You should read their biographies, both by Walter Isaacson, I don't know how you can read those books and not see that they are more than just marketers.
Isaacson also wrote the definitive biographies for Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, among many other historical figures.
Also "Masters of Doom" describes Carmack's career and idk about the word genius, but he is undeniably one of those engineers who's just 10x better than the average engineer.
Where did you get your info from? Where did you see me call Carmack a jerk?
Carmack was known to be very difficult to work with by his peers. Tearing down walls and putting his desk in the hallway to surveil people when they came and went at id software while working on Quake.
Steve Jobs did even more crazy shit. It seems geniuses, or brilliant successful people are very difficult to work with by those wo don't share the same vision and goals and are just looking for a chill 9-5.
Sorry, I misread. I thought you were putting up examples of possible geniuses who weren't humble and given the other examples are famous jerks, I thought you were calling Carmack one by association.
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.
I think most of us have been interviewed by such people. You know, the ones who grill you endlessly with obscure trivia trying to find that gotcha that proves they're smarter than the candidate, at which point I'm begging to be rejected because I don't want to work with such people.
> 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.
This is true, in fact I thought about that when writing this post! But I think the Roddenberry's "no conflict" has been out of favor in storytelling for quite a while now. Star Trek is the exception. And not all Star Trek followed it.
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?
In the post I referenced that I wasn't trying to say that communication differences mean someone is a jerk. Intentional, obnoxious, aggressive and choosing not to change even though they are aware of it is how I define a 'jerk' here.
If someone has a challenge in awareness or their communication style is related to neurodivergence, then I think it becomes a determination of the team as far as what guardrails, training, awareness, tolerance, etc. are needed.
But maybe "jerk-ism" in general can be defined as a challenge in evaluating the emotional response of others? Isn't low emotional intelligence itself a neurodivergence or at least, in most cases, a consequence of a broader neurodivergence?
In theory it would be the role of management to create the conditions for a ND individual to do their best work and not be difficult to work with. However, like everything else, skill levels in that department vary widely and are profoundly hard to evaluate.
I know for myself (moderately ADHD), I become more of a jerk when I'm not getting the supports that I need, and I know the answer is to simply remove myself from those situations when it's a repeated occurrence. But usually there are other factors at play, such as me having become personally invested in the success of a project.
> How much does autism play into being a "genius jerk"? Should a special exception be made in that case?
The OP defines smart jerk in a way that would rule out most people with ASD - by their definition, a "smart jerk" is aware their behavior is obnoxious and aggressive. Usually people on the spectrum are not aware of their own behavior's effects on others, and usually attempt to correct the behavior when they learn about it, so I would think this is not a very big factor. Low emotional intelligence seems a far likelier culprit, and personality disorders.
> Usually people on the spectrum are not aware of their own behavior's effects on others
That sounds exaggerated at best. People on the spectrum might not be emotionally aware of their behaviours effect on others, but they're intellectually / logically aware of it.
> by their definition, a "smart jerk" is aware their behavior is obnoxious and aggressive.
Does intentionality change anything? Working with a "jerk" is a terrible experience whether the jerk consciously decides to be a jerk or he/she can't help it / can't tell.
> That sounds exaggerated at best. People on the spectrum might not be emotionally aware of their behaviours effect on others, but they're intellectually / logically aware of it.
Based on my own extensive experience of living on the spectrum and years of participating in support groups, I would say this is absolutely untrue or at best extremely pedantic - the end effect is the same.
GP clearly fails the empathy test when the subject has a different neurological matrix to their own. I wonder if with this, they will attempt to correct that effect now that they've been made aware of it.
Patterns are always inherently vague. The sequence '3,5,7,_' is a clear example, but even something clear-cut, like '1,2,4,8,16,_' could end in any number; it's possible for it to be the sequence 'Joe's favorite numbers, by year', the next number being 3, as for it to be, say, powers of two.
As such, it's possible that behavior others interpret as 'jerky' is an autistic person seeing pattern A in the data where everyone else sees pattern B.[1]
>Does intentionality change anything?
One would think so. If someone is unintentionally behaving like a jerk, that can be changed in theory by informing them, kindly, of that. If someone is intentionally behaving like a jerk, good luck with that.
(Besides, if it doesn't, manslaughter and murder are indistinguishable, and one would think there is a difference between a carefully planned and calculated murder and you getting killed after a driver accidentally hits you.)
[1] This idea stolen from a paper I read, "Living With Autism: Quus-ing in a Plus-ers World". The author uploaded a preprint to Dropbox, which sadly seems to be the only copy available if you don't subscribe to the journal Res Philosophica: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0skr5orj9l1ra4n4p85li/Living-....
What makes you wonder if it should? They are both personality traits, more or less. Aren't autistic people just as responsible for their behavior as a jerk that has no diagnosis for their behavior? If anything, a diagnosis makes autists at least as responsible given that their behavior is more explainable and has management strategies.
I agree with that. I just was noticing that the article takes the easy route (bashing jerks that are maliciously jerks) but accurately avoids the hard problem (jerks that are jerks because they are neurologically atypical).
Both "smart" and "jerk" are _very_ subjective. OP takes a stab at providing a definition, but it's not a very useful definition, since it could apply to anybody that OP doesn't like.
I'd rather deal with smart jerks than nice dolts any day. But maybe my experience with jerks is too limited. I've known few, but they were smart. And smartness is my most significant factor in how much I like a person, even if they're being a jerk to me. :p
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.
As an American kid, the rule with farts was "he who smelt it dealt it," so you never ever wanted to be the first person to say someone farted or everyone would blame you.
But as adults, we forget this lesson and openly call one another jerks, toxic, Nazis, etc.
The adult behavior is just as childish but less wise.
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.
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.
> 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.
100% agreed. Talking about "needs met" is actually a fundamental part of the course I produced (I did put a link to it, but at the end because I really do think this is a problem in general. Also, I think education for devs on the topic is lacking.) Humility and boundaries 100% agreed too.
There is "team" in "team dynamics". It is absolutely a group effort. I will say, though, it's a group effort that can be greatly impacted by just one individual.
To a point. Some jerks are just misunderstood and need a little TLC. Some people are just bastards, though. I don't get paid enough to be their therapist and "fix" them.
I wonder about this. What's the appropriate line for a manager is a business environment to give feedback about. I don't think random middle managers have the skills to like you said be a therapist, but there is some psychological aspect to keeping a group of people running smoothly.
For sure, and I am willing and happy to do the common things to help coworkers. I like people. I like helping people. It’s just that I have no interest in taking on advanced cases. Like, if someone were a diagnosed, untreated narcissist, managing that is outside my expertise and available energy. That specific diagnose doesn’t inherently make them a bad person. It does mean they’re likely to bring behaviors I’m not equipped to deal with.
That's a very reasonable boundary. Health insurance covers therapy, it's reasonable to expect coworkers routinely exhibiting unacceptable behavior to make use of behavioral therapy and show that they're at least working on the issue.
It's also amazing what a "sorry, x,y, and z are very hard for me, I'm doing my best and still learning to do better" will go. Of course, not everyone receives that with grace, but that speaks to their character.
That's such a great tip! A little communication can go a long way.
And for my side, I try to distinguish between someone being a jerk and someone I just don't mesh with. I'm thinking of a specific coworker right now. They and I mixed like oil and water. They're smart, competent, and well-meaning. I respect them professionally. However, something about them rubbed me the wrong way, and I'm certain they'd say the same about me. We were never going to be work buddies. They weren't being a jerk, though. Our personalities weren't compatible, no more. I'd still give them a good reference.
I've worked worked through the issues in a couple of "brilliant jerks" in my career. Although really none of them were jerks, in both instances just frustrated humans who cared a lot about the work they're doing and nobody had taken the (hours) to fully work through what was going on. With one of them, we worked through stuff for 4 sessions over 2 weeks and by the end got to some version of "wait, so that's it, there is nothing more to it than that, it's just that's the way it is?" and once that acceptance came, the frustration was resolved and the situation was fully understood the homie inside re-emerged.
This has been my experience as well, it boils down to them mostly being unheard, which causes frustration which can manifest itself as us-vs-them. Taking the time and hearing them out, and like you did, just working with them and hearing them helps a ton. I can count the number of actual jerks I’ve crossed paths with in my career on less than four fingers over nearly 20 years. The other “jerks” just need a little peace, love and understanding.
I’m not really referring to particular situations, but consistent behaviors that manifest across many interactions under many contexts.
I too think that real jerkish behavior is rare, versus needing to apply soft skills to a person who has a need that isn’t being met. But when a real one is in a team, I think it’s a serious enough event to warrant consideration of the topic.
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.
All of the above would have been even more blindingly successful if they hadn't been jerks. You can be insistent, you can be stubborn, and you can be sure you're right all without being a prick about it.
This is still a bug, not a feature. These people all handicapped themselves from even greater success.
Then please explain to us how you can achieve the same goals while spending ton of time taking care of others' people feelings. I don't think it works so easily
And here we go with the toxic false dichotomy that you have to "spend a ton of time taking care of others' people feelings" to just . . . not be a jerk. It takes literally no time at all to just not be a jerk.
It takes some time, some effort, and some thought, especially if that is your current default way of interacting with people. Not a ton, though. But not zero, either.
> The world has far more unsuccessful jerks than successful ones.
That's not a very useful metric. Now, if the proportion of successful jerks vs non-successful jerks were much lower than that of successful nice people vs. non-successful ones, that might be interesting to look at as a starting point.
That said, what does "successful" even mean, and why is it something worth pursuing?
I thought someone would mention this. I believe these are the exceptions, not the rule. They just get the press. Far, far more people fail because of those same qualities.
You can but often at the cost of speed and simplicity, or incurring into excessive bureaucracy. I agree with the original comment, Linux won't be anywhere close to what's today without Linus attitude, no matter how "great" other methods of ensuring quality sound on paper.
> You can but often at the cost of speed and simplicity
On the contrary, it takes extra time to go out of your way to curse someone out and question their parentage, rather than just telling them what's wrong with their code. It seems like you're imagining a straw maintainer being obsequious, rather than just not being a jerk.
I didn't say that every interaction was stellar either.
But Linux means big money, it's not just "wrong code" but corporate interest attempting to get their way into the kernel (plenty of examples in the .org mailing list), or HW manufactures trying to get support for their stuff for free, etc. It's not as naive as "code quality".
And again, you can tell people that what they're doing is not acceptable or that they're not going to get what they're asking for, without being a jerk, and without taking extra time. There are literally zero interactions between maintainers and developers that can be improved by being a jerk.
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.
And they're always saying things like, "We should have unit tests" or "We should have an automated deployment pipeline" or "We should use version control" and they're SO MEAN to everyone who doesn't want to waste time on that crap.
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.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadIsaacson also wrote the definitive biographies for Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, among many other historical figures.
Also "Masters of Doom" describes Carmack's career and idk about the word genius, but he is undeniably one of those engineers who's just 10x better than the average engineer.
Carmack was known to be very difficult to work with by his peers. Tearing down walls and putting his desk in the hallway to surveil people when they came and went at id software while working on Quake.
Steve Jobs did even more crazy shit. It seems geniuses, or brilliant successful people are very difficult to work with by those wo don't share the same vision and goals and are just looking for a chill 9-5.
...you do know you can reject the position, correct? You're not obligated to take the job once the interviewing process has started.
I’m didn’t raise my voice or curse or anything like that. I just said “this isn’t a good fit. Thank you for your time”, got up, and left.
Why, Star Trek is basically that. Or at least used to be.
So many persons displaying enviable teamwork and professionalism. Science fiction!
The former, even when they have conflicts, it's something they're sad about; the latter, it feels like they enjoy jabbing each other.
If someone has a challenge in awareness or their communication style is related to neurodivergence, then I think it becomes a determination of the team as far as what guardrails, training, awareness, tolerance, etc. are needed.
I know for myself (moderately ADHD), I become more of a jerk when I'm not getting the supports that I need, and I know the answer is to simply remove myself from those situations when it's a repeated occurrence. But usually there are other factors at play, such as me having become personally invested in the success of a project.
The OP defines smart jerk in a way that would rule out most people with ASD - by their definition, a "smart jerk" is aware their behavior is obnoxious and aggressive. Usually people on the spectrum are not aware of their own behavior's effects on others, and usually attempt to correct the behavior when they learn about it, so I would think this is not a very big factor. Low emotional intelligence seems a far likelier culprit, and personality disorders.
That sounds exaggerated at best. People on the spectrum might not be emotionally aware of their behaviours effect on others, but they're intellectually / logically aware of it.
> by their definition, a "smart jerk" is aware their behavior is obnoxious and aggressive.
Does intentionality change anything? Working with a "jerk" is a terrible experience whether the jerk consciously decides to be a jerk or he/she can't help it / can't tell.
Based on my own extensive experience of living on the spectrum and years of participating in support groups, I would say this is absolutely untrue or at best extremely pedantic - the end effect is the same.
Edit: given the downvote, I assume not.
Are we?
Patterns are always inherently vague. The sequence '3,5,7,_' is a clear example, but even something clear-cut, like '1,2,4,8,16,_' could end in any number; it's possible for it to be the sequence 'Joe's favorite numbers, by year', the next number being 3, as for it to be, say, powers of two.
As such, it's possible that behavior others interpret as 'jerky' is an autistic person seeing pattern A in the data where everyone else sees pattern B.[1]
>Does intentionality change anything?
One would think so. If someone is unintentionally behaving like a jerk, that can be changed in theory by informing them, kindly, of that. If someone is intentionally behaving like a jerk, good luck with that.
(Besides, if it doesn't, manslaughter and murder are indistinguishable, and one would think there is a difference between a carefully planned and calculated murder and you getting killed after a driver accidentally hits you.)
[1] This idea stolen from a paper I read, "Living With Autism: Quus-ing in a Plus-ers World". The author uploaded a preprint to Dropbox, which sadly seems to be the only copy available if you don't subscribe to the journal Res Philosophica: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0skr5orj9l1ra4n4p85li/Living-....
It’s great that they get along, but they don’t accomplish much, if anything.
Every time I've seen it shared, it was shared by a plain-old, regular jerk.
But as adults, we forget this lesson and openly call one another jerks, toxic, Nazis, etc.
The adult behavior is just as childish but less wise.
That’s abuse of authority AND dunning-kruger
I have at least two counterexamples in my personal experience.
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 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.
There is "team" in "team dynamics". It is absolutely a group effort. I will say, though, it's a group effort that can be greatly impacted by just one individual.
It's also amazing what a "sorry, x,y, and z are very hard for me, I'm doing my best and still learning to do better" will go. Of course, not everyone receives that with grace, but that speaks to their character.
And for my side, I try to distinguish between someone being a jerk and someone I just don't mesh with. I'm thinking of a specific coworker right now. They and I mixed like oil and water. They're smart, competent, and well-meaning. I respect them professionally. However, something about them rubbed me the wrong way, and I'm certain they'd say the same about me. We were never going to be work buddies. They weren't being a jerk, though. Our personalities weren't compatible, no more. I'd still give them a good reference.
I too think that real jerkish behavior is rare, versus needing to apply soft skills to a person who has a need that isn’t being met. But when a real one is in a team, I think it’s a serious enough event to warrant consideration of the topic.
This is still a bug, not a feature. These people all handicapped themselves from even greater success.
The world has far more unsuccessful jerks than successful ones.
That's not a very useful metric. Now, if the proportion of successful jerks vs non-successful jerks were much lower than that of successful nice people vs. non-successful ones, that might be interesting to look at as a starting point.
That said, what does "successful" even mean, and why is it something worth pursuing?
You can enforce quality standards without being a jerk. There are many, many projects doing so.
On the contrary, it takes extra time to go out of your way to curse someone out and question their parentage, rather than just telling them what's wrong with their code. It seems like you're imagining a straw maintainer being obsequious, rather than just not being a jerk.
But Linux means big money, it's not just "wrong code" but corporate interest attempting to get their way into the kernel (plenty of examples in the .org mailing list), or HW manufactures trying to get support for their stuff for free, etc. It's not as naive as "code quality".
But it doesn't take any extra time to give friendly and appropriate feedback in a code review.
If someone is so fragile, that they cannot accept feedback in their code review, then they are the jerk.
Unfortunately, far too many people think having high standards is an excuse for being a jerk.
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.
I'd take a genius jerk vs. any regular dude, the conversation may be unpleasant but at least interesting.
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.