Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

brendangregg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 243 posts

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#121

Post by bjt2n3904 »

sah2ed wrote: post #94
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #45

I'm not entirely sure I subscribe to this "behavior based" vs "merit based" look at job performance. Consider this criterion: > 1. After encountering the person, do people feel oppressed, humiliated or otherwise worse about themselves? Bob and Mary are staunch members of . While they never discuss it at work, Mary deeply resents the views Bob posts on social media. During a code review, Bob is bluntly critical of Mar…

> Bob and Mary are staunch members of . While they never discuss it at work, Mary deeply resents the views Bob posts on social media. I'm assuming Bob and Mary are members of opposing political parties? Even if that is not the case, is it really mandatory to friend/follow co-workers' stream of consciousness on social media? Wouldn't it be more productive (from Mary's perspective) to segment professional from personal…

Correct, I meant to say opposing political parties.

I suppose my point is: criticism and being a jerk are orthogonal in theory, but in practice it's much more difficult.

Making a rule that says, you can get someone fired if they hurt your feelings gives disproportionate power to anyone with thin skin.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#123

Post by 0xfeba »

kingkawn wrote: post #5

Why should nothing ever feel bad?

I have to say, a similar thought crossed my mind. This is the result of political correctness: No one should ever feel wrong or bad.

But then again, it depends entirely on the author's definition of "selfish" and "bad team player".

Having worked at a small startup with 10 people, who would... not berate, but explain bluntly, you if you did something wrong, and a big corporation where you have to always read between the lines to get to the point of any conversation, I see vast differences in productivity.

But my sample size is so small, so I shall sit and ponder some more, and only talk about it on online forums...

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#124

Post by lazyasciiart »

I have totally turned into an Alice recently. I am watching an important project turn into a failure for no good reason at all, and I feel like I can either just stop giving a shit about the outcome and go along with it, or I can keep saying that this isn't going to work, and to recover we need to do x.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#125

Post by valuearb »

mars4rp wrote: post #53

I am an Alice and I need some feedback as why is it a bad thing! I work in an environment when very small percentage of people know what are they doing. and people that know what is going on do not speak up because they are frustrated and know probably nothing will change. in this environment I do speak up whenever I get a chance and I've been in arguments with managers 3 4 level above me. everybody else wants to be…

You can't be a superior engineering contributor unless you are honest with everyone, from superiors to peers, to reports. The key is how you present information. I just proactively scheduled a 1-1 with a Sr VP three levels above me for later this month to cover an important topic.

This is what I want to tell them:

Our core customer facing application is shit. The contractors who wrote it cut tons of corners and the marketing people who designed did a horrible job, the UI emphasizes features customers don't care about, and makes it extremely difficult for customers to actually reach and use the revenue generating sections of the app. Not only is the marketing leadership is disfunctional, and worse, you (the Sr VP) have created a disfunctional development organization, that makes me wonder if you understand how to develop commercial applications.

This is what I will say:

The weaknesses in our core application are costing the company millions of dollars a month. We are struggling with making quick, effective decisions and shipping new versions to address the major problems because we have "too many cooks in the kitchen" in our team meetings and planning. I will give specific examples and relate them to specific examples from my long history shipping quality commercial apps on time. I will finish by saying the team is demotivated and underperforming, which makes you, the Sr VP, look bad, and plead that we need to solve this, for them and the company both.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#126

Post by mirceal »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #58

Early on in my career (DevOps/Virtualization/SDN/etc) I landed a role as a junior admin, a backfill for a more senior engineer who was moving up in the organization, but staying on the same team. It could be said he landed somewhere between "Alice" and "Bob", probably due to some mild autism. Without getting into excessive detail, working with him was hard, but by far the most rewarding, educational, and instructive…

roll less than 10: you lose your job... :|

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#127

Post by lazyasciiart »

vemv wrote: post #120
lazyasciiart wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that every time you implemented a new feature in your existing Java codebase, everyone asked you to explain Java. Would you be happy to prove the value of Java to your colleagues constantly? Would you start thinking that your peers maybe weren't similarly reasonable to you? At what point does explaining things become frustrating to you?

I think you should reword your question as it's not a realistic scenario. Engineers freely choose to learn Java and apply to Java job postings, and if that's not the case I doubt they'd be vocal against the "value" of Java.

You seem like you're imagining a very ideal world. I personally know many engineers who joined a company for one reason, then the team/company began a new project and migrated to Java. I have seen people argue about the choice of underlying technology in code reviews. And if you think my specific scenario was unrealistic, then perhaps attempt to understand it as a general example of "something that is obvious to you and which you think you have explained adequately in the past and should not need to explain again and again". If you still can't understand it, then I think you may simply have never worked with anyone who was at a significantly lower level of knowledge/comprehension than yourself, and perhaps you just aren't capable of understanding the situation without having been in it.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#128

Post by _xhok »

If someone does something wrong, Alice tells them plainly, and they get offended, whose fault is it? Some people say it's Alice' fault for offending; some say it's the person's fault for doing it wrong in the first place, and for subsequently getting offended.

I think we're conflating is and ought here. It's probably a fact of reality that most people aren't happy to be told they're wrong. But arguably people ought to accept the consequences of being wrong, e.g. feeling bad when they're told.

I've talked to lots of startups in San Francisco. Most are failing, just due to the nature of startups, but can survive if they reach a finite set of straightforward goals. They've found product/market fit, they know what they have to do, they just have to do it, and the correct 10,000 characters of code input into a computer would solve all their business problems. There's often a lot of handwringing about why they're failing: the process is wrong; communication is wrong; something or other. But the largest reason they're failing is that they're insufficiently good at technology. You know who'd be really good at fixing that? A team of Alices.

I think Alices get too much flak. Bob is genuinely a toxic character. But if your only fault is telling the truth, which offends people, and you're otherwise excellent at your job--- there's a huge opportunity for twenty Alices to get together, bypass the inefficiencies of being offended, and win big. Tech has an obvious historical example.

Edit: I reread the description of Alice. All right, maybe don't browbeat your point into others.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#129

Post by watwut »

edw519 wrote: post #49
alexanderstears wrote: post #42

Hiring brilliant jerks is fundamentally a decision that comes down to the specific situation and imo it should rest with the hiring manager. Letting brilliant jerks ruin it for others is a management problem, not a brilliant jerk problem. However, professionalism is a two way street. Bobs and Alices that make professional salaries can be expected to improve, though the professionals that work with them should make so…

Letting brilliant jerks ruin it for others is a management problem, not a brilliant jerk problem. Great comment of an instance. The class: "Letting ruin it for others is a management problem, not an problem." I have rarely run into the "brilliant jerk" problem. I have almost always run into the "incompetent manager" problem. "Incompetent Managers in Engineering". Now there's an article I'd really like to read.

There are people, including highly skilled, who are not jerks and are not destroying anything to others. There are even people who are not jerks despite management itself being evil.

Management has part of blame, but jerk is responsible for his own behavior. Jerk is responsible for what strategies he choose to look brilliant. (And people with autism don't count as jerks unless they are. Most of them are willing to stop behavior when explained what the issue is directly.)

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#130

Post by DamonHD »

johansch wrote: post #96
DamonHD wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experienced two nearly-brilliant thorough-going jerks at once in one role, who induced me and most of my peers to leave also. There have been a couple of others in another role, in banking, and they know exactly what I think of them! B^> These people do exist, and can be successful, and the description given in TFA pretty closely matches many aspects of psychopathy, such as the charming-when-necessary and no empath…

You mention banking. To me that's like a culturally totally separate universe, with totally separate profiles of people. I don't think my experience applies to that universe.

There are a lot of well-paid engineers/STEM in banking.
Post reply on HN