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When Smart People are Bad Employees

blogs.forbes.com

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Re: When Smart People are Bad Employees

#11

Post by flashgordon »

keeptrying wrote: post #9

All said and done you need your "bad" employee more than they need you. Brilliance usually comes at a cost. If you were really a good leader you would have been able to get Rodger some help with his drug problem. And if it had worked he would have repayed you with some amazing work. Stop fucking complaining about "bad" employees who make you more money than everyone else on the team. Your job IS to deal with them - s…

Is it really black and white as that? Would you still hire a genius if his actions were unethical on purpose just on the off streak that he might (or even has) produced 10x the wealth/value/code/output as an average engineer?

Re: When Smart People are Bad Employees

#12

Post by astrofinch »

keeptrying wrote: post #9

All said and done you need your "bad" employee more than they need you. Brilliance usually comes at a cost. If you were really a good leader you would have been able to get Rodger some help with his drug problem. And if it had worked he would have repayed you with some amazing work. Stop fucking complaining about "bad" employees who make you more money than everyone else on the team. Your job IS to deal with them - s…

Even if keeping difficult employees is the right move, classifying them (as this post attempts to do) can still be useful. In fact I'd guess it's even more useful.

Re: When Smart People are Bad Employees

#13

Post by michaels0620 »

I've been in the company of really smart (and likable!) Heretics and they tend to go out not with a bang but with a whimper. It's sad to watch.

They may be even be right but their persistent negativity and challenging of the status quo (even in minor matters) ends up wearing people down. Then eyes start rolling when they talk and their rants are met with sighs rather than attention or acknowledgment. Then they start getting left out of meetings and email conversations as it is easier to get things done without them no matter how smart they are.

All of this feeds the Heretic's perception of being the only sane person in the asylum turning them even more cynical and negative.

Re: When Smart People are Bad Employees

#15

Post by smokinn »

Absolutely useless hyperbolic link-bait.

No one acts that way unless they have severe mental illnesses (such as the cocaine-addicted bipolar genius) or the company already has serious systemic problems. If you see things near the exaggerations in the OP regularly, the company is already diseased and needs major overhaul.

Re: When Smart People are Bad Employees

#16

Post by angdis »

"Holding the bus". I like the phrase, everybody has their bad days and should get some slack when they need it in exchange for giving their best when it really counts.

However, I have to take issue with manic coders. I've seen the results of "heroic" coding. It sucks. Sure, it does the job, meets the deadline or whatever but the problem is that quick work is typically nothing more than a "rush job" that becomes a maintenance nightmare in the future.

The thing is no one wants to work with someone who is unstable or difficult. If the success of your enterprise depends on sporadic bursts of mania from individual workers, I'm sorry, that just isn't going to be sustainable.

Re: When Smart People are Bad Employees

#17

Post by j_baker »

alex_c wrote: post #4
phaedrus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have bipolar disorder and I definitely identify with his "the flake" story. I wouldn't just not show up like the guy in the story but I do have depressive cycles where I'm not sure I'm doing any good by showing up; I come in anyway. After a while the cycle swings the other way and I get heroic coding done at a (excuse the pun) manic pace. I like to think it comes out more productive on balance. For instance most re…

Obliquely appropriate username? :) Just curious, is your boss aware of your cycles, and does he/she plan for them? If not, what effect do you think trying to explain would have?

I don't know about bipolar disorder or the grandparent's boss specifically, but I've learned never to discuss mental disorders with bosses or coworkers. There simply is no upside and every imaginable downside. Best case: you get labeled as someone who uses a mental disorder as an excuse for not doing your job. Worst case: you become "that crazy person" that nobody wants to associate with.

Re: When Smart People are Bad Employees

#18

Post by [deleted] »

mgkimsal wrote: post #2

Kinda scary that I see myself in that list - mostly example 1, reason 1 and 2. OTOH, it's a bit heartening to read "sometimes these people actually make better CEOs than employees" - just hard to get most people to take you seriously when you start off at the bottom (not impossible, just typically harder to do than simply getting hired in at the top).

[deleted]

Re: When Smart People are Bad Employees

#19

Post by kenjackson »

keeptrying wrote: post #9

All said and done you need your "bad" employee more than they need you. Brilliance usually comes at a cost. If you were really a good leader you would have been able to get Rodger some help with his drug problem. And if it had worked he would have repayed you with some amazing work. Stop fucking complaining about "bad" employees who make you more money than everyone else on the team. Your job IS to deal with them - s…

Your job IS to deal with them

Your job isn't to deal with them, its to extract from them. Once you can no longer extract value beyond their cost, "poof, be gone".

Once T.O. isn't a great player, who's gonna put up with him? No one. With that said, when you look at most of the greats, think Gretsky, Jordan, Tiger, Magic, Bird, etc... they are the model player. The only major exception I can think of is Bonds, and with him, steroids I think I helped a lot. If not for the roids, I think Griffey and A-Rod look a lot better.

Re: When Smart People are Bad Employees

#20

Post by BigZaphod »

This is probably OT and maybe even rude... but that lead-in with the Kanye lyrics is just strange.

My reading of the lyrics snippet (and I'm certainly no expert in these things) suggests that the character is telling a girl to run away from him because he knows he's a dick. Specifically, he's a dick that's especially good at criticism and spreading negativity and of the list of targets, one group happens to be people who work a lot which implies to me that the character's less-than-hardworking nature looks bad by comparison.

So not only is the character a dick, he's a self-professed underachieving one and perhaps even proud of it. He might even be worried that the girl is one of those kinds of people he hates, or maybe he kinda cares for her and knows his personality is toxic on some level, or he just can't have nice things, or there happens to be a hotter girl one table over so this one has to go...

Anyway, it's just odd because it seems like the character that is "speaking" in the song is exactly the sort of guy who might bitch about how troublesome smart people are because he's always got to be the smartest guy in the room but refuses to put in the work required to remain the smartest guy in the room when there's other actual smart guys in the room. So the best solution in that case is to get rid of the others by telling them to "run away as fast as you can."

In summary, it seems to me like the lyrics are actually speaking more as a person who hates over-achievers and/or smart people than as a person who is one of those troublesome smart persons who hates average folk and therefore would appear to, well, not really support the author's actual argument. Or something?

I don't know. I'm probably not one of the smart ones. so... :P

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