I've worked with people who think mocking the personalities of developers is a form of team-building. The toxic competitiveness is seen as some kind of incentive for personal growth. Football players are paid to win, not growl.
Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth
71–80 of 279 posts
Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth
#72> 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…
> In my experience, talented developers are usually intelligent enough that they can make up for their shortcoming in the social area by consciously adapting their behaviour. That's orthogonal to the issue mentioned in the article. For the purposes of "not being a jerk", it doesn't matter if that comes naturally or if you have to devote conscious effort to it; only the resulting behavior matters. > Brilliant jerks ar…
> Survivorship bias.
In more ways than one. When jerks are allowed to be jerks, people who do not want to deal with jerks leave the company. So the jerks bubble up to the top, while otherwise great engineers who don't want to be berated move along to better things.
Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth
#73Earlier 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…
I've found the first few chapters of _Crucial Conversations_ extremely useful. Manager-Tools.com speaks very well to relationships being very valuable, worth more than float(5) vs 5.0... though... I really do agree. Float(5)? Really? And 5 should be replaced with IntNoReallyItJustAnInt(5)?? ;)
You don't use Boolean.ToString(b).Equals("true") ?
Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth
#74> 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…
> In my experience, talented developers are usually intelligent enough that they can make up for their shortcoming in the social area by consciously adapting their behaviour. That's orthogonal to the issue mentioned in the article. For the purposes of "not being a jerk", it doesn't matter if that comes naturally or if you have to devote conscious effort to it; only the resulting behavior matters. > Brilliant jerks ar…
Having worked at a company with very nice people and no fire to actually get things done (just platitudes), it can be just as bad of an environment if your goal is to succeed. Often times people come in to "play work" and achieve only a fraction of what's possible.
Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth
#75> 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…
> Brilliant jerks are often to be found at the beating heart of successful software. Exhibit 0: Linus Torvalds
I'm really not convinced that Linux is successful because of Linus's jerk-ness.
I think it's successful because the BSDs were under a cloud of legal suspicion in the early '90s (the USL lawsuits) and Mach didn't have zero-copy message passing, and so as a result, Linux was basically the only free software general-purpose UNIX-alike for 386s that existed. (MINIX resisted being general-purpose until 2005.)
Once you have that, it's basically a matter of network effects.
There are a ton of things Linus did right, of course. There are also a ton of ways he could have destroyed the project, but didn't. All of those are praiseworthy. But we have exactly one data point, and I don't think we can extrapolate a rule from that, certainly not a rule that everything he did was right. If there had been Linux and 386BSD competing on equal terms, who knows what would have happened.
Brilliant jerks are, in fact, often to be found at the beating heart of successful software. That is true. But would that software have a different beating heart if not for them? Would it be more successful?
Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth
#76This 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,
This is just a strawman. No one is suggesting that you should hire mediocre people instead.
Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth
#77> 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 tell myself I can work with (almost) anyone who is trying to do better. If someone is intentionally being subversive, that's hard to work with. Humans are difficult, and the people that own that & try anyway are my kind of people.
Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth
#78> 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…
Or there was an abrasive jerk who made them to do the wrong thing. Abrasive jerk was likely to be the one doing then shouting down. Abrasiveness does not make you right, the assumption that the most pushy jerk is right is just wrong.
Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth
#79The book "The No Asshole Rule" covers this topic in length.
Not all jerks necessarily brilliant, productive or successful. But the "culture ruining" jerks are the ones that become an example for others to follow, or sabotage people with potential to make room for themselves or their friends.
Re: Brilliant Jerks Cost More Than They Are Worth
#80"Where a normal review would often contain a handful of comments and suggestions, he would regularly end up in the hundreds"
geeze. This is either a ridiculous hyperbole or telling of a more deep-seated problem. You should not regularly be posting changes that have room for hundreds of comments, and if you do post a change that massive, it should not be considered normal to only elicit a "handful" of comments/suggestions.
I work in a company with a strong code review culture. When I'm less confident in the correctness of what I'm doing, I'll ask for a review from someone who I know will use a fine-toothed comb. This necessarily means dealing with what seems like personal preference, but that's a small price to pay for added assuredness you're doing the right thing. Some reviewers pretty much just rubber stamp your work. That can be useful if I'm highly comfortable with the code I'm working with, but overall I don't think that is a positive or makes them less of a jerk. If anything, not taking the time to provide meaningful feedback is the jerk move.