something
wrong?

I know its controversial, but imagine that this was someone's really cute
husky. Sure every day it would bounce about the place and make funny husky
noises.

However every week, on a sunday, it would attack your child and poop on the
carpet.

A normal person wouldn't shrug and say, "Hubert the husky brings a lot of
value to the household, so lets just ignore this." No. You'd bollock the
arrogant shit when it did wrong, and praise it when it was good.

The dirty secret of Silicon value is that actually, individuals are
replaceable. What isn't replaceable is time and money. The cult of the Jerk is
a defence mechanism to allow shit to continue to be shits.

repeat after me:

If they've broken the law or done something morally grey, bollock them.

I know that sounds radical and foreign, but its part of a thing called "wider
society"

~~~
mcguire
If Hubert the Husky makes a shit-ton of money, the definition of "did wrong"
changes.

~~~
inflatableDodo
I don't care how much money someone earns, be it a dog or otherwise, or if
they can buy me untold carpets. I am still going to tell them off if they shit
in the middle of the living room floor.

~~~
Tade0
Problem is, the incentive for businesses is to fire you and make Hubert the
Husky happy, so only such businesses survive.

~~~
inflatableDodo
I knew there was a good reason why I hadn't commented any code, named all
variables using the elvish translations for a variety of diseases of sheep and
built the DB backend out of practically unknown fork of paradox for dos that
will only run queries if you keep the lowercase letter 'j' held down.

edit - also known as _' best practice'_ when writing bespoke software for
industry.

------
xiphias2
It's easy to see if they are just jerks or geeks as well: just look at their
early life.

In 1998, Levandowski entered the University of California, Berkeley, where he
earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Industrial Engineering and
Operations Research.[12] As a freshman, he launched an intranet service from
his basement.[3] In 2004 he and fellow UC Berkeley engineers built an
autonomous motorcycle, nicknamed Ghostrider, for the DARPA Grand
Challenge.[13] The Ghostrider motorcycle competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge
in 2004 and 2005 and was the only autonomous two-wheeled vehicle in the
competition.[14] The motorcycle now resides in the Smithsonian National Museum
of American History.[3]

I challenge the author of the article to build this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CYGT97i8qU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CYGT97i8qU)

~~~
donmcronald
That’s got to cost a ton of money to build. Who pays for it?

~~~
candiodari
Well "ton" is not very accurate. University teams (some of them) are legendary
in how far they get on how little funds. You'd need a used motorcycle, a
garage (which will be donated), time from 4-5 AI PhD students (again donated),
test space (supermarket parking on sundays or at night), actuators (bad,
recycled or donated ones), time in a metal shop (let's say 2000-3000$),
various parts and ... (let's say $1000), travel and ... expenses (let's say
$10k), ...

It doesn't have to cost much more than $20k or so. Budgets went into $x00k
range for the first Darpa challenge (x < 3 or so).

Who paid for it ? DARPA. Also known as the US military.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihXE1Iu5E3o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihXE1Iu5E3o)

------
sweeneyrod
> People like Levandowski, Travis Kalanick, Parker Conrad, Elizabeth Holmes
> and Andy Rubin

This is a really weird grouping. It's mixing people who have built incredibly
valuable things (Rubin) with those who are famous for failing to do so
(Holmes); and people who broke the law by committing fraud (which seems like
an unusual use of the word "jerk") with those who have been accused of sexual
misconduct.

~~~
mcguire
Levandowski did a lot of ethically sketchy things up to the point where he
allegedly broke the law.

Travis Kalanick did a lot of ethically sketchy things up to the point where he
was removed from his own company.

Holmes did a lot of ethically sketchy things up to the point where the wheels
came off.

Conrad did sketchy things up to the point where someone realized he wasn't
actually doing what he was supposed to.

Rubin did sketchy things up to the point that Google paid him to close the
door behind him.

The key commonality is that they did sketchy things, people knew they were
doing sketchy things, and the entrepreneureal and tech community lionized them
up to the point where doing so became embarrassing. (And seems to be
continuing to do so, judging by this thread.)

------
cryptozeus
“But to me, the Levandowski litigation again shows the tech industry’s
schizophrenia about those brilliant jerks. ”

Sure let’s generalize entire industry based on one nutcase. Brilliant article.

~~~
BurningFrog
"This cherry picked example exactly confirms my preconceived notion!"

~~~
mcguire
To be fair to cryptozeus, Levandowski is in the photo directly under the
title.

------
geggam
Sometimes when I deal with people I think are less intelligent than myself I
wonder what it would be like to be in that rare stratosphere of intelligence
never running into someone who you thought wasnt an idiot.

Then I wonder if I would become a jerk simply due to fatigue.

Good thing I dont have to worry about it too much :)

~~~
BurningFrog
If you're actually a genius, you understand that people dumber than you aren't
idiots. They're normal.

~~~
candiodari
And that's supposed to make you feel better ?

Go to city hall or DMV, try get something done, and you will understand how
dealing with inflexible idiots feels. (note that you're not dumb because you
work at city hall/DMV, but if you're not dumb you have better options and go
somewhere else. So over time, these places collect idiots). When you're
smarter, there's a lot of DMVs.

It's not like dealing with people a little less smart or smarter than you
feels (in fact they will regularly outsmart you, you'll just outsmart them
just a tad more than the other way). That's just fine, interesting, and
doesn't stand in anyone's way. It's dealing with people _much_ dumber than you
that's the problem.

Here's a repeating conversation that's frustrating. The problem is smart
people play chess, whereas normal people just play a move.

"I want to X" "But that's (insane|difficult|not what I'd like to do|not what I
see|...), why not Y ?" "Because Y leads to Z, to A, and likely to B, which is
a negative for me" "But why not C ?" "Because C leads to D, E and then again
to B, which is not what I want" "But ..." (continue for another 10 minutes)

Or people that hate you because you "make them feel dumb" (which is exactly
what they do to you when you have to explain everything of course, but never
mind that). And you might say "why not make them feel smart". And sure, I do
that. That's easy. But it takes time and energy, and I'm just not going to do
that 100x every day. 10x, sure. No problem. But there's a limit.

Or people who feel like they're _entitled_ to your intelligence. Every last
problem they encounter. "Hey <drop everything and> come look at this", and
then the first time you don't they immediately escalate.

Or just playing chess, then looking at "idiots" moving on the playing field.
And seeing them placing themselves into impossible positions and ...

Also worse is that you see people's motivations. How, say, social workers are
going to discuss a new policy to do X, and this sounds really positive and
you're the only one in the room that's "but, no it isn't positive at all.
Because the motivations of these guys that are involved are to ... and that
will lead to ..., which is going to destroy these peoples' lives, and you KNOW
this but you're suggesting the policy because your organization will once
again have to expand". For example, "early detection of child abuse" by people
who are paid for finding child abuse will lead to ... false accusations. And
of course, once again they will find much more than their worst fear. Or
helping the homeless by "providing accomodations", and you want to scream that
no, they want them off the street because they think it'll increase their
house's value and their ego while effectively arresting and locking up these
people.

Or worse: you actually go look at the accommodations they were talking about,
because you're interested. Either for those abused kids, or for those
homeless. And then you know: there is no act as despicable, counterproductive
and outright evil as "professionals" "helping" people.

------
natalyarostova
I don't really understand the headline question. Levandowski is brilliant,
that's not really up for debate.

~~~
bdcravens
The article is paywalled, so I may be off-base about the article's premise,
but my take is that the "brilliant jerks" of our industry (first ones that
come to mind are Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds) not only get a pass because
due to results, but that their personality is worth emulating. The idea I
think is that we need to push back, and call being a jerk what it really is: a
character flaw, not an asset.

~~~
deepsun
Sorry I probably missed something, but when was Linus Torvalds being a jerk?
Sure, he showed finger to NVidia the company once, which was funny, but didn't
harm anyone. His mails are also very straightforward and up to the point,
without diluting it with compliments, contrary to current cultural code.

I don't think skipping compliments equals to being a jerk. I'd look at
actions, and I don't remember Linus did something nasty.

~~~
bdcravens
Linus himself admitted to it:

"My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for.
Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch,
this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry.

The above is basically a long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful
personal admission that hey, I need to change some of my behavior, and I want
to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove
away from kernel development entirely."

[https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167](https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167)

~~~
deepsun
Thanks, I stand corrected.

------
dev_dull
You usually only meet jerks when they’re in positions of prestige and very
competent (brilliant?). Why? Because the jerks who aren’t good at they’re job
are fired long ago. You might start to think that there’s some connection, but
really is just they’ve managed to barely hang out by virtue of their skill.

~~~
dgellow
> Because the jerks who aren’t good at they’re job are fired long ago.

That’s wishful thinking. A lot of jerks will never be fired and are terrible
at their job. It’s not that simple and isn’t cheap to fire someone.

IMHO the main difference is mostly that jerks with power will negatively
impact more people, thus are more visible.

~~~
User23
The jerks with power who appear bad at their job are actually good at their
real job and that's politicking. They're only bad at their nominal job,
whatever it may be, which doesn't matter by definition since they are
successful enough to have power.

~~~
postfacto
^^ This.

Also, your real job is making your manager look good to his manager, not
actually the nominal job of writing reliable, stable, flexible code that you
signed up for in your employment agreement.

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beardedman
Jerks are jerks are jerks are jerks. Their intellectual acumen is irrelevant.

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sjg007
The whole brillant jerk thing is epitomized in "Halt and Catch Fire" ... So I
am going to go with nuance.

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justinator
When they write, "Brilliant Jerks", do they mean, "Sociopaths"?

