The hilarity of this advice in a single chart: http://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ERIC/prices/ericsso...
I'm scratching my head as to the point you are trying to make. What's the chart got to do with the topic?
Brilliant Jerks in Engineering
201–210 of 243 posts
Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering
#202I'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?
>At what point does explaining things become frustrating to you?
After the third time I get asked the same exact question
Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 m…
I can't see this meeting ending well. Better in parallel look for a job opportunity with less than three layers of management above you.
If you think a Sr VP is going to take a meeting from a Sr Dev just to fire them because they tell them things they don't know or don't want to hear, I'd say you are being paranoid. Nothing I do in that meeting will be a fire-able offense. The reality is most Sr Managers crave hear honest feedback, as long as it's given in a respectful way. They may not agree, but they aren't going to take offense.
But if I'm wrong, and this Sr VP is one of the thin skinned exceptions (doubtful since they are taking the meeting from a Sr. Dev in the first place), then I can get a better job somewhere where it's less dysfunctional.
Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering
#204Either people are normal or they are not.
If you have a chip on your shoulder, always have something to prove or want 'revenge' on an unnamed whole because you were bullied in school you are unlikely to work well with others and are going to be a liability in every single context.
Either you are brilliant or you are a jerk. Being able to respect and work well with others is a basic life skill.
Linus for instance respects and works well with thousands of people. Let's have the same transparency that someone like Linus works under for other CEOs before feeding into tabloid level sensationalist journalism that singles out one in tens of thousands of interactions.
Just being able to write a software program or doing what you were trained to do does not make anyone a genius and the vast majority of software is mundane.
Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering
#205This is not a new observation, but it is a worthwhile one.
I ran across it in https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Computer-Programming-Silve... in the form, "If you see a programmer trying to become indispensable, fire him." Followed by a note written 25 years later saying, "I have received more thanks for this piece of advice than anything else that I have said." (Both quotes paraphrased from memory.)
Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering
#206Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my case, for most my teenage and short adult life I was always left "feeling positive and motivated" except I would always fall back into the same habits. I started to expect the gentleness and kindness. What I needed was a good ass whooping. If I look back at my life in hindsight, I learned the most when I was under the gun -- had to succeed, failure not an option -- not "motivated" and "positively influenced" Ma…
How are you defining 'motivated'? To me it seems like an oxymoron to be motivated and not do anything.
[deleted]
Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well what happened at the end?
Eventually I threaten to quit because of him. The guy who was hired as his replacement had apparently made a similar threat after it was clear he wasn’t going to get the job he signed on for. And an incident meant others in management got a small view into just how little he actually accomplished. It helped the company wasn’t doing great and cutting his salary was probably useful. Years too late though. We’d lost goo…
Interesting. Do you know where he works now, or is he at the same role.
Its interesting how these days things got tad better. When I worked for a few big tech corps, you always got these people who were there because there always been there, and they never cared to moved on with technology/people/you name it, but because of who they knew/what they knew/how long they been there, noone wanted to touch it. Nowadays it seems so fast paced that there is not enough room for those type of guys even at the top corps.
Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eventually I threaten to quit because of him. The guy who was hired as his replacement had apparently made a similar threat after it was clear he wasn’t going to get the job he signed on for. And an incident meant others in management got a small view into just how little he actually accomplished. It helped the company wasn’t doing great and cutting his salary was probably useful. Years too late though. We’d lost goo…
Interesting. Do you know where he works now, or is he at the same role. Its interesting how these days things got tad better. When I worked for a few big tech corps, you always got these people who were there because there always been there, and they never cared to moved on with technology/people/you name it, but because of who they knew/what they knew/how long they been there, noone wanted to touch it. Nowadays it s…
It was a small company, sort of a family feel, so things all ran differently. He wasn’t actually related to anyone though.
No I don’t know what happened to him, and neither do the other people who worked there that I’m still in touch with. We are all curious to know if he’s doing a similar job somewhere else or is doing something else entirely.
Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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 major sections of the kernel for years, and should know what is expected of them. I don't think that's necessarily good enough. Even if he is personally restrained in whom he acts like a jerk towards, his behaviour establishes norms within the project and contributes to how other pe…
> Project leaders need to set good examples
Why? Are we Puritans now?