In my experience this type of person can only exist in your organization if their manager is below average. I have come across my share of them and every time if their manager was a dud the whole company suffered, if their manager was on the ball they would put structure around the jerk to achieve a net improvement in productivity without the negativity.
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Elison and Jeff Bezos each nurtured that sort of person (and were themselves that sort of person). They utterly steamrolled the kinder and gentler companies in their respective markets.
Sometimes reality and what you want to be true are not the same.
Yes and no. There is brilliance and there is "being a jerk" and you can be brilliant and not a jerk and the organization will thrive, or you can be brilliant and a jerk and the organization will be better off without you.
When brilliant people are managed by strong managers, those that manage to team performance rather than those that manage to individual performance, they add value by not only doing a lot of work but helping everyone else do their best work. The problem occurs when a manager is weak and the brilliant person has 'jerk' tendencies which come out unchecked. Then everyone suffers.
It is sort of like managing sociopaths, you can do it if you can set up the scoring for them such that they 'win' if the group wins. And of course that is easy to write but very hard to put into practice.
spot on, I have seen people like this who you wouldn't even call brilliant but excellent Prototype-Masters. usually they flourish because they can provide cover for some deep seated insecurity of their bosses (like knowing you are technically incompetent). the problem is that such people are credit suckers because their quick & dirty prototype can pass for the real thing in the eye of 'innocent bystanders'. Overall it just lowers morale of the team as nothing seems worthwhile anymore.
It's always possible the brilliant jerk is just being taken advantage of so his boss can take it easy. Exploiting ego isn't hard and you don't need to be better than him at his own game to do it. If his manager is insulated from the rest of you, it's probably not worth enduring the brilliant jerk though.
This has been my experience as well, if the manager does not stay on top of it the person is toxic. With sufficient incentives, they can be managed to lift up the team.
