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Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

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Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#151

Post by JimboOmega »

grandalf wrote: post #33

The situation I've encountered is a jerk who was actually fairly mediocre in his abilities but whose bully characteristics and brash confidence had led many of the non-technical people in the company to believe he was extremely skilled. I think one reason people become bullies is because they know they can't back up their decisions with skill. Linus is brash, but is quite able to work well with people and has the res…

There a lot of things that lead to this, including...

1) The whole 10x thing. The implication being that if you're brilliant, you're worth an entire team or more; if you're average, you're... worthless. Thus, you have to be better than everyone else to be worth anything

2) Classic bro culture - somebody who gets rewarded for being obnoxious, bullying, and "alpha" is a very "bro" thing.

3) Tech people tend to be people who put a lot of their self esteem in their intellectual - and work - abilities. This means they get more defensive when that ability is threatened.

It's a culture that rewards being brash and confident. Can you imagine someone saying that they are an average programmer but work well with a team to get done a lot?

There are definitely people who quietly get a lot of work done, and there are people who are "force multipliers" who make the rest of the team more productive (something I regularly try to do, incidentally). Depending on the culture these things can get ignored pretty easily - the 10x developer is an individual with limitless skill in the classic view.

There's not really a space for an "average" developer - everybody has to be a "Rock star" or "10x" developer. We only hire the top 1%, etc. So if you aren't, what else can you do but fake it?

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#152

Post by NTDF9 »

I had a brilliant jerk at another job. One time, he just blabbered and interrupted a junior engineer in a meeting so much, another senior engineer stood up, took off his glasses and screamed loudly,

"Let the man talk, will ya?"

The room just went silent for a few moments after.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#153

Post by sigi45 »

You have to understand one thing: A Brilliant Jerk is not brilliant.

He/She excels in one specific topic and perhaps never thought about excel in all necessary skills. He/She is caught in her/his world and might not be able to learn proper social skills. It is quite hard to change long lasting behaviour.

I'm quite surprised how many adults stop evolving.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#154

Post by matt_wulfeck »

notyourday wrote: post #117
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #84

This is one of the great examples of survivorship bias. You start to think that all of the most brilliant people are jerks, but the reality is that all of the non-brilliant jerks were fired long ago for crossing the line. The only ones left are very very valuable -- and still should fired if they can't play nice.

... which is how you end up in a company with mediocre engineers, developing mediocre products, sliding into mediocre abyss. But at least while making those mediocre salaries they can all hate those "brilliant jerks" that they fired.

Funny you say this while commenting on an engineer's opinion from Netflix. Believe it or not you can fire jerks and still be technologically innovative.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#155

Post by s73ver_ »

grandalf wrote: post #33

The situation I've encountered is a jerk who was actually fairly mediocre in his abilities but whose bully characteristics and brash confidence had led many of the non-technical people in the company to believe he was extremely skilled. I think one reason people become bullies is because they know they can't back up their decisions with skill. Linus is brash, but is quite able to work well with people and has the res…

I can't help but think that a lot of those people see the way Linus acts, and get this idea in their heads that they too can act that way. He's just as much a part of this problem as anyone else.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#156

Post by s73ver_ »

MBCook wrote: post #142
vikascoder wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are Jerks and Non-Jerks. Also Brilliant Folks and Averae Joes(?). I dont know why we tend to club two different qualities and consider them as a single entity. The question should be, "This employee is a jerk, what to do about it" rather than, "This employee is a brilliant jerk, should we tolerate it". There are enough brilliant people who are excellent human beings with no failings and plenty of mediocre bulli…

The problem is non-brilliant jerks are usually a lot easier to get rid of. They can be replaced. When the jerk is brilliant and necessary (or at least perceived so) management can be much more hesitant. ‘Yes he’s horrible but we can’t operate without him’ or ‘we don’t have the slack to pick up that work’ or ‘it will take too long to train someone new right now’. They get extra excuses that a medium or low performer w…

Sadly, that extends to behavior far worse than being a jerk.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#157

Post by UncleMeat »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #105
vemv wrote: post #31

I'd add that from an engineering perspective, 'brilliant' jerks aren't even that brilliant. An actually intelligent person is happy to prove his thinking via truthful argumentation (and unit tests, documentation, and so on), and also happy to get his points refuted by similarly reasonable peers. Anything other than that approach is noise.

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?

The key is to provide clear and actionable feedback. If people fail to act on that feedback and continue to hold the team back, you should escalate the problem. "Don't be a jerk" does not mean "be a doormat". It means that when your provide and receive feedback you do it in a careful and effective manner.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#158

Post by s73ver_ »

digi_owl wrote: post #106
grandalf wrote: post #33

The situation I've encountered is a jerk who was actually fairly mediocre in his abilities but whose bully characteristics and brash confidence had led many of the non-technical people in the company to believe he was extremely skilled. I think one reason people become bullies is because they know they can't back up their decisions with skill. Linus is brash, but is quite able to work well with people and has the res…

Linus Torvalds have gotten an undeserved reputation because it is oh so easy for the online tech media to take emails out of context. Whenever he brings out the harsh words, it is because someone has been stalling and deflecting about breaking some core rule for kernel development. Torvalds never pounce on someone out on tail end of the patch chain. He comes down hard on those that have been in charge of maintaining…

Not really. In what context is saying that someone should be 'retroactively aborted' a perfectly fine thing to say?

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#159

Post by Singletoned »

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 are not wrong. There are lots of people who feel and act like you, and when they get together on the same team they can be very productive.

I feel that a lot of places have a culture of agreeability. They are focused on fixing disagreement rather than fixing the underlying problem. A truth-telling person isn't suited to those environments.

I also feel that a "no brilliant jerks" policy is an anti-neuro-diversity policy. It weeds out high-functioning autistic and psychopathic people. I think any homogenous environment created from such a policy would be a dangerous thing.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#160

Post by s73ver_ »

_xhok wrote: post #128

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 t…

Definitions of "plainly" vary wildly from person to person.
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