People responding about how they personally aren't bothered by jerks are missing the point. It's great if you have thick skin, but it's hard enough to hire quality engineers without having to stipulate that they must also be psychologically hardened against lazy, petty, or oblivious aggression from coworkers (i.e. jerky behavior).
If I can choose to hire one brilliant jerk or three merely "good" engineers who don't need to be reminded to treat their coworkers thoughtfully, then I take the three engineers every time.
Arguments pointing to famous productive jerks (e.g. Linus Torvalds) also miss the point. Sure, Linus's prickliness may actually be a benefit given his singular position, but it's just that -- singular. You'll notice that no one else in the Linux dev community gets lionized for their random acts of rage. The world can tolerate a single Linus, but the solution doesn't scale, especially not to a random work group at a tech company.
If I can choose to hire one brilliant jerk or three merely "good" engineers who don't need to be reminded to treat their coworkers thoughtfully, then I take the three engineers every time.
Arguments pointing to famous productive jerks (e.g. Linus Torvalds) also miss the point. Sure, Linus's prickliness may actually be a benefit given his singular position, but it's just that -- singular. You'll notice that no one else in the Linux dev community gets lionized for their random acts of rage. The world can tolerate a single Linus, but the solution doesn't scale, especially not to a random work group at a tech company.