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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

#41

Post by JoshTriplett »

desireco42 wrote: post #9

Honestly, I was always happy to have good developers. The better you are, the bigger pain in the but you can be, as far as I am concerned as long as the code you are delivering is excellent. I am perfectly happy to work around your quirks, within reason of course. And, of course you will be a jerk when you are seeing things others just can't and they can't understand you. After a while you lose patience. What good de…

> What good developer can bring to a team is more valuable then 3-4 polite junior devs that have enthusiasm (which I value also highly) but can't produce quality stuff.

All good developers were less-good junior developers once. What I value most is the good, patient developer that turns all the developers around him into good developers over time. They're far more valuable than someone with a high production rate but who drives others away.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#42

Post by seoknucklehead »

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.

I was thinking the same thing. There are diminishing returns with most jerks if they are marginally better than the rest of the team, but if they are 10x better, maybe you just need a team of 1.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#43

Post by Waterluvian »

andreyz4k wrote: post #31
Waterluvian wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey that's me! I had a frustrating moment the other day where a colleague said that float(5) was more explicit and personally preferred in Python than a literal 5.0 I realised I was being pedantic but I genuinely believed in "good craftsmanship" when I really pushed him to change it. I need to get better at this because the social friction I caused may cost more than the poor craftsmanship. But the other part of me i…

By the way, float(5) is slower, because it creates two objects instead of one.

I pointed that out but also immediately conceded they it doesn't matter since it was instantiated once at runtime.

Which is why I call it craftsmanship. It works the same for all intents and purposes, but c'mon. :)

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#44

Post by hug »

If this article were actually true, Apple wouldn't exist as the company it is today. Steve Jobs, while not a developer, was undoubtedly brilliant, and most definitely a jerk.

It's unhelpful to pigeonhole people and then extrapolate out their actions from there, because for the most part people don't conform to whatever mental model of that stereotype you've built in your head. People are complex beyond imagining.

Besides, what's the author's sample size here? One? Two? It's an anecdote worth relating, to be sure, but I think it'd be better served by leaving the "Brilliant Jerk" bit out, and leaving it as a story about team morale being more important than the contributions of any single team member.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#45

Post by throwanem »

Waterluvian wrote: post #24
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…

Hey that's me! I had a frustrating moment the other day where a colleague said that float(5) was more explicit and personally preferred in Python than a literal 5.0 I realised I was being pedantic but I genuinely believed in "good craftsmanship" when I really pushed him to change it. I need to get better at this because the social friction I caused may cost more than the poor craftsmanship. But the other part of me i…

We all have that part. The trick is not to let it make you an asshole. There might be times when that's the right thing to be - satisfying a pedantic quibble over a style preference, to the detriment of morale and team cohesion, is never, ever one of them.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#46

Post by phaed »

omni wrote: post #21
EpicEng wrote: post #14

No they don't; mediocre 'nice guys' do though. Every 'brilliant jerk' I've worked with and led has been a net positive over the long haul. Every mediocre nice guy has been dead weight that costs everyone around them time. I'll take the brilliant jerk any day. They can simply deliver in ways that others cannot.

> 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.

Nice false trichotomy there, Joker. I'd rather have brilliant developers who are also decent human beings.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#47

Post by cateye »

This could be turned around: Nice Mediocre People Cost More Than They Are Worth.

I've seen a lot that socially desirable behavior is evaluated and preferred rather than people doing excellent work. Group dynamics quickly exclude these by creating a consensus of what is accepted and what the goal of the group is. This is especially easy because these brilliant people are always -by definition- a minority,

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#49

Post by spacemanmatt »

braveo wrote: post #37
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 stopped reading when the blogger started talking about the "brilliant developer who could code circles around us", and then referred to him as a "10x developer". These are stereotypes, and quite often bloggers will make up stories to illustrate a point. Which is fine, but when your point is based upon stereotypes, then I'm not interested. ---- So with that said, I agree with everything you've said. Quite often thes…

That, or they had a reputation for "moving fast and breaking things" without submitting to any secure practices, and the abrasive jerk who knows security never bothered to apply there in the first place. Or the polite person who knows security, for that matter.

Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth

#50

Post by jldugger »

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.

No matter how much two such folks might deserve one another, I'm not sure companies could afford to watch their final two coders refuse to cooperate over trivial shit like line length.
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