Smart jerks aren't worth it

> Since that education is sorely lacking, I made a course. It's called Team Dynamics and Soft Skills for Developers. I put my 25 years of dev, management, tech education, and interpersonal communication training into it. I think you and your team will find it useful.

There's the pitch.

Most of the time people aren't trying to be jerks. They're just not having a need met. They may or may not know about the need, or may or may not be working to address it. It may be something that you're responsible for that you're not acknowledging.

Don't underestimate how far a little humility, open ears, and boundary setting might get you. Writing the person off as a jerk just makes the problem worse.

Not to say you're responsible for anyone elses bad behavior, but it's also not ok to pin all the problems of team dynamics on one person. Having a emotionally healthy productive team is a lot of work, and it's a group effort.

I had an oldtimer boss that fired assholes without hesitation. The reason was that once upon time he had a fantastic one-of-a-kind worker, but he was real shithead that brought the whole team down. It got so bad he was left with the one asshole and a bunch of incompetent workers who would only put up with him because they couldn't get a job anywhere else. Everybody else who was worth half a shit walked off (several mid-shift) because of this guy dragging everyone down. Boss realized what he'd let happen one day, fired the asshole, got most of his old workers back, and he ended up getting a lot more work done with them than he ever had.

I've always kept that lesson in mind since and it's never led me astray. Companies that put up with those personalities just aren't worth it.

There's a meme-style picture of Reed Hastings (Netflix CEO) with the caption: "Do not tolerate brilliant jerks. The cost to teamwork is too high" that I've seen shared and re-shared on my LinkedIn feed for years.

Every time I've seen it shared, it was shared by a plain-old, regular jerk.

> It is also true that great things have been accomplished by well-functioning cohesive teams of people who respected each other. That, however, isn't seen as fodder for great storytelling (who wants to watch or read about a team getting along).

Why, Star Trek is basically that. Or at least used to be.

Still would rather deal with a smart jerk than a dumb jerk, the latter of which seems far more prevalent.

You present it as if there’s only two options. What about the 75% of dumb nonfunctional teams?

It’s great that they get along, but they don’t accomplish much, if anything.

In the IT world the jerk is always some dev, never a "scrum master”, some HR dude, or some project manager. Did anybody notice? :D

This is article is the rhetorical equivalent of saying "Long string isn't worth it" and then proceeding to complain about how hard it is to work when someone ties you up with string, or leaves 5000 yards of tangled string in the kitchen. We've all been there, right?

For every such article you could write one called "Short String Isn't Worth It."

Obviously, depending on your context, working with difficult people is necessary and worth it. Sometimes it may not be worth it to you, but it's worth it to other people.

Lots of people at Apple did not want Steve Jobs to return, after he left. But lots of people did, and he arguably made everyone there (whom he didn't fire) a whole lot of money. Was it worth it or not? Depends how you feel about things.

Articles like this can be better written when the author reminds himself to focus on the elements and forces, rather than reifying and polarizing the topic into a garish stereotype.

The point of an article like this ought to be to help people examine themselves and their situation so as to reconcile themselves to it or to take productive action. Pitchforks and torches aren't helpful.

I can and have rejected candidates who seemed qualified but were significantly unpleasant to interview. I don't mean they weren't super happy cheerful and outgoing during a stressful situation. That's a lot to ask for and plenty of awesome people get a little quiet and clammed up during interviews. I mean, they made sarcastic remarks about other people, or spoke condescendingly to me or other interviewers, or reacted nastily to feedback. That kind of thing.

If I'm going to spend 40+ hours a week interacting with someone, I'm not going to hire a brilliant jerk. I don't care if they're great at their job. If I'm going go spend most of our time together wanting to scream at them, I don't want any part of it. No thanks. Life's too short to spend it around jerks.

Difficult geniuses often evolve into great people. We all learn our lessons in different orders, and humility and empathy for the frustrations of genius can have a powerful effect.

Genius is a blessing, yes, but it is often a burden. "Genius" implies bright talents but may imply deficits, too. Either way, this person didn't necessarily ask for that, and may struggle to express their ideas in a way which isn't combative. Genius in one area (say, programming) does not always follow in another (emotional regulation).

We should be humane with people as they grow. Indeed, the single best aspect of the mind is that it can change when it wants to.

jerks can slow you down drastically. worked with someone who was a genius, but couldnt move in a direction until he proved everyone wrong. it felt like every decision took hours to move on. even low impact ones.

Cipolla Matrix can help - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cipolla-matrix.svg

My experience is that smart jerks are actually a sign of having a hierarchy of jerks going all the way to the C-levels.

For every smart jerk there's a manager who endorses that person and who also has a manager who in turn either has the same attitude or "lets them cook" as long as KPIs are fulfilled.

People will generally downplay toxic behaviour if they exhibit it themselves. Not saying that's always the case, but in my experience it's much more common than management being intimidated enough by the jerk to not want to touch them.

Not being a genius has no correlation with not being a jerk, either.

I'd take a genius jerk vs. any regular dude, the conversation may be unpleasant but at least interesting.

Agreed. Yet~

>Let's define the term "jerk" here as someone who is both intentionally, and obnoxiously aggressive. Aggressive in their enforcement of their own opinions and dismissive of others'. Obnoxious in the frequency of unnecessary negative interactions with them. Intentional in that they understand their behavior is aggressive, and choose not to adjust it.

Intent is impossible to prove (or so I've been told). He uses the implicit heuristic of, "They keep doing it." However, it (obnoxiously aggressive behavior) is in the eye of the beholder (or, often, in the appearance of the accused). What is "frequent" and "unnecessary"? By who's metric? What's the line between "opinionated" and "browbeater"? Does it shift depending on the identity of the individual? (Yes.)

>Ultimately, you know you're dealing with someone who is acting like a jerk by how you feel after interacting with them.

This criteria is just asking to be abused by people who hold prejudice. Some people are irrational or traumatized, and it's okay to sympathize with their take on an individual while also understanding that they're not being reasonable. Likewise, it's possible for a charismatic and energetic individual's behavior to be deleterious; coworkers don't necessarily walk away feeling overtly attacked, but their tendency to self-police to the bully's desire might be raised. Such jerks often also zero-in on "fair targets", leaving them as the only people to feel abused, while everyone else rationalises their treatment as deserved.

IME, the best way to root out actual jerks is to focus on people with power (by however mechanism, they are able to get people to do what they want them to do, more so than those people are able to get them to do things) who are quick (within one or two negative interactions) to blackball others (maintains a sh*t list, ghosts, verbally harasses, particularly in a way that isolates the target).

Why do I only hear about problems like this in elite professions where the workers expect to be pampered?

This is tricky! We've got someone who some might classify as a jerk on our team, but in so many regards this comes down to how they interact on slack. Every effort to improve slack comms has failed here, but enough of the team has worked with them for long enough to know that they're actually kind. However, we often have to warn new team members, or those who work in distant parts of the company that rarely interact. They are so valuable though; its a hard trade off.

Jerks label people.

Instead focus on behaviours, I've seen frustrated people raising genuine problems labelled as a jerk.

For example, is the guy who picks up on issues in code reviews the one who is a jerk?

Or, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule

Linux would not be stable if Linus wasn't a constant jerk about code quality. Microsoft would not be an empire if Bill Gates played nice with IBM. Steve Jobs was considered to be a massive jerk, yet Apple is one of the most successful tech companies in existence. The list continues with Zuck and Musk. All of the above are confirmed jerks, yet they are also incredibly successful at business.

One issue I've found with cultures that emphasize no jerks is that the pendulum can swing too far that way to the point where its difficult or impossible to provide critical feedback. Not to say that you need to be a jerk to have difficult conversations, they can and should be done with empathy.

It would be nice if they had other employment arrangements. Like being a solo developer with oversight. It is still true that some projects do not need an entire team and could be handled alone. The smart jerk is not smart if they can't do a project alone.

I worked with some of the top people in the world, in my field. Some of them were generous, self-effacing, humble, and a joy to work with.

Others ... not so much.

One thing that they all had in common, though, was not suffering fools. Sometimes, they would yell and cuss, other times, they would just never work with you again.

I generally preferred the first.

I won't do it to others, because that's not my style, but I would get a dressing-down, followed by "Don't let it happen again." I'd still be in the Circle. I haven't been ejected from the game. If they just transfer me out, I'm down for the count.

I have found, that, if we want to be top of the game, then we need to work with those that are already there. We have to take the risk that we will be rejected, or told that we're not doing a good enough job. We should definitely not expect participation trophies. In fact, it's likely that we may not get a huge amount of positive feedback.

Pretty darwinian, but that which does not kill you, makes you stronger.

I feel that a lot of the lessons that I learned, also helped me to be a better leader and mentor. Some of those lessons, were on what not to do.

I agree with everything, but can't help noticing that this kind of take becomes immediately invalid when the jerks in question are (or says they are) neurodivergent. How much does autism play into being a "genius jerk"? Should a special exception be made in that case?

That video though...

Sometimes they are. Nuance is hard, right?

Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison...

tbh I’ve had more trouble with managers who think they’re software architects than any developer “genius”

That’s abuse of authority AND dunning-kruger

Real geniuses are typically humble: Dirac, Einstein, Von Neumann…

   If most interactions leave you feeling emotionally exhausted, dismissed, belittled, or angry, you may be dealing with toxic behavior on your team.

Or you’re that kind of person who’s hiding its stupidity behind being nice with others and doesn’t produce anything of value. You are often responsible for the feelings you have.

   A well-functioning, cohesive, happy team can come up with novel solutions, better implementations, and well-reviewed code.

That would deserve another myth-busting article… No team is happy and productive

   The fact that they are inconsiderate of others does not make them more logical.

One doesn’t always know what triggers others. It could be anything. A better solution is to strengthen yourself mentally, to be less impacted emotionally by others.