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We're in the business of shipping working things on time. I'd take the "brilliant jerk" over most alternatives. Grow up, ignore the jerkness, and enjoy the code. Seriously - great developers are so rare anyhow.
And really, if we're in the business of shipping working things on time, do you think it's a good idea to keep someone on who's going to bring down the rest of your team, or drive them away?
> 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…
http://thehustle.co/steve-job-insults
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidcoursey/2011/10/12/steve-jo...
http://bgr.com/2015/06/18/what-its-like-to-work-for-steve-jo...
When I see opinion pieces like this, my first thought is always of the book "multipliers" which put forward (huge over-simplification) that you should strive to hire people who make their co-workers more productive. A jerk is often a strong individual contributor who detracts from the work of those around him. And to that extent, jerks should be avoided. But when a jerk is also a multiplier, they can drive achievement far greater than what would otherwise be achieved.
A good example of this is Steve Jobs who, by all accounts I've read, was a bit of a jerk, was abrasive and demanding, but also pushed his people to achieve amazing things, not just at Apple, but also Next and Pixar.
If you avoid the brilliant, jerky multipliers, you just might fail in the most enjoyable way possible.
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 interested in your perspective now that you had a reputation?
Have you asked "the jerk" to be more polite about his feedback? Have you explained why it's important? Have you listened to his perspective?
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…
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.
I'd rather drive a Ferarri.
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.
That extra throughput is also better spent because instead of 4 people discussing how to do things, there's 1 jerk bossing around 2 non-jerks. Cancel all team meetings!!!
Now, make the team size 15. Most of those will be 3x and 2x programmers as well. Seeded with a 5x, two 4x and the village idiot (VI, whom we will peg at 0.5x, just for the Lulz). So, the BJ has the VI kicked out, starts making much neglected changes, and everything seems to be going in the right direction. But then, your rank and file get demoted -1x because they also cannot cope with BJ's rapid changes. BJ might be seen as keeping the boat afloat, but in reality his productivity is neglected by everybody else's fuckups (which are BJ fault, because he cannot be bothered to let the team know what he's doing). 5x and one of the 4xs quit in disgust of the general chaos, and 6 months later, they are back with a competing product and poaching the big team clients.
So, it does not sound as if BJ "delivers" as much as you thought, does it?
Sometimes, before you can realise the factual superiority of a process/technique, you need to trust someone else's opinion on it. It is only later that you can understand why. This makes sense to me, because this is how I learnt when I was starting out.
I read articles like this somethings and think "holy shit I hope I'm not a jerk" - but then I relax when I realize I'm not brilliant enough for that to matter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Brilliant jerks are often to be found at the beating heart of successful software. Exhibit 0: Linus Torvalds
To be fair, Linus is like the last line of defence for Linux. If being a jerk helps remind the strict rules that he envisioned, maybe it's working.