“I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent — their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy — they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent — he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.”
Compare that to the simple Joel Spolsky “Smart and Gets Things Done” hiring criteria.
In my experience...
Smart and doesn’t get things done: Architect Astronauts who would rather spend all day refactoring, doing LeetCode and can never ship features. They always get distracted by the ooh shiny. No Hire
Not smart/Doesn’t get things done: undependable and takes time from other developers who try to explain things but they still don’t take the effort to learn on their own. No Hire
Not Smart/Gets Things Done: Depending on how not smart they are, sometimes they can at least do grunt work that would bore better developers. Other times, they do “negative work” that causes other developers to go in and undo the damage and then redo the work.
Smart and Gets Things Done: they know their purpose is to ship features and not reinvent the wheel. Hire
I sit in the British Library reading rooms watching 90% of people tapping away at their laptops 90% of the time... All that productivity! but if noone ever stops to read anyone else's work, well then there can't be much point to it
“I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent — their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy — they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent — he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.”