Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

The situation I've encountered is a jerk who was actually fairly mediocre in his abilities but whose bully characteristics and brash confidence had led many of the non-technical people in the company to believe he was extremely skilled.

I think one reason people become bullies is because they know they can't back up their decisions with skill. Linus is brash, but is quite able to work well with people and has the results to prove it.

Most people who adopt bully tactics are simply doing it for tactical reasons to hide their own weaknesses.

The myth of "brilliant jerks" is harmful because it lets any jerk pretend he's doing it because he's brilliant, when chances are he's just afraid of being unmasked as mediocre.

As a corollary, engineering culture should be very open to every member of the team learning and being very open to lessons learned (read: mistakes made) in the process. Bullies often intimidate by criticizing others' decisions, which creates an atmosphere of fear that prevents rational thought and stifles group learning.

I've been a smart jerk, dunno about brilliant but positive about the jerk part. More in the selfless camp, I cared about the company (Sun) a lot and ran rough shod over anyone who got in the way of my quest to make the company better.

I definitely hurt some people and, as a young guy, felt that making the company better trumped all of that. And I was a little clueless, I had ADD and no treatment and had no idea that communication happened non-verbally, just wasn't a thin g for me.

What made it better was when I added compassion and empathy to my thought process. Instead of barging into someone's office and yelling at them that their code was broken, I'd start with the people stuff. Ask if I could talk to them, ask how they were doing, ask if they knew about this problem in their code. More ask, less yelling. And in my head, i would ask myself is there anything going on in this dude's life that is negative? Sick kid? Divorce? Parent dieing?

I was still willing to come to the conclusion that the person sucked at whatever chunk of code it was that was in the spotlight but it took me a lot longer to get there because I was trying to see if there was something else going on that caused the crappy code.

Dunno if that helps, I'm sure people told me to think like that but it took me a while to get there. Maybe this shortens the path for someone else.

I am an Alice and I need some feedback as why is it a bad thing! I work in an environment when very small percentage of people know what are they doing. and people that know what is going on do not speak up because they are frustrated and know probably nothing will change. in this environment I do speak up whenever I get a chance and I've been in arguments with managers 3 4 level above me. everybody else wants to be politicians and please everybody! but I believe because no one wants to hurt other people's feelings we are in a shit situation we are in.

why am I wrong ? should I care less like everybody else?

PS: where I currently work is wasting public money and I feel obligated to do something as a Libertarian!

If someone does something wrong, Alice tells them plainly, and they get offended, whose fault is it? Some people say it's Alice' fault for offending; some say it's the person's fault for doing it wrong in the first place, and for subsequently getting offended.

I think we're conflating is and ought here. It's probably a fact of reality that most people aren't happy to be told they're wrong. But arguably people ought to accept the consequences of being wrong, e.g. feeling bad when they're told.

I've talked to lots of startups in San Francisco. Most are failing, just due to the nature of startups, but can survive if they reach a finite set of straightforward goals. They've found product/market fit, they know what they have to do, they just have to do it, and the correct 10,000 characters of code input into a computer would solve all their business problems. There's often a lot of handwringing about why they're failing: the process is wrong; communication is wrong; something or other. But the largest reason they're failing is that they're insufficiently good at technology. You know who'd be really good at fixing that? A team of Alices.

I think Alices get too much flak. Bob is genuinely a toxic character. But if your only fault is telling the truth, which offends people, and you're otherwise excellent at your job--- there's a huge opportunity for twenty Alices to get together, bypass the inefficiencies of being offended, and win big. Tech has an obvious historical example.

Edit: I reread the description of Alice. All right, maybe don't browbeat your point into others.

Early on in my career (DevOps/Virtualization/SDN/etc) I landed a role as a junior admin, a backfill for a more senior engineer who was moving up in the organization, but staying on the same team. It could be said he landed somewhere between "Alice" and "Bob", probably due to some mild autism. Without getting into excessive detail, working with him was hard, but by far the most rewarding, educational, and instructive years of my career. I learned more in that short time from that one difficult engineer than the next 3 years combined.

I'm not excusing his behavior, but if you're able to handle that style and develop a functional relationship "brilliant but difficult" folks can be an amazing resource. He's the Sr Infrastructure Architect for that organization now, and they've never been doing better. His ability to be difficult but brilliant keeps the overbearing management folks in check, and has allowed the technology platform to move forward dramatically.

The one downside (other than the constant testing of my self esteem and resolve) was that I let him teach me D&D and he was a pedantic dick of a GM.

Google has an interesting philosophy on this:

""" Cosgrove asked them to elaborate on the idea: "exile the knaves, but fight for the divas."

Rosenberg said maintaining Google's collaborative culture requires weeding out and getting rid of the knaves: Employees who lack integrity, who are jealous of their peers, take credit for others' work, and think only of themselves. "Nice humble engineers have a way of becoming insufferable when they think they are the sole inventors of the world's next big thing," they write in their book. "This is quite dangerous, as ego creates blind spots... Nip crazy in the bud."

Divas, on the other hand, display "high exceptionalism," Rosenberg said. If the divas are brilliant and doing a good job, they should be valued and allowed to do their jobs. "As long as ... the divas' achievements outweigh the collateral damage caused by their diva ways, you should fight for them."

"They will pay off your investment by doing interesting things," they write. "...Remember that Steve Jobs was one of the greatest business divas the world has ever known!" """ [1]

[1] http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/10/googles_...

This is a great article. It's a terrific opportunity for introspection.

I do however want to point out that some of these may be less about being an insufferably relentless jerk than other pieces.

> He is late to meetings, ... then looks at his phone or laptop while ignoring everyone around him

This is also a pretty common indicator for ADHD. Not to say that excuses being a "jerk", but there are people out there that have a fundamentally difficult time tracking and arriving at meetings properly, and it's not always easy to account for. It also goes hand in hand with a few other related issues here. It's also somewhat common in the world of software.

I have some semblance of issue arriving at meetings properly, and it takes sincere effort to correct for it. When I started my career (admittedly, not so long ago) I definitely displayed more pieces of what is described as brilliant jerk than I would like to have (though certainly nothing like gaslighting and exploitation of others around me - more those things in line with adhd).

On the other hand, I spent 3 years working especially hard on self improvement here, and I certainly appreciate the patience of those around me in helping me realize my failures. It took me a year of effort to really avoid interrupting others while talking - not as a matter of being a jerk, but simply because my mind gets lost in conversation and feels the need to begin talking with less cognizance than I wish I had that others were speaking. These days, I am quick to apologize upon realizing I've interrupted, and ask the speaker to continue. That's strictly worse than never interrupting, but it both publicly acknowledges that I know this is a problem for me in conversation, and helps move forward.

The best thing for some people who have some of these issues is to give them honest, direct, and proactive feedback regarding it. They may well have no idea the ways in which they're impacting those around them, and they may well be surprisingly proactive in self-improvement upon being spoken to.

It's non-proactivity in self-improvement that you should be far less accepting of, ADHD or not.

I was so Alice for much of my career. I know this is going to sound totally cliche because this book get's recommended everywhere, but How to Win Friends and Influence People really did help me.

I'd add that from an engineering perspective, 'brilliant' jerks aren't even that brilliant.

An actually intelligent person is happy to prove his thinking via truthful argumentation (and unit tests, documentation, and so on), and also happy to get his points refuted by similarly reasonable peers.

Anything other than that approach is noise.

Meanwhile management and executive positions are teeming with not-Brilliant only-Jerks. It's the norm rather than the exception.

Totally makes sense.

I've worked with so many brilliant jerks. They're incredibly toxic. The Bob example is bordering on sociopathic, or is a sociopath.

I've worked with someone who ticks almost all of the Bob traits. He would actively try to get people fired who he didn't like, spending time gaslighting everyone around them until enough people disliked his victim where it was possible to fire them. He turned entire teams against each other, causing organizational issues that lasted years after he was eventually fired.

The problem is that he was legitimately brilliant, and he was incredibly productive. This made his gaslighting all the more effective. When we spoke about things and people, people listened. He was charismatic, funny, and had a long-standing reputation.

After firing this person, we found out he has a history of being abusive and getting fired. It's hard to know this because he's in leadership positions in a few important open source communities.

Thankfully this org is numerous years in my past and I've eventually moved past the stress associated with it, but it's an experience that stuck with me for a long time.

I found the line of questioning and discussion by the manager of the employee he "told off" to be profound, yet succinct:

> 1. Was it my intent to make his staff unproductive?

> 2. Do you think you could have told my engineer what you needed to, in a way that left them feeling positive and motivated to fix it?

> Always do that in the future, please.

I would hire a brilliant jerk. Our company has 3. 2 of them I actually like, they fit the likable jerk archetype (common in sitcoms, I think Bill Maher is a good example), and they’re good. The other one is basically not interested in human interaction. This offends people somehow, but I’d rather work w someone who doesn’t want to talk to me than someone who I don’t want to talk to.

The real problem with jerks is that "you get what you role model". If you have senior technical people acting like jerks and getting away with it, you have junior people concluding that being a jerk is the way to get a leadership position. That creates a toxic workplace over the long haul. Jerk-like behavior is a performance management issue and managers that don't confront it dig their own grave.

I feel that the Kotlin community definitely needs a "No Jerk approach". I've recently been to a meet-up which was on the advantages of using Kotlin for Android development, the speaker exhibited many characteristics from this article.

1. Bob interrupts others, and ignores their opinions (When people asked questions, he downplayed them and in some cases declined to answer them)

2. Bob bullies, humiliates, and oppresses individuals. With non-technical people, he wins arguments by bamboozling them with irrelevant technical detail, making them feel dumb (When asked about Coroutines he started explaining irrelevant stuff like locks and guards and compiler level instructions without actually answering the questions)

3. Bob engages in displays of dominance in front of groups (He was quite assertive that his language is better than Java, no one could convince him otherwise)

4. Bob is negative. He trash-talks other technologies, companies, and people behind their backs (He trash talked Java)

5. Bob manipulates and misleads. Sometimes he misleads subtly, by presenting facts that are literally true in a way that is intentionally misleading. (He mislead people into thinking that null checks were just wrong and should be avoided altogether by writing code in Kotlin, he also indicated that writing data objects was not possible in Java)

6. Bob uses physical intimidation. Bob glares at those he doesn't like, and may invade people's personal space. (He said that if his team member was unwilling to learn Kotlin he was probably not worth his salt)

7. Bob gives great talks – about himself.

8. Bob refuses to change. (This was quite evident about him)

To sum up, he was arrogant and loved humiliating the audience, I and a few others left the talk after 30 mins.

I previously worked in a place with a Bob (who ticks 80% of the boxes there) and it really is super-toxic. He got plenty of "gaslight" because he had special treatment. He didn't need to follow the processes like everyone else. He got cool work. Hence my 'previously worked'.

Jerk is often just a paraphrase for "mildly autistic."

I've had really good results hiring "jerks" and actually taking the time to understand them as people, and then put them into positions to succeed.

Calling out others as jerks is very often a power play to gain social leverage over people who aren't good at that game.

I've never come across this problem, at least not in software 'engineering'. I have met the odd jerk from other departments, but 99% of people who try that stuff will back down when you push back. Dealing with jerks is a good skill to cultivate (one that I've only recently got the hang of).

Either people are normal or they are not.

If you have a chip on your shoulder, always have something to prove or want 'revenge' on an unnamed whole because you were bullied in school you are unlikely to work well with others and are going to be a liability in every single context.

Either you are brilliant or you are a jerk. Being able to respect and work well with others is a basic life skill.

Linus for instance respects and works well with thousands of people. Let's have the same transparency that someone like Linus works under for other CEOs before feeding into tabloid level sensationalist journalism that singles out one in tens of thousands of interactions.

Just being able to write a software program or doing what you were trained to do does not make anyone a genius and the vast majority of software is mundane.

At one of my previous employers, we had one such jerk who was so bad that even his manager quit in frustration. None of the other managers wanted to take him in their team. This guy was technically bright but very hard to get along with. He would intimidate everything into getting his way. At one point, none of the engineers wanted to work with him. Management did warn him but it didn't make a difference. So the company found a new manager and put this guy under that poor soul. Eventually things were suddenly resolved when this jerk verbally harassed a key technical lead who was ready to quit if that guy was still around. If you look at this resume, he has a patchy work history of short stints. But his is good technically so companies are lured by him.

This is not a new observation, but it is a worthwhile one.

I ran across it in https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Computer-Programming-Silve... in the form, "If you see a programmer trying to become indispensable, fire him." Followed by a note written 25 years later saying, "I have received more thanks for this piece of advice than anything else that I have said." (Both quotes paraphrased from memory.)

This hits close to home for me. I've received feedback (never from management—from peers) that I've exhibited some of the "brilliant jerk" behavior (hopefully more Alice than Bob, but I'd rather not be a jerk at all...). A few reflections I've had:

1. Part of it is personality differences. I often default to taking a fairly aggressive approach to discussions, and appreciate a spirited debate on the merits of a particular issue. Depending on who I'm talking with, this can be a good experience, as long as neither side is taking it personally—and I have plenty of colleagues that seem to enjoy working with me. However, this rubs some people the wrong way, and I can come off as domineering if I'm not careful, especially to people that prefer to avoid confrontation. Of course, how I am perceived by others is my own responsibility—but my default personality seems to be more compatible with some people than others.

2. When paired with a strong personality, I tend to take an approach to balance them out. All of the times I've been called out for being too negative, it's been when I've been working closely with a person that is overwhelmingly positive. I feel that I tend to be more critical when I feel that others are not properly vetting new ideas. On the flip-side, I've also noticed that when I'm talking to someone more negative, I tend to take a more positive approach, especially if I feel that they're ignoring the positives in an idea or situation.

3. I tend to be more harsh on people that I perceive as at or above my level—I feel that honesty is something that everyone deserves from me, but I'm direct to a fault. However, with people that I perceive as junior, I find I'm naturally more diplomatic and constructive—I don't want to demoralize them, and I am thankful to be able to play some small part in building someone else's career. I need to remind myself that all people—even those that I perceive as senior to me—benefit from affirmation and constructive feedback; it's easy for me to underestimate the power of my words.

The hard part for me is to identify which parts of my personality are jerk-like, and which parts—when channeled appropriately—are useful (a team lacking critical voices is also going to be ineffective).

I fervently believe that the greatest challenge in our field is not technical—it's interpersonal. Rarely do projects fail because of technical reasons; instead, they fail because of communication breakdown, interpersonal conflict, and other "soft" attributes. I hope that I can be part of the solution, rather than the problem.

I think Brendan must have worked with quite a lot of brilliant jerks in the ZFS appliance days at Sun/Oracle. The Fishworks team was excellent but some of the top heads were quite toxic.

This really hit close to home.

I work with engineer whose is brilliant. We originally thought he was jerk, but the bosses loved him because he was a 5x engineer with the ability to handle huge cognitive loads, catch errors or conflicts in our large systems in the planning phase.

It turns out he was neuro atypical, and was actually nice guy, it turned out he was the one paying for friday pizzas not the boss. He was just too ahead of us, and honestly we let our inferiority complexes and frustration color our opinions of him.

You have to understand one thing: A Brilliant Jerk is not brilliant.

He/She excels in one specific topic and perhaps never thought about excel in all necessary skills. He/She is caught in her/his world and might not be able to learn proper social skills. It is quite hard to change long lasting behaviour.

I'm quite surprised how many adults stop evolving.

This is one of the great examples of survivorship bias. You start to think that all of the most brilliant people are jerks, but the reality is that all of the non-brilliant jerks were fired long ago for crossing the line. The only ones left are very very valuable -- and still should fired if they can't play nice.

I have totally turned into an Alice recently. I am watching an important project turn into a failure for no good reason at all, and I feel like I can either just stop giving a shit about the outcome and go along with it, or I can keep saying that this isn't going to work, and to recover we need to do x.

> coworkers become accomplices, and gaslight his abuse

Personally I think this is the worst part. It's much harder to deal with a group of jerks and their like-minds. A group typically self-justifies their behaviors and more likely to defy company policies. That's why bullies typically come in packs.

The hilarity of this advice in a single chart:

http://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ERIC/prices/ericsso...

I had a brilliant jerk at another job. One time, he just blabbered and interrupted a junior engineer in a meeting so much, another senior engineer stood up, took off his glasses and screamed loudly,

"Let the man talk, will ya?"

The room just went silent for a few moments after.

> Bob interrupts others, and ignores their opinions

You don't know what a brilliant jerk is. Brilliant jerks never interrupt anyone and listen to everyone. But they always find a way to do (and make other people do) what's best for themselves.

Alice will make a great founder.

Alice, if you're listening, quit your job and go start your own company!

Why should nothing ever feel bad?

I've never actually come across an actually brilliant engineering person who was also a jerk. Maybe they sometimes superficially seemed like a jerk at first (particularly if you had a very thin skin), but not after you actually made an effort to get to know them.

Most of the time though, the jerks just aren't even close to being brilliant. I feel this jerk attitude is quite often something that is used to mask ineptitude.

This is after 20 years, 7+ companies and quite close work with hundreds of individuals (often in a managing position, so maybe they think I was the jerk ;P).

(In fact I feel like most of the "brilliant" people I have worked with have actually been nicer than the average person.)

Hiring brilliant jerks is fundamentally a decision that comes down to the specific situation and imo it should rest with the hiring manager.

Letting brilliant jerks ruin it for others is a management problem, not a brilliant jerk problem.

However, professionalism is a two way street. Bobs and Alices that make professional salaries can be expected to improve, though the professionals that work with them should make some concessions.

One major problem with corporations / labor / the modern world is that the demands on employees are extremely high. It makes sense - people want to work in good jobs and corporations are paying for the labor and the corporations have to make money so they have incentives to hire the best people for the jobs.

Professional standards are very high - I'd say that most professionals in America are in the top 20%-30% of multiple skill sets - communication, leadership, self-directedness, tolerance for b.s, along with any domain specific skills.

We don't have an environment that most people can succeed in. And solving it would be good for people who struggle with some things or people who don't want to focus their life around professional accountability/development.

The right question to ask isn't "is bob valuable" but more like "how can build a company in that gets a single parent to manage Bob"?

This doesn't pass the Torvald test. i.e. Would your startup hire Linus if he hadn't yet created linux and git?

I have no problem working with jerks, as long as they're brilliant. Culture fit also means not hiring people who are going to scream bloody murder at a disagreement, if your team is full of disagreeables.

>2. Does the person target people who are less powerful than him/her?

YMMV but there is a problem in that leaders and brilliant-but-non-expendable (for w/e reason) engineers can often be jerks themselves. So much so that they use their power to write the narrative that the less-powerful was the jerk.

I know it is politically incorrect to say this kind of thing, but it certainly does happen. This happened at NASA when engineeres voiced concerns of the dangers of a foam strike. Management bullied them and the groupthink culture there made people side with authority. Then this caused the Challenger disaster.

And let's be honest: get out of STEM and into something like politics, and it's very sadly a significant part of the game.