
What do you do with the Brilliant Jerk? - NelsonMinar
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/what-do-you-do-with-the-brilliant-jerk/
======
blhack
Covering for people on holidays? What an JERK!

Bringing in the most revenue and publishing the most? PSH! What a totally
useless bit of dead weight!

Oh, and the other people in the group _respect_ this guy? What are they
idiots? Don't they know they should be respecting _me_?

/s

edit: ya know, reading this and some other things about how "smart people" are
so bad at communicating, except to other "smart people" makes we wonder what
the managers are actually doing.

Clearly the can't actually manage the talent, they can't even figure out how
to talk to them. You see that's you're job, managers, _managing the talent_.
If you can't handle that thing that is right there in your title, then what
the hell are you doing here? You're not fit for the job.

To me the answer seems obvious: flatten out your org, put "smart people" at
the top, and ditch the guy whose response to acquiring talent is to fire them.
_He's_ the weak link.

~~~
jakejake
I've worked with some "brilliant jerks" before. But they were never the type
to cover on holidays, bring in the most revenue, etc. The brilliant jerks I
knew tended to be selfish and negative. Perhaps he didn't share the company
vision, but this guy didn't sound like a jerk (well, until he started suing
the company after he left).

I will say that the true jerks have a way of worming their way into the
company. For example they'll do a lot of work with the goal of making sure
they're the only one who understands some certain process. Then they horde
knowledge and never want anyone else in there or any documentation to exist.
The team is afraid to fire them because nobody knows or has the time to learn
that part of the system.

~~~
zaidmo
I was hoping / expecting the article to conclude with a recommendation on how
to best channel the energy / talent of the "brilliant jerk". Not have this
person fired. Promote him, but limit him, under a specifically defined
position in the company where the boundaries are set - e.g. Head of Product
Development, Head of Business Ops, Line Management, Finance...

I'm a Stargate fan and when I read brilliant jerk, I thought Rodney McKay and
Nicholas Rush. Yeah, they had there issues, but at the end of the day, you can
count on them...

~~~
jakejake
I was also hoping for something along the lines of "how to get better
productivity from difficult people"

------
doktrin
I am uncomfortable with the advice being doled out here. In all cases
mentioned, the "brilliant jerks" were clearly invaluable to the venture. In
both cases they would _literally_ not have gotten past the early startup stage
without them. However, once they become inconvenient to manage, the "only"
solution was too fire them.

Not only does this strike me as a mismanagement of talent, but it is almost
bordering on the unethical. While I do not claim to know the specifics
involved, some of the anecdotes gave me pause :

>> _And the Brilliant Jerk speaks the truth. But I have also seen him stick
his head in the door and deflate an entire management team. A growth company
needs enablers, not disablers._

A growth company also needs sensible advice, and sensible advice should not be
confused with being a "disabler". Too often I have seen rational advice get
dismissed because reality isn't compatible with someone's bold new plan.

Not knowing the specifics here, it's not too hard to imagine a scenario in
which a "management" team gets carried away with lofty and unrealistic goals
only to be "deflated" by someone with actual technical insight.

~~~
eli
I mostly agree with you. But I have also seen how one person with a really bad
attitude can affect an entire team.

~~~
CodeMage
If that person happens to be _the_ person without which it would have been
impossible to have that team in the first place, then maybe the right thing is
to find out _why_ they have that bad attitude and what can be done to change
it.

------
calinet6
Pigeon-holing people is a great way to make them into lesser human beings, and
companies into the insensitive bureaucracies that good talent loves to avoid.

Talk to the person for pete's sake. If they're underperforming or their net
contribution to the company (via culture or performance) is negative, then
work with them to improve or work with them to change jobs. Maybe they need a
different position. Maybe they need to leave and start their own company.

But if you label them, put them down, and attempt to deal with them "as a
problem" rather than as a human being, then yes, you will have problems.

This is just an example of inept management of talent, nothing more. I
encourage everyone to disregard this article except as a case study in how not
to manage people, and try to do better.

~~~
calinet6
I'm going to reply to myself with a counter-argument. I just remembered the
"No Asshole Rule," which is a great book with similar themes. I think there's
a difference between someone who is simply an asshole, and someone who is
tenacious and sometimes a jerk _to management_ (which the OP article seems to
show) and disagrees openly. The latter might be an asset, the former is almost
always a net negative.

The point is, you have to evaluate these situations on their merits. If
someone really is dividing the company and producing a negative effect, then
obviously you need to deal with that in some way. But if they're not
destroying the culture (indeed most are adding to it in some way if they care
about the company and work hard), then it's not a cut-and-dry decision.

However, the No Asshole Rule makes some very good points along these lines, so
perhaps there is merit to the idea of avoiding jerks at any costs from the
beginning.

------
flatline3
This is the kind of argument that you see from "stage 2" or "stage 3"
management teams installed at a startup. These are the people brought on when
the investors or CEO decide (mistakenly) that they now need "real" management,
and then proceed to hire the worst possible kind.

This kind of management strives to guide the now-profitable and low-risk
venture towards a state of permanent mediocrity; the remaining smart, stellar
people merely stand in the way.

The new management's desire is to secure their position in the organization by
instituting policies that require that information and knowledge flow through
them, amassing a greater base of direct and indirect reports, and redefining
their internal metrics of "success" in a way that's genuinely divorced from
external reality.

The Brilliant Jerk in this situation should be promoted, the new management
should never have been hired.

~~~
joezydeco
Funny thing. I'm in this very exact situation and, indeed, I feel like the
Brilliant Jerk these days.

We recently made our B-series round. The CEO and CFO have been in closed door
meetings for months, leaving us adrift. The VC firm has installed people on
the board and in the office, so _they_ need attention. The people around here
that put in the late nights and hair-tearing conference calls are pretty much
being ignored. Communication has fallen off a cliff. But hey, we're a Real
Company now!

Good thing I'm turning in my notice next week.

------
malvosenior
So because this guy can't manage high-end talent, his answer is to fire any
high-end talent that somehow makes it through the door. Great advice :/

I've mentioned it previously here
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4503224>) but this is a classic example
of management ineptitude and ego passing up opportunities because it's "hard"
to be challenged by someone more intelligent than yourself.

~~~
batgaijin
Where does this attitude come from? It's like saying "Well, I could hire
someone with a power-tool to fix up my house, but I don't know how those fancy
machines work. I know! I'll hire that old carpenter down the street and watch
him work over his shoulder!"

~~~
ajross
It comes from the fact that the power tool user won't just fix your house,
she'll also yell at you about how the design is bad and you need to be doing
these other six things to fix it. The carpenter will just shut up and do his
job.

So if you're someone who wants to plan your own house (and _especially_ if
you're someone who feels like you need "authority" to do it) you have a built-
in incentive to ban power tools from the workplace.

------
noonespecial
This is dangerous advice. Brilliant people work for your startup for less than
they could make at bigcorp because they believe in the vision. If you show
them the door as soon as you get what you want out of them, you're in for a
world of hurt.

This seems to be exactly what happened to the OP. The superstar spent years
after poaching employees and starting trouble.

~~~
woodchuck64
He says the Brilliant Jerk quit and then spent years poaching employees and
starting trouble. Working on an amicable parting well before that is the OP's
advice.

~~~
rhizome
As long as any failure to engineer an amiable parting is blamed on the "jerk."

------
kimmel
Here is an accurate tl;dr of this article:

"I am too stupid to manage employees smarter than me so I label them and get
rid of them. I am always correct and everyone else is wrong and this has
nothing to do with me being the boss."

Also that line about Gates and Jobs is just there so the author can try and
draw a parallel to them and thus inflate their position and validate their
actions.

------
NelsonMinar
I figured the Hacker News crowd would hate this article but I thought it was
well written and worth posting. I've been a bit of the Brilliant Jerk myself
in jobs and I've also been a manager at places with a Brilliant Jerk problem.
I've personally seen how the rest of a group can do much better if you remove
someone causing problems. Sometimes you find the other non-jerks are brilliant
too, they just need the room to shine.

The key takeaway for me from this article is that startup employee culture is
as important as technical ability. It's a scaling challenge; if you need to go
from 3 people to 20+ and one of those earliest people is poisoning the culture
you have a real problem. Hopefully good management can address that problem
without going so far as firing someone. But sometimes the solution is to get
rid of a jerk, no matter how brilliant they are.

~~~
strlen
I think the article uses the term "Brilliant Jerk" to describe someone who is
technically brilliant but not politically apt or motivated by money
("brilliant businessmen"). That's not what I (and probably you) mean by the
term. Managers that view allowing employees to work from home or giving them
challenging technical work as "coddling" are the real jerks in my opinion
(albeit not brilliant ones).

The article could be right if it spoke about genuine "brilliant jerks".
Companies I've worked have passed on candidates who aced the technical
interview but then proceeded to yell at at interviewers when there was a
disagreement or make sexist remarks (duh on the latter point).

I am not saying it doesn't happen, I've yet to encounter any existing
employees who were truly brilliant jerks: I've encountered brilliant engineers
who had trouble related and showed impatience with average (that is average
compared to other engineers within the company) engineers, but none were worth
firing. They also had a particular eye for under-appreciated talent and would
often spot and mentor employees with high potential, but who had
underperformed (compared to their potential that is -- they may have still
done well in a stack ranking, but they had the potential to contribute a lot
more) whether due to lack of focus, lack of self discipline, or plain
inexperience (almost always a lack of debugging skills).

I have also encountered employees who were jerks, were technically good (but
never true outliers) but were political and were more interested in growing
their power rather than technical excellence. They would be worth firing, but
the problem is jerks follow a "kiss up, kick down" pattern: traditional
("micro-") managers love them and give them free reign to bully other
employees (including the technically brilliant but less socially and
politically apt individual contributors).

No solution is going to be perfect -- and I am not nearly experienced enough
to speak from anything but gut feel -- but what seems to work (and have
created engineerings organizations where I enjoy/have enjoyed working) is:

1) Filter out jerks, ladder climbers (those more motivated by status and money
than by impact, learning, or solving hard problems) as a part of the hiring
process (which includes -- but is not limited to -- the interview process).

2) Take extra-ordinary steps to reduce company politics. This is easier said
than done: good[1] startups avoid that because everyone is aligned to the same
goal, the trick is maintaining that kind of an alignment as the companies
grows. I am currently reaping the fruits of such an atmosphere, but I am still
learning and trying to understand how this is accomplished.

[1] There are just as many terrible startups as there are amazing ones -- and
there is less of a thing such as "an average startup". Quality (in terms of
"place to work") follows an inverted Bell Curve. I have heard (but fortunately
haven't experienced firsthand) my share of horror stories of small startups
that are far more political at 20 people than Google was at 20,000 people.
Naturally, the earlier the stage, the greater the variance.

------
option_greek
"The likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Roger Ailes have had no problem
showing Brilliant Jerks the door, and all built world-class brands faster and
better than the rest of us."

It might be true but there was a period when SJ himself was a brilliant jerk.
I don't think firing him did any good to apple.

~~~
debacle
Bill Gates, too, was a brilliant jerk, and probably in a bigger if different
way than Jobs.

~~~
calinet6
Could it be that people are complex? That they are more than a two word label?
What a conclusion that would be.

------
marshray
Looking at the context, their "start up" is a group of _doctors_. A medical
practice. If you can obtain the right mix of credentials, this is one of the
most time-tested service businesses there is. Medical practices regularly
persist for decades at a time.

A web search for "STI Knowledge" [http://www.the-resource-
center.com/catalogs/sti_knowledge_ce...](http://www.the-resource-
center.com/catalogs/sti_knowledge_certifications.HTM) suggests they do
training seminars for help desk staff.

Sounds to me like this guy doesn't have a clue about the kind of talent
management applicable to high-tech startups.

------
kjhughes
I sense serious incongruity between the author's aspersions and the "jerk's"
performance and accomplishments.

Before firing a brilliant team member with what the author perceives as an
incorrigibly caustic attitude, he'd better be very sure there are not genuine
issues in the organization that really ought to be resolved first.

------
debacle
This is a very feel-good article, but the reality is that it's very likely
that if you're working at a startup that's going to succeed, the boss himself
is a "brilliant jerk."

The world needs brilliant jerks. They get things done, partially because
they're brilliant but also sometimes because they're jerks.

~~~
Wistar
The world needs brilliant jerks but perhaps at the helm of their own company.

~~~
0003
Yes. How is the Brilliant Jerk doctor who has "spent the next couple of years
attacking the company from every conceivable angle: poaching employees,
helping competitors and starting legal battles" company doing versus his old
company?

------
nnq
Or take it this way: the "brilliant jerk"'s vision was no longer the same as
the "boss"'s vision for where the company should be going (and bien sur, the
other employees sheepishly followed the "boss"'s vision). Just don't call
someone a jerk if your vision (shared by the heard of sheep you control) is
not the same as your vision the team's vision! Some very smart people are
"lone wolves" and they should be respected for what they are, not called jerks
because they scare/disturb your other faithful "sheeployees".

------
joelrunyon
> He was the one doctor who dampened the unity with subtle but consistent
> complaining about why the group couldn’t do some things and shouldn’t do
> others.

1\. Saying why you shouldn't do something is not complaining. If done
correctly, it helps you avoid really big errors.

2\. Unity is often overrated. If a company is "united" in making poor business
decisions that are bad for the long-term health of the company and this
"brilliant" guy is being a "jerk" for suggesting they do something else. I
find "unity" as a goal sounds really nice, but when that replaces actual
discussion, you end up with a very dangerous organization susceptible to self-
deception and self-harm that go full speed ahead because they're "united".

I really don't like this advice at all. I think it might work for the smart
guy who underperforms, but for the example the author quoted, I think this is
terrible, terrible advice.

------
lnanek2
Hahaha, I've been in that position before. Was asked to join an exercise
tracking startup. They decided to pivot to calorie counting and focus on users
who only walk for exercise and do it once or twice a month. They also didn't
like fixing bugs and building test harnesses and the like in many cases,
thinking they often just helped a few people.

I did my job, but I sure as hell poured all my weekend and personal time into
the exercise stuff and bug fixing. Really pissed off the CTO who took it
personally that I was not working on his weight loss stuff in my personal time
as well as my on the clock time. I think, to run a good company, you have to
combine everyone's desires. Letting me work on my things in my time would have
been the way to do that. Instead the managers just go ape shit over someone
who doesn't fit into the homogenous culture they want.

------
mdkess
The nail that sticks out gets the hammer. Brilliant management strategy.

~~~
rhizome
Sarcasm?

~~~
MrMan
[https://docs.google.com/open?id=1esoJHLqo69cxlDT0xPgR42zSIX0...](https://docs.google.com/open?id=1esoJHLqo69cxlDT0xPgR42zSIX0LoBu69FiwDgadYycHfCz4H4qmE1TFYDCK)

------
j_baker
The problem is this: it's incredibly difficult to distinguish a brilliant
person who lacks people skills from a jerk who convinces people they're
brilliant. The doctor in the author's story sounds like the latter. The key
clue: the doctor always worked for people on holidays and weekends. I find
that jerks are generally very good at looking much busier than they actually
are, and this is a very good way to do that.

~~~
joezydeco
The article says he offered first to work on holidays. I'd like to believe
sick people don't take holidays off and doctors would probably be pretty busy
on these days, just like any other.

Maybe the Jerk doctor in this article is fed up with stepping in and working
extra to keep the business working and the reciprocity has dried up.

~~~
j_baker
Yup. This was why I said it's difficult to distinguish a brilliant person who
has little people skills from a jerk who's good at convincing others they're
brilliant. And you're certainly correct to point out that this doctor could
have been nothing more than a management scapegoat. I've seen that _and_ lived
it.

At the same time, I've seen people convince others that they're doing the
business a favor by hoarding all the work, working long hours, taking credit
for others' work, and building up systems that require _their knowledge_ to
operate. This is all well and good in a startup where you have few people, but
it's murder any time you go beyond that.

------
spaghetti
In my mind the labels "brilliant" and "jerk" contradict each other. When
someone is truly bright they will realize how much can be gained from learning
to interact with other people, building rapport with coworkers etc. These
skills can be practiced and the payoff is immense. I'd bet that even Bill
Gates and Steve Jobs had to build rapport with at least their immediate
reports.

There are certainly corner cases. For example a company developing a
particular technology might need some savant for a while to build the proof-
of-concept product. However once that's done this employee's abrasive nature
can have a negative impact on other employees and company culture. In this
rare case I'd choose compassion for the employee. This could involve working
with them, giving them projects they enjoy that don't involve working with
others or even recommending them to another company with a note about their
talent and people skills trade-off.

There's also the case where an employee is regarded as brilliant but lacking
people skills and is just plain dysfunctional. The technical skills are
lacking but people are afraid to confront the person because they will yell or
become angry. In this case the person should be fired ASAP.

------
tnuc
The article sounds like the author didn't like people listening to someone
other than himself.

The writer didn't say what his input or benefit was to this outfit. I know who
I would have fired.

Firing to keep things running smoothly is easy. Managing people to move
forward is tough.

------
zdw
Reminds me of this:

[http://bhorowitz.com/2011/01/04/when-smart-people-are-bad-
em...](http://bhorowitz.com/2011/01/04/when-smart-people-are-bad-employees/)

The solution - if it's worth it, personally mitigate their bad behavior. If
you can't make them a net positive, drop them.

~~~
danielweber
I watched a manager try (almost) his hardest to mitigate an asshole employee.
The employee insisted on being an asshole and used the mitigation as an excuse
to be even more of an asshole.

I say "almost" above because the manager should have fired his ass. He didn't
because he was a personal friend that he personally brought into the company,
which was another failing.

------
macchina
Seems to me that this quote applies: "If everyone is thinking alike, then
somebody isn't thinking."

------
trotsky
Well that's the first time I've ever read a complex justification for firing
people who don't like you in the new york times.

------
jseims
I think the negative comments here are missing the fine points of the article.

* Stage of growth is important. In the beginning, success is more about individual effort. When you get bigger, it's more about overall team culture.

* It's not just "being a jerk" that's the problem. It's being a naysayer, working against the culture.

At a certain size, the negative effects of someone's behavior on the culture
can outweigh the positives of their brilliance. And when that happens, you
have to let them go.

------
ChuckMcM
An interesting read, I've been in both situations one where the 'toxic
rockstar' was managed out and one where the 'toxic rockstar' was tolerated
because of their code output.

The critical bit though is toxicity. There are people like Jeff Dean at Google
who are 10x more productive than anyone else but make everyone work harder,
and there are people who are 10x more productive but they make everyone around
them feel like crap. That makes them toxic.

So if your brilliant engineer spends their time telling younger or less
brilliant engineers how they just threw out all their crappy (but functional)
code and re-wrote so that they could tolerate reading it, it doesn't bring
others along. If they 'sign up' for all of the work so it will "be done right"
and then slow the whole project down because nobody can work on it, they
aren't "adding value."

I think the author was going for people who had become toxic, not people who
were still moving everyone forward.

~~~
flatline3
> _So if your brilliant engineer spends their time telling younger or less
> brilliant engineers how they just threw out all their crappy (but
> functional) code and re-wrote so that they could tolerate reading it, it
> doesn't bring others along. If they 'sign up' for all of the work so it will
> "be done right" and then slow the whole project down because nobody can work
> on it, they aren't "adding value."_

The problem might be hiring the younger or less brilliant engineers, and also
placing them in positions where they cause significant damage, as it's driving
your brilliant engineers to be toxic.

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is certainly a possibility. Its kind of a sucky place to be where you
have to choose between one bright engineer or a bunch of less bright engineers
because they can't work together.

------
kamaal
This post reminds me of a story we studied in the school called 'Pied Piper'-
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin>

What a horrible advice. This guy is basically asking you to make your
employees sacrifice their whole lives to make your company successful. And
then when you and your company actually make it big, mercilessly kick them out
without their due deserved rewards.

This sort of thing creates the 'Zynga stories', where senior executives don't
want the chef to get rich. Or that the hardworking programmer in his cubicle
no matter how hardworking he is doesn't deserve to get rich. And no matter how
lazy the senior executive is, by the virtue of his designation, big college
degree status is automatically inclined to a better compensation.

This might work for a one of case. But on a longer is a disaster for the start
up ecosystem. If these stories spread, no good guy will ever want to work for
a start up.

------
lolcraft
Actually, I agree with the article: if you have a Brilliant Jerk on board,
please fire them as soon as they've got another job. Think of it not as your
company outgrowing this person. Rather, face that this Jerk is simply in
another level. Your big, homogeinized corporation can't play it anymore. They
need to graduate to bigger things.

Honestly, if I were to manage the kind of self-driven, startup oriented,
charismatic doctor that the article talks about, I would feel like I was
wasting their talent every time they came to work. This kind of talent doesn't
belong in a proverbially esclerotic Enterprise, it belongs in a medical
startup or something. Kick them out and send them to an employer that really
needs someone like them. You're not that startup, you're BigCorp now. Put on
your grey suit.

------
engtech
I had a hard time reading this (like others did) because I felt like I was one
of the brilliant jerks he is talking about.

But there is something to the effect of a "bad apple" on the barrel as a
whole: [http://www.inc.com/matthew-swyers/toss-the-bad-apple-
employe...](http://www.inc.com/matthew-swyers/toss-the-bad-apple-
employee.html)

From my own experience, the best way to diffuse me when I'm turning into the
"brilliant jerk" is to give me some projects with some breathing room. I'm a
lot less jerky when I having being through a serial stream of "jumping on the
grenade" on critical/stressful projects that were about to explode.

------
kstenerud
Spot on. Passion is great, and a necessary ingredient to get a start-up off
the ground, but even if someone produces double the value of anyone else at
the company, it's still a net loss if he's demoralizing the team.

~~~
rhizome
You quantify every facet but the last. How are you measuring "demoralization,"
and at what multiple of value does the net loss even out? In other words, show
your work.

------
zem
i think the author's point was a bit subtler than most of the comments here
give him credit for; he just clouded the issue with the unfortunate word
"jerk". what he's describing is a high-performing, brilliant person who, when
he doesn't agree with the new direction the company is taking, neither leaves
nor realigns himself, but spends his time and energy trying to drag things
back around to his preferred vector. however productive he might have been, he
clearly has at least the potential to be a net drain now.

------
codegeek
Can someone explain the tl;dr of this post to me ? This is what I got :

Brilliant jerk is great for a startup but get rid of him if you are no longer
a startup and growing rapidly ?

~~~
zem
here's my take on it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4577003>

------
tisme
Suggestion: abdicate and re-hire this guy as your next CEO.

------
OldSchool
Bad title for the article in my opinion. Anyone who is brilliant should be
smart enough to not be a jerk - it's in his or her best interest to be
perceived positively. Valuable jerk? sure. Now that sounds like a dilemma.

------
stevedekorte
I don't have a strong position on this but wasn't Steve Jobs kicked out of
Apple for roughly the same reasons? They thought he was too radical and
mercurial to handle a larger company?

------
MrMan
What you should do with this jerk - put him in charge.

------
6ren
> _The likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Roger Ailes have had no problem
> showing Brilliant Jerks the door_

Any examples of that?

------
chris_wot
Sounds like the brilliant jerk was the one who wrote the article.

------
indiecore
Suck them dry then kick them out. Brilliant management.

------
wissler
Nice way to get rid of honest and insightful employees.

"He who dares not offend cannot be honest."--Thomas Paine

------
Daniel_Newby
Dunbar's number: you can only maintain personal relationships with about 150
people.

When a company grows beyond this limit, it has to be managed by process and
hierarchy. The human brain simply cannot apply tribal management to a few
thousand employees, contractors, suppliers, customers, business partners, etc.

If you tell your friends "You guys are crazy, that will never work", they
interpret it through an emotional lens that will probably make them
enthusiastic about trying harder with a different approach. If you do the same
thing to a task group you barely know, their enthusiasm will evaporate and at
least a few will start working on their resumes. This is the Brilliant Jerk
problem.

Some of these Brilliant Jerks can probably be retrained to work in the new,
larger company. The thesis of the article is that some of them cannot, and it
is best to jettison them sooner rather than later.

