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Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

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Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#211

Post by shakna »

pconner wrote: post #165
ktRolster wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw that kind of phrase isn't necessarily 'jerky.' As long as the person you are saying it to understands that you respect him/her, and are just disagreeing with their idea, then it can be fine. It's a risky communication strategy, but I wouldn't condemn everyone who uses it.

> As long as the person you are saying it to understands that you respect him/her what kind of person would say that with full vitriolic sincerity to someone they respect? Why say that when you could say, "I strongly disagree for the following reasons..." or something else similarly diplomatic and actually productive?

Diplomacy is not always necessary to get productivity.

Tip-toeing around the issue can make things much worse.

It is much easier to say, "Stop. That's stupid, try again."

Than to try and cherrypick what they've done right, because often times, there isn't anything useful there.

Considering that Gates, Jobs, and Torvalds all have stories where they tell someone what they're doing is stupid, and actually get a decent product out at the end of the day, it doesn't seem like diplomacy is necessary at all.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#212

Post by Arwill »

altoz wrote: post #34

If he really was a 10x engineer and it was a "small team" (say 6 people), wouldn't firing the other 5 have been the better move?

Sometimes yes, but there is the question of budget. If that was a project or contracting work, and the client can be sold 6 people, then it looks like bigger work, and can be charged more. If you just put one brilliant dev to do it, the client might not be convinced that the job is as big as you tell him. Sometimes devs are put on projects just to "sit it trough", they are needed for the headcount.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#213

Post by dasmoth »

jayroh wrote: post #108
zug_zug wrote: post #84

Well, let's look at it from the "the jerk"'s perspective. How would feel if other people accomplished 1/10th what you did? What if they got paid 80% of what you got paid too? What if teaching them took so much of your time that it was faster to do it yourself than hand-hold them through the process? What if, despite producing more than the rest of the team combined, management saw you as a problem, and wasn't interes…

You work to raise your teammates up. Full stop. Productivity for a team is in aggregate - it's the entire teams productivity that's at stake, not an individual contributor's.

This seems to be a pretty ubiquitous view nowadays, but neglects the possibility that some projects might go better with an individual contributor just getting on with it.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#214

Post by alexandercrohde »

jayroh wrote: post #108
zug_zug wrote: post #84

Well, let's look at it from the "the jerk"'s perspective. How would feel if other people accomplished 1/10th what you did? What if they got paid 80% of what you got paid too? What if teaching them took so much of your time that it was faster to do it yourself than hand-hold them through the process? What if, despite producing more than the rest of the team combined, management saw you as a problem, and wasn't interes…

You work to raise your teammates up. Full stop. Productivity for a team is in aggregate - it's the entire teams productivity that's at stake, not an individual contributor's.

No, you work to get great stuff done. Whether or not your teammates are a worthwhile investment (or whether they even belong at the company at all) is a complicated calculation.

In this case the author describes a jerk who's more effective than the rest of the team combined. In this case, I kind of wonder whether it was a mistake hiring such a team.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#215

Post by segmondy »

People that lie, who are dishonest, lazy, don't wish to work hard and look out for their interest before the company's interest are the worst kind of jerks. These jerks are seriously threatened by any kind of person who is not afraid to speak up and call them out to their shenanigans.

I've seen this before, where the team was building a skyscraper with cardboard boxes, and the "brilliant jerk" called them out and they fumed and morale was low. The jerk left and the team supposedly started meeting their goals and was releasing faster.

Well of course they were! the lone voice that was the gatekeeper was gone and all sorts of garbage was being committed to the code base. The skyscraper went up faster, and one day it came crashing down never to go up again. I was a consultant that saw this. So I always take "jerk" with a grain of salt. Of course, people should be kind, diplomatic, and caring, but they should also tell the truth and the bitter truth. I'm conflicted on the entire training thing, I believe that senior developers should teach, however, unless the company is willing to budget time for that, it is on each person to learn and shore up their skill. The company should train their developers if they are not up to par.

Work is were work happens, if you wish to learn and grow, study furiously outside of work. It's your responsibility as someone that represents themselves as a professional and asks to be paid a fair wage to learn. Some of these lessons the "senior developers" can teach are worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, I don't see junior developers cutting checks to them for those lessons. Let me reiterate, work is were work happens. If you are fortunate to find a mentor that is willing to teach you, be grateful for you are blessed. If you apply for a job and the company never talked about training you, it's your responsibility.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#216

Post by JoshTriplett »

notacoward wrote: post #197
JoshTriplett wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly . You have to pick: either the jerks, or the people who the jerks drive away. And that doesn't take into account the people who aren't quite driven away but find work that much more unpleasant as a result. If you encounter many skilled jerks, consider why that might be, and why in the same environment you don't also encounter skilled people who are fun to work with. In such an environment, the skilled people…

> If you encounter many skilled jerks, consider why that might be Often that might be because the viewer is unaware of their own jerkness, and only sees others reciprocating.

Entirely possible. But the viewer may also just be in an environment with skilled jerks that have driven off skilled non-jerks. So whether the viewer is a jerk, nice, or indifferent won't necessarily change the apparent correlation they observe around them between jerkiness and skill. The danger lies in generalizing that observation and assuming it applies outside that environment.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#217

Post by braveo »

watwut wrote: post #191
braveo wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it apparently wasn't obvious: We should be putting "abrasive jerk" in quotes. The point that was being made by both of us is that these abrasive jerks aren't actually abrasive jerks, they're just going against the grain because it's the technically better choice. And then they get labelled as abrasive jerks and ignored, and then queue the scandal when people talk about how horrible the toyota code is (for examp…

How do you know the jerk is jerking for the technically better choice? You don't. These debate always assume that the person who is doing criticism is right. That is not the case in real life. Criticism can be both right and wrong. Note that these people did not really bought into his theories and opinions nor were able to follow his instructions - the amount of code review complains would go down it that would be th…

No, you're right, I'm sure that somehow Sony managed to hire an entire team of sys admins that were so incompetent that none of them actually realized just how vulnerable their system was.

like... every. single. one. of their sys admin team was really that oblivious. Out of all the people they hired, not even one competent got accidentally picked up somewhere along the way, during all the years they were were running that network before it happened.

Or maybe, their sys admin team was acutely aware, but management didn't give them the autonomy to choose to fix it, and anyone who spoke up and tried to push for the issues to be fixed got labelled as "not being a team player", or a "troublemaker", or even ... gasp ... an "abrasive jerk".

And then they got booted, and everyone else learned the lesson and just shut up and kept collecting the paycheck.

And then suddenly they get hacked, and then finally management was willing to spend the money on securing things better.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#218

Post by hinkley »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #134

Lots of thoughts around the code review issue (the jerk generated 'hundreds of comment'). I have a rule: the only comments I make are about improving the correctness of the code. Nothing about technique or approach or format or cleverer ways of doing anything. Just directly actionable constructive comments.

I try to limit myself to being no more than 50% of the comments on a review. I know what that probably sounds like, but with experience, and especially if you study ergonomics like I do, you learn that certain patterns of code that look OK are actually accidents waiting to happen. This bizarre pattern you're using has caused 3 regressions already, and we are not interested in there being a 4th.

To keep it to a dull roar, I do a number of things. Be consistent, prioritize, shop my concerns, and never go first.

By consistently bringing up your top concerns eventually they'll disappear from the code reviews, or others will start making the comments before you can. As things improve you can start bringing up lesser, or deeper issues. If things don't improve you start asking your peers for help communicating the importance of the issue. By going last you let other people contribute, demonstrate consensus, cover issues so you don't have to be the messenger, and you know roughly how many comments the code is going to get.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#219

Post by pconner »

shakna wrote: post #211
pconner wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as the person you are saying it to understands that you respect him/her what kind of person would say that with full vitriolic sincerity to someone they respect? Why say that when you could say, "I strongly disagree for the following reasons..." or something else similarly diplomatic and actually productive?

Diplomacy is not always necessary to get productivity. Tip-toeing around the issue can make things much worse. It is much easier to say, "Stop. That's stupid, try again." Than to try and cherrypick what they've done right, because often times, there isn't anything useful there. Considering that Gates, Jobs, and Torvalds all have stories where they tell someone what they're doing is stupid, and actually get a decent p…

> "Stop. That's stupid, try again."

If you can't say ~why~ it's "stupid," your comment is not useful. And if you do say why it's stupid, those reasons are much more important than the inflammatory adjective "stupid," so just say those instead.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#220

Post by sheepmullet »

mabbo wrote: post #119
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 do…

> Those people are the reason your best teammates decide to move on to new opportunities.

Are they? Most devs I know change jobs to work on more interesting projects, to move into a higher level role, to get a pay bump, to move to a more flexible company, etc.

In my experience it is rare for someone to move because of bad colleagues. Bad management? Sure. Bad co-workers? Not really.

Why do you work at companies with so many jerks? Perhaps you are the problem.

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