There is something in what the original author wrote. It sounds like what he means by "brilliant" are the kind of people who describe themselves as "idea guys." And though Google likes to hire PhDs, I hear they too are suspicious of idea guys.
The author is mistaken about Edison, though. He might have had a hard time working for a boss, especially later in his life, but he was not merely an idea guy. Oddly enough, Edison's own PR may be to blame for this. It left people in the early 20th century thinking of him as a lofty genius rather than the tireless tinkerer he had in fact been.
i think that's the problem: having idea people working on details. by definition they're not good at them -- it's like forcing a shape into the wrong hole. their powers are best used in creative positions
but those sorts of positions aren't very standard or given to people just starting out, so it can be hard for them if they start out doing detail work and their difficulty with it gets the better of them and they're perceived as incompetent. even if they manage to stay afloat in the monotony, their strengths are likely to remain invisible in the detail and the higher-ups never see their potential. worst-case scenario of course, but i doubt it's rare
i heard this second-hand, but supposedly IBM has a particular genius somewhere in california. he is very sloppy, is probably a night owl... but when he gets a spark of an idea, whether it be in the middle of the night, a 'task force' is summoned to jot down as much detail about the idea as possible. if that's true then IBM knows the specialty and significance of these sorts of people
looking at it from another perspective, Einstein is probably the most extreme example of an idea person. but despite being terribly lazy, he was able to do many great things because he _didn't consider it work_. an idea person with a passion is something of an unstoppable force
funnily, the lazyness is likely due to the overhead of the mind organizing data into a format which allows specialized (sensory/intuitive,) instant retrieval later on. the overhead is significant, but the gift is powerful. it's present in varying forms and degrees in different people and in extreme cases (like these 'brilliant' guys) is risky like min-maxing
Actually I meant "idea guys" in the pejorative sense. From what I've seen, good ideas come from slogging it out in the trenches of implementation. Self-described "idea guys" (and this term is almost invariably applied to oneself) are generally useless.
I think you've said as much in an essay or two. What struck me about the 1924 essay was how strong the similarity was between success in early 20th-century grocery stores and success in Internet startups. Determination edges out brilliance in both cases.
Another thing that struck me is that even this grocery store owner noticed the biggest problem with our educational system:
For a time I tried picking these youngsters out of the colleges. But my experience with college men was not fortunate. If I selected good students, I found too often that their leadership had been won by doing very well what their teachers had laid out for them. They had developed a fine capacity for taking orders, but not much initiative.
I think there must be a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches. Pure art or math might be top-down (McCarthy). You might be more of a bottom-up person.
Or did McCarthy create LISP from tinkering with code and seeing the inadequacies in what already existed? I'm afraid I don't know as much about the history as I'd like to.
The author is mistaken about Edison, though. He might have had a hard time working for a boss, especially later in his life, but he was not merely an idea guy. Oddly enough, Edison's own PR may be to blame for this. It left people in the early 20th century thinking of him as a lofty genius rather than the tireless tinkerer he had in fact been.