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

Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

retrospective.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 279 posts

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#111

Post by watwut »

endorphone wrote: post #16

The bit about improved productivity seems dubious. One of the problems in this industry is that a lot of teams have no real measure of their actual productivity. We have scrums and points and velocities, but seldom have any way to know how this actually compares to other teams, or any other benchmarks. I've been dropped in on teams that had spent long periods (in cases years) creating trivial solutions. They were pro…

Following combination would slow them down: "Where a normal review would often contain a handful of comments and suggestions, he would regularly end up in the hundreds." with "Most of the comments were opinion and personal preference. [...] He never took the opportunity to teach or mentor. He just stated his opinions as fact."

That sort of behavior generates a lot of work to the rest of the team - time spend changing the code, time spent discussion opinions and trying proactively writing the code in way that will pass his review. Time spent being confused over why this or that was wrong again (since it was not wrong actually). If those less experienced people feared him, which is likely, they spent a lot of time attempting to anticipate his opinions and preferences (while sacrificing their own opinions and preferences even when they were right).

Moreover, people like him would cause other experienced people to leave. While junior might be fine with being expected to submissively conform to someone elses preferences that much, experienced person wont. "You are doing it wrong" might work on junior, but not on someone who knows that he is not doing it wrong. Anyone who is willing or wanting to take on responsibility would leave.

Yet moreover, he likely regularly shot down good ideas of other people, which would make those other people more passive. It is the same effect as why micromanagement has.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#113

Post by [deleted] »

geofft wrote: post #75
dcposch wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brilliant jerks are often to be found at the beating heart of successful software. Exhibit 0: Linus Torvalds

I'm really not convinced that Linux is successful because of Linus's jerk-ness. I think it's successful because the BSDs were under a cloud of legal suspicion in the early '90s (the USL lawsuits) and Mach didn't have zero-copy message passing, and so as a result, Linux was basically the only free software general-purpose UNIX-alike for 386s that existed . (MINIX resisted being general-purpose until 2005.) Once you ha…

[deleted]

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#114

Post by ianbicking »

xiaoma wrote: post #30

> "He could crank out 10 times as much work as any of us could in one day." If this is true, it sounds like the best option would have been firing the rest of the team and looking for another like him.

There's an implication later that he might have been 10x because he was cutting other people down – turn everyone else into a 0.1x developer and the 1x developer starts looking good.

I'd take that claim skeptically. But another consideration is that more than half of a team's work isn't code. You have to write the right thing, not just something, and that requires time and communication. So he might have been a 10x coder and a 0.1x communicator – indeed since he seemed to have little interest in interpersonal relations, some amount of his performance may have been due to his own time allocation choices.

Two of those people together would perform very poorly on some projects. And very well on others, depending on the clarity of the project and the amount of technical challenge it presented.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#115

Post by flamedoge »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #90
flamedoge wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Linus is like the last line of defence for Linux. If being a jerk helps remind the strict rules that he envisioned, maybe it's working.

Ah, the tiger-repelling rock hypothesis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm2W0sq9ddU

Other people are saying he could be softer and I don't disagree.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#116

Post by dbg31415 »

So what is a jerk? I know this article is probably a fictitious rather than about a specific individual, but seems like if he really was a "10x"er he'd be an asset to the team and reasonably intelligent people could see that.

This guy was communicating the best he could... "Where a normal review would often contain a handful of comments and suggestions, he would regularly end up in the hundreds." Sounds like he's trying. I assume it takes a lot of his time to generate comments like that... if he was right, I'd want the team to be following his advice and that should help reduce the number of comments review over review.

To me... a jerk is someone in legal who says with a smile, "Sorry we were holding that information about us acquiring that other property until now... and we need the new system up and running by Monday." Or someone on the design team who just refuses to switch his designs from points to pixels or pixels to points or whatever it is the current site is using and then bitches about how it's 1/2 a pixel off in production. Or that guy in sales who tells me that the product is shit because we haven't built the one feature his important prospect really wanted... Someone who doesn't care that they are making more work for me, someone who doesn't care about the job I have to do.

Someone who is doing a huge code review... with copious amounts of feedback... man, I'd love that! Sounds like he really cared and is being quite thoughtful. I think with the right manager and process the team could improve.

Management layers exist to help setup processes that act as lubrication -- so if someone is just good at his job and rubbing people the wrong way... that's 100% a management problem.

Having dealt with this exact problem in just about every position I've had as an adult... I think the solution is to pull aside the offended people and make sure they know how I see them -- I'd explicitly point out what I agreed with and offer praise about their production where warranted. I'd encourage them to parrot back some of the behavior towards the offending person... if they didn't feel comfortable, they could let me do it for them.

I'd pull aside the "jerk" and bluntly as I could explain why it's important to be more political in dealing with others on the team. I'd make sure some personal issues weren't going on and that he knew it wasn't appropriate to be mad at people at work because his wife left him, etc. I'd make sure we did reviews every sprint (or at least every cycle) where others got to review him, and I'd read those back to him. I have literally never found a "jerk" who couldn't be reasoned with, or explained away. I had one amazing dev who was pretty far down the Asperger spectrum who loved calling people a "fucking dumbass" and eventually it just became part of the culture on that team to lovingly call everyone a "fucking dumbass" -- we even had t-shirts made. Looking past what is said to the intent... most "jerks" aren't trying to hurt feelings, they just take pride in their work. Give me people who care any day, we can find a way to work them into the team.

Be careful that "morale increased steadily and we actually began to meet our goals even faster with one less person on the team" isn't just diminished expectations in disguise.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#117

Post by throwaway729 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #86
omni wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll take the brilliant jerk [over the mediocre nice guy] any day. Holy false dichotomy, Batman. I'd rather take neither of them and fill my team with adequate-to-exceptional devs who also happen to be decent human beings.

> I'd rather take neither of them and.. I 'd rather drive a Ferarri.

Are brilliant & nice people really as rare as y'all seem to be suggesting? That's not my experience at all.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#118

Post by 89379232 »

dcposch wrote: post #25
beachy wrote: post #13

> A “No Jerks” Policy Must Be Built Into Your Culture. It is entirely possible to be extremely passionate (and even brilliant) without being a jerk. A “no jerks” policy must be preached and practiced from the highest levels. Following simplistic rules like this is usually what leaves us knee deep in the proverbial. Maybe I've been lucky, but I've never worked with anyone who's as much of a jerk as described in the ar…

> Brilliant jerks are often to be found at the beating heart of successful software. Exhibit 0: Linus Torvalds

He may flame on mailing lists from time to time, but I prefer an honest character to CoC thumping Machiavellis who talk and behave like politburo members.

The latter actually harm and exclude people while acting politely; Linus does not.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#119

Post by mabbo »

beachy wrote: post #13

> A “No Jerks” Policy Must Be Built Into Your Culture. It is entirely possible to be extremely passionate (and even brilliant) without being a jerk. A “no jerks” policy must be preached and practiced from the highest levels. Following simplistic rules like this is usually what leaves us knee deep in the proverbial. Maybe I've been lucky, but I've never worked with anyone who's as much of a jerk as described in the ar…

> I've never worked with anyone who's as much of a jerk as described in the article

Maybe it's just that jerks don't affect you as much as they do other people. And that's great- for you. But for the rest of the team around you, those people are awful. Those people are the reason your best teammates decide to move on to new opportunities.

You should also consider the old saying 'every team has an idiot, and if you don't know who the idiot is, it's you', and double check that this doesn't also apply to jerks. Maybe the reason you haven't worked with a jerk before (and in fact believe brilliant jerks are just the best) is because you are the jerk.

I don't mean to say that as an insult. I was the jerk. I still am the jerk sometimes. It's hard to see, hard to deal with. Maybe you aren't, but it's worth careful examination just in case, no? Otherwise, you're literally making people around you miserable.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#120

Post by wott »

If I sum it up:

1. They did not manage to improve themselves a bit thanks to "the jerk"'s remarks, since the number of remarks (that he calls justified remarks) did not decrease.

2. They are now happy to deliver quickly. They don't give a fuck about the fact that they now deliver shit, and they are happy with the fact they didn't learn anything.

Post reply on HN