Are Quirky Developers Brilliant Or Dangerous?

jammag writes "Most developers have worked with a dude like Josh, who's so brilliant the management fawns over him even as he takes a dump in the lobby flowerpot. Eric Spiegel tells of one such Josh, who wears T-shirts with offensive slogans, insults female co-workers and, when asked about documentation, smirks, "What documentation?' Sure, he was whipsmart and could churn out code that saved the company millions, but can we please stop enabling these people?"

Comments

brilliant or dangerous?

[p3on]

why are the mutually exclusive?

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[tgatliff]

Exactly... To the average layman, the thought of a "Dr House" type principle always applies. For the people who actually do high end development or research work, however, they realize that intelligence is only useful if the person can work with other people or can effectively communicate his work. Also, documentation of that work is essential...

In short... it is only mutually exclusive if you are in a room full of a bunch of business MBAs who apparently as a whole still think that solutions come out of some magic hat somewhere...

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[neapolitan]

Agreed totally. I wish more people realized this and thought like you.

I, too, can write obfuscated code and appear "genius-like." It is a whole lot harder to bring *everybody* along than to rocket yourself ahead, make yourself appear to be esoteric and "invaluable," and, in a sense, bully everybody else into compliance. Now, we don't have enough details on the particular story to know if his colleagues actually were bad.

However, I spend a good deal of every day helping people that may be not as quick or sharp as me in many ways, but that is my job.

Finally a point regarding documentation -- I'm sure that every programmer here has come back to code that he/she wrote, and thought, "Man, this guy (me) is a genius. However, it just took me 30 minutes to understand how I did this!"

Early on in my programming life, I thought this was indicative of my awesomeness as a programmer. Now, I just think it is poor documentation, and largely a waste of time. If I can't figure out how I did something a year ago, it would take other people twice as long... They may appreciate the clever implementation, but in the large scheme of things that is not efficient, nor awesome.

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[Maxo-Texas]

The problem is that smart people get very irritated working with fools.

Our corporation has now cut our productivity by 75% in the last 5 years due to SOX related procedural changes. It takes 45 days to put a 1 line code change into practice.

The smarter developers got irritated, then angry, then acted out, then most of them left. The few who remained were mostly burdened with debt and couldn't afford to take the risk. So they take anger management courses and let the corporation destroy them as people.

There are appropriate places for smart developers-- in projects where they save millions of dollars.

There are fewer and fewer jobs for smart developers. Corporations prefer predictable pleasant programmers over brilliant good programmers. They would prefer that a project *definately* take 16 weeks instead of taking 2 to 9 weeks.

Even tho I was smart enough to move out of programming and into management, the culture slowly driving me insane as well. As far as I can see after a few promotions is that it is is turtles all the way up and the problem is coming from somewhere above 5 levels of management above me.

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[tixxit]

One of the best courses, I think, during my undergrad was a practicum course. We started off with a fairly simple project. The teacher gave us some requirements, but told us that for the rest of semester, each assignment would simply be new requirements to the original project and that, as we are developing it, we must keep that in mind.

Some people in the class just brushed it off, did the usual homework thing and just rushed it out as fast as they could. Others spent a little longer on the first assignment, trying to anticipate future requirements, and make it general enough that they could add them if needed. After each assignment (there were 4), she'd ask people how long they had spent implementing the new features. In the end, it turned out that saving an hour on the first assignment, cost you about 2 hours on the second assignment and, unless you basically rewrote the first assignment, it just got worse as time went on.

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[qbzzt]

Paraphrased from something I read.

Walking on water is nice - but to really bring value you need to freeze it, so other people will be able to follow behind you.

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[Myrimos]

TFA is confusing "quirky" with "asshole." I love working with quirky people -- people who look at the world in entirely different ways, people who solve problems in a different manner, and people whose idiosyncrasies make them genuinely fun to be around.

I can't say that I enjoy working with assholes, though. It doesn't matter how good your code is or how quickly you put it together, I can find somebody almost as good who's a lot less of a pain to work with. The extra little bit of efficiency isn't worth the metric cockton of assholery.

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[homerjs42]

I've also encountered the corollary -- I find some absurdly written ridiculous piece of code and wonder what moron wrote it only to find my own initials in the comments.

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[nine-times]

The problem is that smart people get very irritated working with fools

Of course, really extremely smart people can outsmart fools into getting them to do what they want. Really smart people get more irritated working with other smart people who have opposing agendas.

There are fewer and fewer jobs for smart developers. Corporations prefer predictable pleasant programmers over brilliant good programmers. They would prefer that a project *definately* take 16 weeks instead of taking 2 to 9 weeks.

I don't do software development, but as a manager, yeah, I'd generally rather work with pleasant people who do their jobs "slow and steady" rather than the "brilliant" but unreliable guy. The real issue is often not the uncertainty about exactly how long a project will take, but uncertainty about whether you can trust what you're being told how long a project will take.

What I mean is, yes, I'd rather have someone working for me who says, "I can get this project done in 2-9 weeks" and gets it done in <9 weeks then someone who says, "I can get it done in 16 weeks" and gets it done in 16 weeks exactly. 9 weeks is shorter, that's an easy call.

The problem is dealing with someone who says, "I can get it done in under 9 weeks," and then sometimes it takes 2 weeks, sometimes it take 9 weeks, sometimes it takes 23 weeks, and sometimes it never gets done. I'd generally rather take the steady 16 weeks over that sort of thing. A steady-16-weeks allows me to make other plans, make promises to other people, and set other deadlines. With the theoretically-9-weeks-but-who-knows answer, everyone would actually be better off being told, "I have no clue how long it will take," because at least then there would be no false expectations.

All of this is just to say, I'd rather have people that I can rely on than theoretically brilliant people who are just going to do whatever the hell they feel like.

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[Imagix]

Exactly. I'm always amazed by people who think that writing impenetrable code is "advanced". Any jackass can write something convoluted and obscure that nobody else can understand (or maintain) -- what takes actual talent is condensing complicated logic into code that's simple enough a ten year old would understand it.

I'm reminded of two quotes.

One from Einstein: "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

The second from Kernighan: "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[Foofoobar]

Here's one reason why... I was Bipolar II which meant I was mostly manic. As a result I was easily angered, very enthusiastic, easily empassioned and highly creative. My brain went a MILLION miles per hour in that state and I had brilliance that I couldn't contain at times. I already have an IQ of 160 and during that state it was up 5-10 additional points (when I could stay focused).

Tack onto that the boundless energy the condition gave me and the fact that I never slept in that state and you have exactly what you described. I felt untouchable and alive like no one could imagine. So why did I go on meds? Well, that's the trick. How do you get bipolars or other people who have a self destructive disorder that makes them feel superior or more intelligent go on a med that dumbs them down or slows them down?

I hit that point where I realized my condition was isolating me and shutting me off from everyone else around me. When I examined my life, I realized I had no one to blame but myself; I burnt people out like matches but couldn't see that I was the one common factor in all the damaged relationships. More exactly, my condition.

I eventually got better and now write my own documentation, get along with others, don't have mood swings at work, etc etc. It took me years and lots of hard work and effort to get over old emotional habits... the meds don't do it alone.

But I guess what I am trying to say is that sometimes brilliance comes with madness. Sometimes it's just madness, sometimes it's both. Getting them to help themselves though can be almost impossible though.

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[hairyfeet]

But then there are also the flip side to the problem. I did some temp work with a company that had a "Josh", lets call him Jim, and hell, everybody really liked the guy. He could whip off code like you wouldn't believe and solve problems that others had been stuck on for weeks in minutes. So what was the problem?

It was, for lack of a better description, what I like to call the "head too full" syndrome. The guy knew how to write badass code in what seemed like every language from BASIC to the latest language o' the day, but trying to get docs out of the guy(hell trying to get comments you could actually understand out of the guy) was nearly impossible because he had already moved on to the next problem in his head by then. I spent about a week setting up his new machines the way he liked them and talking to the guy. Afterwards one of the higher ups stopped me and said "You always seem to have good ideas about things. What would YOU do to make Jim's work day easier?". I could tell the company would frankly fall apart without Jim so I said "Honestly? Find a guy with a little programming knowledge who can sit in the office next door and write docs for Jim. Because every time someone asks him for an explanation or docs you are going to throw him "off his groove" and it will take him a day to get his groove back. Let him do what he does best and let somebody else follow behind him writing the HOWTOs."

So I would say, yes some are quirky because they are frankly asocial asshats. But I'm sure there are plenty like Jim who just have "heads too full" that are just not thinking like we think. I mean, I would be having a conversation with the guy about the old days of Commodore and Atari programming when he eyes would glaze over and he would smile and then suddenly he would just blaze out this huge complicated mess of code that frankly WAS brilliant and would have taken anyone else weeks to cook up. Did he mean for it to be complex or weird? Not really, that was just how his brain worked. And expecting him to fit in the cubicle mentality would have just had the guy frustrated for a couple of weeks until he got tired of it and quit.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that you really have to base how you handle a "Josh" based on the situation. Are they acting the way they do because they are asocial? Or because their brains really don't work that way? Because as we know Einstein had to have his address stuck on his coat when he was working on a problem because he would wander off deep in thought. I'm sure that most that ran into him would have thought him rude for not engaging them in conversation. But he wasn't TRYING to be rude, his "head was too full" to give even a moment's attention to anything but the problems in his head. And that was Jim to a T. Nice guy though. Maybe that is what makes the difference between a Jim and a Josh?

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[Miamicanes]

> The problem is dealing with someone who says, "I can get it done in under 9 weeks," and then
> sometimes it takes 2 weeks, sometimes it take 9 weeks, sometimes it takes 23 weeks, and sometimes
> it never gets done.

In most cases like that, here's what really happens...

Mgt: "How long do you think this will take?"

Programmer: "Er, I guess 3 months or so, assuming nothing major goes wrong along the way."

Mgt: "That's too long! We need it in 8 weeks. Can it be done?"

Programmer: "I doubt it. Maybe if god parts the skies and makes a miracle happen."

Mgt: "It's really, really important. In fact, it really needs to be done in 6 weeks."

Programmer: "You're insane. There's no way in hell it's going to happen."

Mgt: "OK, I'll allocate 8 weeks."

Programmer: (sigh) "Whatever."

8 weeks later ...

Mgt: "Is the program done?"

Programmer: "No. We'll probably be done in another month, maybe two at worst."

I think you see where this is going. The programmer had a decent idea of how long it would take, and could have probably given a more realistic estimate within a few days had he been encouraged to identify the riskiest parts of the project (specifically, third-party libraries and things constrained by real-world hardware/network performance) and try to tackle them *first*. However, if management twists his arm backwards, or keeps pressuring him for a "better" (ie, shorter) estimate, he'll eventually get disgusted and throw them the number management wants... rationalizing that it's not *quite* a lie since miracles occasionally happen, and absolving himself of any moral responsibility for actually agreeing to a deadline he views as ridiculous since he was coerced into it.

That, IMHO, is the root of more miscommunication between management and developers. Far too many managers don't quite understand that programmers *hate* interpersonal conflict, and will casually agree to just about *anything* if they think it will get the person to quit bothering them. The constructive way to deal with it is to begin by asking the programmer for a range (best case vs likely worst case), then ask him to identify the riskiest factors influencing the range, then nudge him to tackle those factors first so a better estimate can be refined quickly. Just don't make him feel like you're twisting his arm or browbeating him, because estimates are like information from interrogation -- torture will get you the answer you want quickly, but the answer itself will likely prove to be worthless.

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[Venik]

It is equally amazing how programmers of average ability insist on branding brilliant code they have trouble understanding as convoluted and obscure. The only thing that matters here is the bottom line. If Josh produces code that makes the company millions, then this is all that matters. It is entirely irrelevant if some of Josh's obtuse co-workers with a pronounced inferiority complex think that his code is convoluted. Most managers I know would rather fire every idiot complaining about Josh's shenanigans, than to fire their obnoxious but talented cash cow. I had the privilege of working with a couple guys like Josh. Understanding their work and their methods may be challenging, but it is also rewarding. Most can't stand brilliant co-workers, but not because of their alleged eccentricity. Bell curve riders feel inadequate and threatened working with talent. They demand endless meetings, ceaseless telecons, and detailed documentation, as if reading documentation would actually make them understand genius. People like Josh rarely get fired: they just get tired working every day with the same morons and go for a better-paying job elsewhere.

Re:brilliant or dangerous?

[MartinSchou]

I'd place myself as slightly behind the bell curve (out of practice) at the moment (slightly ahead when up to speed). I'm quite capable of recognizing brilliant code. I'm also able to recognize code that makes absolutely no sense to me. At times those two are the same thing (meaning that the code is doing things way above my comprehension, not that the code doesn't work).

The thing is - if that brilliant code turns out to have a subtle flaw or needs to be redesigned, how can you be certain that the originator is still with the company or the project? Sure, that brilliant code may have saved your company millions, but when the flaw allows people to siphon money directly from your bank account, how would you rather go about fixing it? Stepping through convoluted code or reading the documentation? Sure, "my code just works" is a nice reponse. I'm also certain that Einstein was a lot smarter than most of the Josh' out there, and if he'd just said "E=MC^2 - trust me" people would have told him to fuck off and come back when he'd shown the math that proved it.

I've worked with people quite a few rungs above me. All of them are capable of writing documentation that I can understand. Documentation that cuts the time spent on my comprehension of how their code works by 90+%.

Their job isn't just whipping out code. It's also showing that it works. How it works. The upside is I don't ask them nearly as many "stupid" questions, because while their code still in Klingon - but it comes with subtitles. It also means that once I've looked through this Klingon enough times, it'll start making sense. I might actually learn how to write some stuff in Klingon by reading what they've written (with subtitles). But in the software industry that's just a waste of time - who needs people actually learning stuff at work?

Imagine the following scenario:
Ed is a brilliant engineer and architect. He comes up with a way for us to build a trans atlantic maglev train route that runs under water in essentially vacuum tubes. He's even figured out how to make it cheap enough that trip from London to New York city will cost you 200$ and will take about two hours. His brilliance even allows the project to scale, so that if we swing the tubes upwards and really punch it, we can send stuff into orbit for a price of 1000$/ton.

Now, instead of writing up the designs, specs for the materials, how to build the materials and so on, Ed's just going to tell the people involved how to do it by phone. Because of Ed's absurd brilliance and genius, this actually works for a full week, and his super human skills in JIT means we're now 12 miles into this tunnel.

The 8th day however, Ed's rather unfortunate. Seems he decided to drop by the post office the same day that Dan the mail man went postal and killed everyone in the office. Including Ed.

Since noone else knows how any of this stuff is supposed to work, we now have to give up on the tunnel project while we siphon through the few things Ed actually left behind.

Now, in the real world Ed's demise would be somewhat of a setback, as we've now lost the lead engineer on the project. However, since Ed was a good engineer and architect, he knew he was supposed to put all these things down on paper before we started the project and put billions or trillions of dollars on the line.

Now, in the software industry, we're very fond of calling ourselves engineers and architects. Unfortunately most of us (even in companies) really don't reach that level of excellence - we don't document what we do, either because we're too lazy or because the companies don't want to spend money doing that. That's fine - just don't consider yourself or what you're doing software engineering.

I've actually had the pleasure of working for an engineering company as the only software developer/programmer. Imagine how flabbergasted I was when my boss asked me for documentation as well as actual schematics for the software I was making. Schematics as in fl

Can we stop enabling these people?

[ivan256]

Translation: Control is more important than productivity.

I think it would be a lot harder for this guy to have made his point without such an extreme example.

Re:Can we stop enabling these people?

[Anonymous Coward]

As an antisocial mindshare person, I resent this topic. Because perpetuation of my antisocial liberties is the precise reason I developed subject matter expertise in the first place.

Re:Can we stop enabling these people?

[DrLang21]

if the author has such a problem with this guy, maybe he needs to be skilled enough to replace him

That's part of the problem. Having irreplaceable people on your staff is bad for business long term. If someone is laughing at you for asking for non-existent documentation that they should have written, they should be fired immediately. The cost to business if this guy were to leave will only get worse with time and probably already outweighs the savings of keeping him on.

Lesson, you are replaceable. If you are not replaceable, then you are too dangerous to have.

Re:Can we stop enabling these people?

[Maximum Prophet]

If your competitor hires this guy they might be able to outproduce you just long enough to put you out of business. Doing things right is important, but staying in business is the *most* important thing. (It's a gamble, like all of life, you roll the dice and take your chances.)

Re:Can we stop enabling these people?

[talldean]

If you can't replace a relatively inexpensive employee, you're one traffic accident away from being out of business entirely. Let your competitor take that risk. "It's a gamble, like all of life, you roll the dice and take your chances." The odds of your competition hiring the guy - through a noncompete clause - and him being the tipping point of sending you out of business? Miniscule. The odds of a daily accident, or family problems, or the employee just leaving for greener pastures? Enormous.

Re:Can we stop enabling these people?

[Swizec]

You stop being a quirky genius soon as you declare yourself as one. Since then you're just a wannabe poser.


See that's why I'm NOT a quirky genius.

Re:Can we stop enabling these people?

[__aagmrb7289]

I have yet to encounter a situation where anyone is THIS good (or where every other employee is THAT bad). And if a business WAS in that situation? Better to put it out of its misery - it'll get killed off sooner or later, regardless.

I'm not sure why people feel a need to defend the "quirky" walking lawsuit that these "great" programmers are all about. Very few businesses need genius programmers in order to stay in business. And most of the time, these people keep your business one step away from being sued into an early grave - and they don't provide a good product. A good product isn't something that does things in really neat ways. It's a usable product, well documented, that does the job its designed for really well - and can be updated and maintained as necessary. None of these are true of any product worked on by the described programmer.

I have no interest in pretending that programmers need to wear ties to work and act like your average joe. However, being anti-social and incapable of writing a maintainable product? Not interested.

Re:Can we stop enabling these people?

[DrLang21]

There are many excellent geniuses out there in the tech field that do what they're supposed to do. They document their work so that others can understand it. If they die or quit tomorrow, their company won't have to spend 2 years trying to figure out what they did. Getting a cheap geek to document these people holds its own high risk. What if the geek doesn't understand what they did? If this "genius" can't be bothered to document his own work, what makes you think they can be bothered to review someone else's documentation of their work? Mitigate your risk by paying more to hire a genius who won't put your company at risk of internal collapse.

Re:Can we stop enabling these people?

[Dan Ost]

If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted. Hope you like your current job.

Nice made up story...

[sunking2]

It should ensure that lots of bored IT people with god complexes flock to his article and dream about how important they really are. Of course the reality is that just about everyone could get hit by a bus and within 2 months their names will be forgotten and the company will be just fine.

Funny...

[mdm-adph]

I've never met one of these coders in real life. For that matter, I've never been with a company who's internal politics would even allow such a person to exist.

What cyberpunk novel does this hypothetical "Josh" live in?

I'd say most are less extreme

[Trepidity]

Most quirky developers don't defecate in the lobby or egregiously insult coworkers. They just have poor social skills, may have poor hygiene, may perform poorly on teams, and so on. In those (by far more common) cases, I've almost never seen a situation where the company would be better off without that person in some capacity. Usually it just requires moving them off some team project to a big one-person project that's been festering on the TODO list.

It's actually pretty hard to find really good coders, so I'd say unless they actually are so terrible in other ways that it's screwing everything else up, if it were my company, I'd try to find somewhere to put them that plays to what they're good at while minimizing any potential friction.

Re:I'd say most are less extreme

[Rene S. Hollan]

Really is it that hard to spend 10 minutes in the morning, EVERY MORNING to bathe yourself??

Sometimes, when you've spent the past 48-72 hours working to solve some crisis that some moron left and you have to clean up, yes.

You look like shit, smell about as bad, and have a cranky attitude to match.

But, shipping on time and avoiding a $250,000/day contract penalty can sometimes justify the hell (Ah, contracts with separate "code complete" and "QA Pass" dates.)

Some coders don't shower all the time because they haven't gone home.

Stop coddling your little genius

[Anita Coney]

When kids are recognized as being highly intelligent and gifted, parents, extended family, and teachers go out of their to coddle them. To treat them as special. To give them far greater leniency and independence than kids with normal intelligence.

Is it any shock that these kids grow up to think the rules don't apply to them?

Re:Dr. House Syndrome

[java killed the dino]

Shows like 'House' glorify it and apparently make people think it is okay to be an asshole as long as you get the job done.

It isn't?

Re:without clowns like this

[Red4man]

The office females already notice you.

Right before they say things like "Oh dear God that THING.. that mouthbreather is looking at me again. I wish he'd just go away. Ewww gross, look how sweaty his palms are. Think he's ever heard of a shower?"

right tool

[trb]

If you need to cut, there's no tool as good as a sharp knife. If you need to turn a screw, a sharp knife probably isn't the right tool. If you have a guy who's a sharp knife, and you're using him to turn screws, maybe the problem isn't him. Maybe the problem is you.

They do exist

[Maximum Prophet]

I worked for a small company that severely underpaid it's employees. As a result, most were people who were just out of college (me), couldn't get a job elsewhere, or didn't want to move because of family connections in the area. Many employees quit right after a spouse graduated from the nearby University.

One of the programmers was brilliant, but actually insane. He could look over your shoulder and debug the page on your terminal in a few seconds. That is, when his meds were working. He would check himself into the local mental hospital for weeks at time, during which he was truly unavailable. They kept him around because they couldn't afford to hire real programmers.

Rent-seeking

[Baldrson]

"What documentation?"

The story ends there. "Josh" is no coding genius. He's a business genius. He understands that business nowadays is all about rent-seeking. Rent-seeking is looking for a parasitic niche from which you can milk the system with impunity, until the system collapses.

How could anyone learn any other lesson from the goings-on in Washington, D.C. and Wall St. nowadays?

Re:Lack of Documentation == dangerous

[Joe the Lesser]

Maybe there would be more documentation if you established reasonable deadlines.

Just sayin' sometimes there's another story.

Re:Dr. House Syndrome

[russotto]

Sounds like Dr. House for developers. People think because they are smart and/or great at their craft they can basically do anything they want.

Right. And that must be stopped. Because extraordinary results shouldn't result in extraordinary rewards. Genius developers who can solve problems in an hour which could take the rest of your team a month or more should get the same cubicles and be subject to the same strictures as everyone else.

Sorry, I'm not buying it. It's hard to compensate a quirky genius developer. You can pay them well (and usually have to), but that only goes so far -- they generally aren't like CEOs for whom money is the end rather than a means. Perks like an office rather than a cubicle are perfectly reasonable incentives, and so is "slack". If your genius developer doesn't document his code, a lesser developer can document it in far less time it would take any number of lesser developers to write and document it, or at least one of them isn't worth his salt.

Spiegel has rigged the question by choosing, embellishing, or inventing out of whole cloth a "quirky developer" who Spiegel claims caused most of the problems he solved and went beyond what any company could tolerate (open sexual harassment). But just because his probably-fictional "Josh" wasn't worth the trouble doesn't mean it's a good idea to treat your best developers like interchangable code-monkeys for whom following procedures is more important than brilliance.

Re:Dr. House Syndrome

[Joe the Lesser]

He may be an ass, but I agree with the parent that if you cure cancer I don't care if walk around shirtless and speak in Klingon.

Re:Perhaps

[ultranova]

It's not necessarily "enabling". I've known a lot of people who are just eccentric but incredibly bright (and have been told I'm one, which surprises the hell out of me), and it's probably just part of the territory.

A guy who mutters to himself while working is eccentric. A guy who insults his co-workers is an asshole. And a guy who smirks while informing others that documentation doesn't exist is just plain malicious.

Assholes should be kicked out of any team, because no matter how bright they are, they won't be able to compensate for the lowered productivity of everyone else who has to waste their time and energy to deal with their little power games. As an added bonus, it makes every other employee happy, thus making the world a bit better place. Profitable and morally right, firing assholes is a win-win situation. Even the asshole might benefit from the wake-up call.

Re:Lack of Documentation == dangerous

[morgan_greywolf]

Exactly. There's always two sides to a story like this. One reason documentation often gets missed is because "make it work and make it work NOW!" and "we forgot to tell you, it also needs to Z in addition to X and Y!" gets nice'd above documentation.

If we all had all the time we needed to do everything, the documentation would get done. But this is the real world and in the real world, IT management is definitely going to put functionality well above documentation on the importance scale.

Re:Lack of Documentation == dangerous

[Qzukk]

It only took you 90 words to say what he did in 11.

Obviously he had the time to clearly document his thoughts, while the other guy needed to make his post and make his post NOW!

Real geniuses aren't arseholes

[David Gerard]

In my continued and repeated experience, the real geniuses aren't arseholes. They may be socially inept, but they aren't contemptuous about it.

Paul Graham talks about this in How to start a startup:

For programmers we had three additional tests. Was the person genuinely smart? If so, could they actually get things done? And finally, since a few good hackers have unbearable personalities, could we stand to have them around?

That last test filters out surprisingly few people. We could bear any amount of nerdiness if someone was truly smart. What we couldn't stand were people with a lot of attitude. But most of those weren't truly smart, so our third test was largely a restatement of the first.

When nerds are unbearable it's usually because they're trying too hard to seem smart. But the smarter they are, the less pressure they feel to act smart. So as a rule you can recognize genuinely smart people by their ability to say things like "I don't know," "Maybe you're right," and "I don't understand x well enough."

This technique doesn't always work, because people can be influenced by their environment. In the MIT CS department, there seems to be a tradition of acting like a brusque know-it-all. I'm told it derives ultimately from Marvin Minsky, in the same way the classic airline pilot manner is said to derive from Chuck Yeager. Even genuinely smart people start to act this way there, so you have to make allowances.

It helped us to have Robert Morris, who is one of the readiest to say "I don't know" of anyone I've met. (At least, he was before he became a professor at MIT.) No one dared put on attitude around Robert, because he was obviously smarter than they were and yet had zero attitude himself.

Re:Lack of Documentation == dangerous

[Chris.Nelson]

If there is no documentation, the answer to the question, "Is it ready?" is "No." It's likely that the PHB doesn't know enough about what you're doing to disagree with you and grab your raw code from the repository and use it. If you establish a precedent for being done quickly (without documentation) then you get caught in a vicious cycle of it being expected that you'll be done quickly. It's best when the system supports proper documentation, etc. but if not, sandbag your estimates to give yourself time to do the job right, or at least half right. Over time, your productivity will catch up when you can figure out last month's or last year's code more quickly for a new feature because you took time then to document what you were doing.

Brilliant doesn't have to be dangerous.

[crovira]

I used to comment my code's 'intent' and document what I was trying to make it accomplish. (Instead of, and I kid you not, writing shit like "C = C + 1; /* add one to C */" [What was C counting, you fucking butt munch? There's terse and then there's stupid.] )

Then and only then, after documenting the intent, would I feel free to write the code.

I ended up giving courses to the other programmers because I was doing things in CICS Command Level COBOL that they had never heard of (like dynamic memory allocation to take a data structure and stand it on its ear.)

There were two ways to approach the problem.

I choose NOT to be a cock-biting ass-hole about it.

Re:Brilliant doesn't have to be dangerous.

[Beardo the Bearded]

I once wrote a coder / decoder for control messages for a radio system.

The code itself was about 30 lines. With comments explaining WTF was going on, it was about 150. There were backsteps, cycling through arrays, multiple search trees, etc. Part of the comments included basic theory on the decoding mechanism.

There was no way good variable names or "self-explanatory" code would have worked there.

Re: brilliant and dangerous?

[fugue]

People like Josh, on the other hand, should be fired on the spot.

I don't think so. They can just be recognised for what they are, and treated accordingly. Think of him as a fire extinguisher--a pain in the ass to clean up after, but from time to time invaluable. Sometimes you need a solution NOW, and you will have time to clean it up (or re-implement it more carefully) later. Perhaps your expectations for him were too high. Understand your resources and learn to use them appropriately.

Re: brilliant and dangerous?

[Dionysus]

Sometimes you need a solution NOW, and you will have time to clean it up (or re-implement it more carefully) later.

Except, cleanup (or re-implementation) never happens. What will happen is layer upon layer to work around bugs and problems. Because you can (almost) never justify to upper management that you need to reimplement something that works and the finish product is basically the same you started out with (with cleaner code, maybe).

Re: brilliant and dangerous?

[jellomizer]

Um no.
Because there are a lot of good people who can do the work and better and be a company player too. You are assuming that Josh's skills are irreplaceable. And that a good employee cannot do what he does. I am sorry, he is replaceable, and you can get a more professional guy to so the same job just as well, if not better because he is not so high on himself. I too have cleaned up messes after people like him. And let me tell you I have never seen any work by these guys that make me go wow this guy is my superior, in programming. Usually after a couple week I figure out the flow and I am just as productive as the guy was before, except people are willing to talk to me. Ask questions and raise problems that the other guy made them to afraid to mention.

Re:These guys are all right.

[Weaselmancer]

Yeah, I was all angsty in my 20's too. I had long frizzled hair and wore an army jacket with patches all over it, and hated the world and all the stupid morons in it.

I'm now in my 40's. I have a haircut, I'm sitting in an office cube wearing a polo shirt.

And I've got some news for you. It's *all* pointless. The end is the same for everybody. We're all worm food. Doesn't matter if you rage against the machine or oil its gears. In a hundred years, I promise you it won't matter one whit.

What does matter is what you do with the time your have. And I'll say this - I'm happier now at 40 with a nice job, nice house, nice car and a family I love dearly - however boring and polite it may be - than I *ever* was at 20 running around rebelling against everything mocking the stupid sheeple.

My advice would be to take whatever brilliance you may have and apply it to your own life, if you're able. Solve your own problems. Find whatever happiness you can. Because sitting around picking at your own wounds to keep them fresh doesn't do a single bit of good.

I have friends who never "sold out". They're miserable. Most are too poor to fix their missing teeth. If you sit around and tend a harvest of misery your whole life, then that will be your reward.

To sum up, life only sucks if you work at making it suck. Let it go.

Re: brilliant and dangerous?

[Kell Bengal]

I've been in exactly this situation: we were an custom GPS electronics company where one very talented electrical engineer built the hardware from the ground up (and he and a whole team of software guys did the code). I signed on as his lackey to do additional electronics development on the side because his time was 'so valuable' and they needed more stuff done besides

.

The -very- first thing they had me do when I arrived was produce page after page of documentation on how the hardware actually worked so that the software guys could understand it. It wasn't ground-breaking design, it wasn't super complicated, but it was subtle and you couldn't get the whole idea of what was going on without being able to speak Engineer (specifically the EE dialect). A lot of people in the company were terrified that he'd walk out one day and get hit by a bus and the company would have to spend a fortune it didn't have for a team of engineers to come in and tell everyone else how their own system worked.

When I asked him why there was no documentation (or very poor documentation when there was) the answer was a combination of "You shouldn't need documentation" and "I'm not paid to document things."

Well, actually... you are.

A few early experiences counseled me very strongly to enforce good documentation practices in my code and hardware design. Any design more complicated than a blinking LED (the hardware equivalent of 'Hello World') requires it - if you aren't documenting, you're not doing what you're paid to do. As TFA says, End of Story.

Re: brilliant and dangerous?

[jellomizer]

Having Asperger's isn't a good excuse to do a poor job or to be anti-social, or unprofessional. Yes you may have hard time following the right non-verbal queues. But things such as dressing appropriately for work, using the bathroom in the right spots, and a lot of the quarks that happen are due to bad behavior that people even with serious Asperger's can work one and minimize and be at a professional level. I don't take the idea, that I have a disability so you need to deal with my Crap mentality, it is basically reinforcing that they can behave badly, without having them work on improving themselves.

Re: brilliant and dangerous?

[91degrees]

The article was about someone who can do an incredible amount of coding in a very short time. Indeed, more coding in less time than most anyone else.

Because all he was doing was writing code. He took an hour to solve a problem that took the team 2 days. "The team" must have been at least 3 people. So that's occupying 6 programmer days. 40-45 hours. It would have taken him less than an hour to document or explain what the solution was. Is he really worth 40-45 times as much as the other programmers?

If the guy produces a lot of unmaintainable code then he's costing almost as much as he's making for the company. His personality problems will increase staff turnover, and he will eventually leave. Nobody lasts forever. When he leaves everything that he wrote will have to be documented or replaced at considerable cost.

Most programmers will be able to do most tasks. There are some highly specialised tasks that will require an expert in that area, but you can always find the appropriate expert. Anything else can be learned. You'll lose a developer for a few days while he learns but you'll gain a developer with extra knowledge, and the half decent ones will be happy to stick with a company that allows them to develop.

Re: brilliant and dangerous?

[Kell Bengal]

Well, he was employee #1 in the company (both value-wise and chornologically). Since he didn't document at the start, it was much cheaper to hire a post-grad than spare a more expensive employee from actual development work.

I wonder if perhaps there's an argument for pairing senior employees who do the critical design work with fresh hires to document the what and why of it. That way, the higher-up engineers don't have to write anything down and the junior engineers get to absorb some of their insight by osmosis.

I myself am a quirky yet briliant programmer

[MichaelCrawford]

I have been a software engineer for twenty-one years, at one time having the role of "Debug Meister" as a system software engineer at Apple Computer - this because I'm a wizard at assembly debugging and reverse engineering.

• My Resume

For example, I was once able to give Microsoft the exact byte offset in Word's binary where their bug lay, that would cause a very rare, difficult to reproduce system crash - this was way before Mac OS X, so application faults would hang the whole machine.

I have Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder. Because it's just like being manic depressive and schizophrenic at the same time, it is one of the very worst mental illnesses that one can have.

It is very rare, poorly understood and notoriously difficult to treat. My symptoms include depression, which has been suicidal at times - I've attempted in a serious way twice - a profoundly euphoric state called mania, auditory hallucinations and, in my case, visual hallucinations that coordinate with a profound paranoia that leads me to believe that a shadowy, secret law enforcement agency I call The Thought Police are coming, not to arrest me, but to kill me.

I call them The Thought Police because they are The Police Inside My Head. You see, I know very well that they're not real. Unfortunately, just knowing that one is paranoid doesn't make the paranoia go away. When I look directly at my attackers, I can see that they're not there, but when I turn away I can feel their presence again.

But Wait, There's More!

There are Five Axes of psychiatric diagnosis. That is, one's Madness is a point in a sort of five-dimensional vector space.

Schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia and manic depression are all biochemical axis diseases; they are caused by screwed up brain chemistry. They are thought to be genetic, although there is some evidence that schizophrenia can be caused by infectious disease when one is either in the womb or very young.

Biochemical axis illnesses are generally incurable, but their symptoms can often be relieved with medication. I know very well what would happen to me should I ever weary of my life on the run and decide to turn myself in to The Thought Police - and so I am very diligent at taking my daily dose of the powerful, expensive, mind-altering drug which gives me the comfort of staying a step - but just a step - ahead of Them.

There is also a neurotic axis. Neuroses are purely psychological in origin and are usually caused by some kind of unresolved trauma, usually experienced as a child such as sexual abuse, but it can arise in adults too, as with the war veteran's Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Ironically, many neurosis originate as adaptive strategies, that enable the neurotic to survive their terrible ordeal. Thus the soldier who learns to dive for cover at every sharp sound survives the war, but is unable to return to civilian life after returning home - because he still feels the need to dive for that safety.

The little girl who survives her pedophile by imagining his advances to be courtship by a handsome prince my not find her Castle in the Sky such a wonderful place to live when she grows up, gets married and has children of her own.

The neurotic axis illnesses can all be cured, and through "talk therapy" alone, without the use of any drugs - in fact, using drugs to relieve one's symptoms can actually relieve one of the need to ever get better.

Unfortunately, the cure generally takes many years and is collossally expensive. In my case I estimate that I paid just one therapist sixty thousand dollars for thirteen years of weekly psychotherapy sessions.