I have recently been labeled a “brilliant jerk” at a FAANG company and threatened with termination. In actuality I now know that I have acted like this (not always but sometimes) and I take ownership of it. In trying to come to terms with it, I’ve been doing a lot of research and I think the research is overly simplistic particularly when it comes to motivation. I am not a psychopath and I am not purely self interested. My motivations have never been money or climbing or anything like that. I’ve wanted to build cool stuff that people say can’t be done but that is also successful. I have always pulled in the direction of the company and not my own (at least in my mind). I have never treated anyone badly simply to treat them badly to make myself feel better or to put them down. I always thought it was best to give people direct and honest feedback. It’s almost never what I was saying that was wrong but how I was saying it. I was too harsh and I ignored emotional data. In trying to be objective, I tried to keep things logical and data based always; I would get upset when people could not follow a logical line of thought. I often used, in a modified way, the Socratic method to show someone that their argument was wrong. This led people to feel I was disrespectful to them because it would force a contradiction. By doing this, I meant to teach them but I was wrong; it simply made people feel foolish. I ignored the emotional side of things and that’s a big problem for me. It’s also not true that I would never concede I was wrong. You just had to have a really strong case.
Up until now this has also “worked” as it’s gotten things done on time. In one case, my work saved a product line that would have failed entirely. It took a lot of courage to stick my neck out and said we had to change direction. The change in direction meant abandoning something I had spent a year designing. Nobody wanted to abandon that work and shift. It was the right thing to do though. I took a huge amount risk and flack at the time and probably was almost fired. So there is good and bad to this. I am working to change but something is going to get lost. I probably won’t stick my neck out like that again.
I am also human. I make mistakes too and I’m trying to learn from all this.