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We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made

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Re: We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made

#61

Post by threatofrain »

wdewind wrote: post #48

Everyone is commenting on the mismanagement angle here, which is very real, but I think it's also important to point out that the author is simply wrong about "Rick" being a genius if the descriptions of his behavior and work product are accurate. I think there's a huge myth about solitary geniuses who are assholes. I've yet to meet someone I consider really genius who is also a toxic asshole. Maybe occasionally you…

I find that brilliant people come from all walks of life. It's not obvious why you would think mental aptitude would translate to healthy, gentle, or sociable personalities.

Richard Feynman is known to have a temper, and Einstein was known to be extremely callous in intimate affairs. We've also seen MIT professors display a lesser regard for lesser minds in math. We've also seen brilliant top-of-their field sportsman display great arrogance and disregard to lessers. The guy who writes "The Haskell Book" isn't known to be nice, but people still acknowledge that it's one of the top texts. Linus Torvalds isn't known to be nice.

You might not consider these people to be "geniuses", but they are certainly brilliant in some way, participating heavily in their field in some way.

Re: We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made

#62

Post by debaserab2 »

mattbgates wrote: post #34
sverhagen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Old school"? I think it's in most cases irresponsible not to use version control. Sorry to say, but it's "amateur hour". No better than "Rick". I agree with one of the parents that "Purpose" is probably the most useful, but even there: at that level the code should be largely self-documenting.

I never said I didn't have version control. To assume "at the code level it should be largely self-documenting" is to be a Rick. Comments are there to help everyone, including non-programmers understand what is going on.

> To assume "at the code level it should be largely self-documenting" is to be a Rick

You don't have to be a Rick to write clean, concise code.

I'd strongly recommend reading up:

http://www.codeodor.com/index.cfm/2008/6/18/Common-Excuses-U...

https://blog.codinghorror.com/coding-without-comments/

Re: We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made

#66

Post by ironchef253 »

Plenty of blame to go around.

I have turned into Rick before. I was a super productive engineer and I would work way ahead of the company in isolation and get things done super fast. This was caused by me being a workaholic and enjoying my work too much, not really caring about or paying attention to what was going on around me politically. It never occurred to me that pulling way ahead of the company would only result in severe damage to myself and the team.

Being this kind of engineer is like putting a Ferrari Engine into a Volkswagen Beetle. The Ferrari Engine is going to tear the Beetle apart and the result will be bad for all parties involved. The longer the Ferrari engine is allowed to run, the more damage it is going to do.

When I behaved this way in the past, a strong mentor or manager would have helped me immensely. Instead I had managers who were scared of me because I was more talented than they were and just wanted me to go away. As a result, I received no input as to how to better structure my working style and failed to mature and grow. The result was I ended up getting laid off after becoming deeply frustrated with everyone around me.

Companies need the right sized engine that provides the correct amount of forward momentum, not an engine that rips the team to shreds. Learning to hold back, Pay very close attention to my surroundings and communicate much more carefully is required. This is generally the work of program managers, but there are very few good ones. Lead engineers need to learn to program manage themselves or they will just end up getting twisted around the axle.

The reality of this industry is that software developers are disposable parts. Rick spent years building these systems, asking him to rebuild them would have been impossible. Once he got to the point of becoming toxic, he had to go. The Volkswagen Beetle (rest of the company minus Rick) needs to proceed onwards.

Re: We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made

#67

Post by cpncrunch »

6nf wrote: post #51
cpncrunch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think the "genius" deserves most of the blame. The company obviously shouldn't have allowed this guy to waste 2 years writing crap, but I don't think it's fair to say that the author of this article is "the problem". That's like blaming someone for hiring an incompetent builder to build their house.

The author is not to blame for the problem of course - since the problem existed before his arrival. The author made the problem worse by implementing the wrong solution. The company was lucky to survive this misstep, and poor Rick was forced to work insane hours just to end up being fired anyway. Not a good outcome for anyone. The company looks bad for mistreating a seriously committed employee. Rick looks bad becau…

>The author made the problem worse by implementing the wrong solution

From what I can tell, the author thoroughly investigated the situation, then made the (correct) decision to rewrite the entire thing from scratch.

It does seem as if Rick was severely burned out from the long hours, which probably made things a lot worse. I think he shares equal blame along with the company...nobody asked him to do that, and it seems to have been mostly caused by Rick himself. The company should have pulled the plug earlier, but they must have trusted him.

I agree it's probably a bad idea to post it publically.

Re: We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made

#68

Post by revmoo »

Whoa I didn't realize that you tied this to your company name. You're in some deep shit for this, I don't think you realize the kind of Streisand effect that is about to utterly hammer your company. This was a bad idea.

Edit: Wow this is in another one of your blog posts: "It took eight months of seven-day weeks and twelve-hour days to complete our last legacy system overhaul."

You are insane.

Re: We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made

#69

Post by wdewind »

threatofrain wrote: post #61
wdewind wrote: post #48

Everyone is commenting on the mismanagement angle here, which is very real, but I think it's also important to point out that the author is simply wrong about "Rick" being a genius if the descriptions of his behavior and work product are accurate. I think there's a huge myth about solitary geniuses who are assholes. I've yet to meet someone I consider really genius who is also a toxic asshole. Maybe occasionally you…

I find that brilliant people come from all walks of life. It's not obvious why you would think mental aptitude would translate to healthy, gentle, or sociable personalities. Richard Feynman is known to have a temper, and Einstein was known to be extremely callous in intimate affairs. We've also seen MIT professors display a lesser regard for lesser minds in math. We've also seen brilliant top-of-their field sportsman…

I'm sorry but you're making a massive stretch by implying the either Einstein or Feynman were known as toxic assholes by basically anyone (except maybe Einstein's wives).

And while one can of course say that someone is a genius at a sport, I meant specifically intellectually, and even more specifically I wanted to combat the notion that it is common for software engineers to be geniuses and total assholes. I just haven't seen that frequently, and in fact usually the pattern is that the engineers who are typical assholes are, correctly, the least secure in their own skills and try and mask that with needless complexity (in code, communication etc).

I guess maybe my meta point is that I think intelligence generally fights toxicity, not the opposite. I'm sure you can find counter examples as humans are complex.

Re: We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made

#70

Post by threatofrain »

wakeywakeywakey wrote: post #2

TBH, I read this as: we mismanaged the project for months (years?), reduced scope creep by negotiating with the client, and finally implemented what should have been the version 1.0 solution while shifting the blame entirely on the loner dev who worked himself into a corner trying to catch up to our sales department's untenable promises. Everyone created the problem, the dev was an easy target to eat the blame becaus…

I also think it's kind of silly to criticize a solo developer for not documenting. Has anyone seen a mid-sized team that doesn't explicitly delegate or make documentation a priority?

Now you expect a solo person to document?

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