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When Smart People Make Bad Employees
theodp writes "Writing for Forbes, CS-grad-turned-big-time-VC Ben Horowitz gives three examples of how the smartest people in a company can also be the worst employees: 1. The Heretic, who convincingly builds a case that the company is hopeless and run by a bunch of morons; 2. The Flake, who is brilliant but totally unreliable; 3. The Jerk, who is so belligerent in his communication style that people just stop talking when he is in the room. So, can an employee who fits one of these poisonous descriptions, but nonetheless can make a massive positive contribution to a company, ever be tolerated? Quoting John Madden's take on Terrell Owens, Horowitz gives a cautious yes: 'If you hold the bus for everyone on the team, then you'll be so late that you'll miss the game, so you can't do that. The bus must leave on time. However, sometimes you'll have a player that's so good that you hold the bus for him, but only him.' Ever work with a person who's so good that he/she gets his/her own set of rules? Ever been that person yourself?"
pretty much covers the entire base of IT folks with those three definitions.
Here is a link for those of you unfamiliar.
I am that person myself, but not on purpose. I just work differently than the other people. I "write the code" in my head in big chunks then eventually have it worked through and then I go actually put it into a file and build it. I also tend to do about 90% of my "work" (meaning actually writing lines of code) in 10% of the time because the rest of the time I'm working through things and writing code in my head when inspired.
The best people I've worked for were never the smartest. They combined high enough intelligence with wisdom. They were humbled by time. They had learned people skills. And if they had any kind of self-awareness, they were shamed by how much they had acted like assholes when they were younger.
Gregory House. Need anyone say more?
the person actually adds strong value to the company then you isolate them within a special department and handle them appropriately.
Most of the time these people don't add nearly as much as they think they do/ In that case, get rid of them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm thankfully not smart enough to qualify, but I've worked with both Heretics and Jerks. One of the really nice things I love about my current workplace is their clear and very explicit "no brilliant jerks" policy. "For us, the cost to effective teamwork is too high."
The only time I've ever interviewed someone, walked out of the interview absolutely sure we had to hire them, and been wrong was when we hired one of the three smartest guys I've ever worked with -- who proved to be entirely ineffective in getting anything done because "we have to change everything because you're all a bunch of idiots!"
That's because I'm surrounded by Morons who don't even know the capital of Elbonia!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
A slight variation on the first one is the “embittered moral drain”. These are people who are brilliant, but for whatever reason have basically committed career suicide. They become bitter and angry, and although they still do their job, they make a huge deal out of every minor mistake made by the company. This kind of thing spreads to those around them and it can really take the fun out of work, which kills productivity.
A forth type I might add is the “unfocused hacker”. These are the guys who treat their job like their hobby. They focus on the stuff that interests them, and ignore the stuff that’s “boring”. They never ask for clarification and just make assumptions when the requirements aren’t clear because they’d rather code than type up an email. If tasked to build a car in 4 months.. they’d spend 3 months designing the coolest, most elegant windshield wiper you’d ever seen.. and then spend the remaining 1 month bodging an old tricycle to meet the requirements. These guys are usually skilled, but unless you keep a really tight leash on them, they make a huge mess.
I’ve also run into the inverse of this list on quite a few occasions “The Dedicated Idiot.”. These are the guys who are really nice people, willing to put in extra time and energy, good team players, but have the slight problem of not being able to actually do their job. No one wants to get rid of this guy he’s really trying but damn is his code terrible and full of bugs and never on time and never quite meets the spec.
Also, what was up with the mixing of “he” and “she”. I don’t know why, but I found this very distracting.
I have always been the most important person on any team, but no one seems to notice...
Ray Seyfarth, ray.seyfarth@gmail.com, http://rayseyfarth.blogspot.com
> However, sometimes you'll have a player that's so good that you hold the bus for him, but only him.' Ever work with a person who's so good that he/she gets his/her own set of rules?
He openly declared one of his superiors to be an idiot - and got away with it. Everyone (well, mostly) treated him special and he pretty much enjoyed his special status. I still don't understand why that was tolerated. While he definitely was very good, he wasn't so exceptional that it would justify him getting away with pretty much anything.
And I think that there are very few situations where you really have a player that is so strong to allow him to play a one man show in a team.
Why is a person a bad employee if they are willing to point out poor leadership in their company? Isn't that a positive contribution to the company, if the bosses can be replaced with better leadership? The article seems to think that pointing out flaws in the company that can be corrected are ok, but pointing out flaws in leadership shouldn't normally be allowed. I guess this article is directed at PHB's...
sad to say, the world is hopeless and run by morons.
(I am not a number...)
"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning" - Catherine Aird
Of course smart people make bad employees. Good employees are the people too stupid to see that the entire economy is rigged and that 90% of it is pointless make-work that benefits others at their expense, and just keep on pressing the little paddle and receiving their human-treats and making more good little workers.
You think they pay me to post to /.?
No, they pay me to save their asses every couple of weeks.
I guess all (smart) people fit in any of the three categories. As long as they do the work without being too much of a nuisance it's not big of a problem. The 2nd category can actually be worked around if the person does the work (or more of it) that you expect from an average employee. If they get tolerated to the extent of other people leaving or having a hard time working around them then you should seriously considering having a little talk with the person.
However, how indispensable those people are is what really makes the difference. The problem of firing them arises when you can't get them being hit by a bus without the company tanking at which point you need to bite the bullet and hire somebody (or a team) to take over their work and kick him out.
Sometimes all those people need is somebody to lightly boss around. A single employee or a team that can do the menial work because that's why they are reacting like that, they have to do the menial stuff day-in-day-out and little pet projects the higher ups want done quickly without being able to concentrate on the real problems. They also need to get heard by the upper management. It's not for nothing they think the higher ups are morons, usually it is because they're actually morons and don't want to listen to good advice. If you have seriously problematic people that are indispensable, you have serious managerial problems and it won't get fixed by other people taking their place.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
..."Three Ways Employees Can Cause Problems for a Company"? Attacking leadership, or being a flake or a jerk are not in any way attached to intelligence. And frankly there are many more ways that smart or non-smart employees can be a problem for a company (being a thief comes to mind...).
You Fight for the User!!
If they don't want smart people then stop forcing people to have 4-6+ year degrees to get jobs and have more on the job training.
I have found that smart people are really bad at simple, repetitive, boring tasks.
They get bored, start daydreaming, and make mistakes.
For the jerk and flake, there is simply more than 'intelligence' that matters, and sometimes that can offset any benefit.
The same can apply for the Heretic, but frequently the so-called heretic is right, which is a bigger problem than his apparent lack of morale.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I've been that jerk in the past -- the guy that everyone listened to because I was right and came up with really good software, but people hated dealing with me and basically shut up when I was in the room. I slowly discovered that if I stopped acting like a jerk, people still respected me, but they stopped putting up a fight. People even went out of their way to help me. It was a lot easier to do my job, and I'm convinced that I was actually able to produce better code because of the reduced number of bureaucratic headaches.
I wish I'd figured it out earlier.
Hmm, on the other hand, I was asked to do more stuff because people were less afraid of me. So I guess... be careful what you wish for?
Building Better Software
If a smart employee can make a convincing case that the company is run by morons, it's not the employee that's the problem. It's the morons that are running the place.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Brilliant but unproductive, there are a lot of those, smart is not necessarily == productive.
1. The Heretic, who convincingly builds a case that the company is hopeless and run by a bunch of morons;
Thats me, Does it count that the company was running 10+ year old systems with no maintenance contracts, no spare parts, no documentation, and only 4 people to manage 3 full data centers totalling over 500 systems. Where disaster recovery was considered successful if they could get it back up in a week. Oh, did I mention that it was a financial company handling Billions of $? Did you know that financial company employees are supposed to take two weeks off with no access to the systems, that is to detect fraud. They waved the off time because we were only 4 people and could not manage it on 3. And I am the Heretic for pointing this crap out. I question the Heretic label because I have worked for many companies that where run by a bunch of morons who did not understand IT and did not follow any kind of best practices. I am sure we all have horror stories to tell. There are a lot of companies that cut IT to the bone with out understanding what exactly was going on or how it would effect the company down the road.
That job was sucking the life out of me.
It's not that I'm particularly good at what I do.
It's that the place was dis-functional.
The only things that got done were through back channels.
With the inevitable outcome.
Spaghetti code sucks, spaghetti management is worse.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I've been that person whom they hold the bus. That's because I carried the workload of four people. It took four people to replace me when I left. Partly because I'm fairly skilled and partly because I worked long hours and sometimes weekends and sometimes even in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep.
I've also been that person that understood the company was run by complete idiots. When I made a passing comment about the stupidity of the CEO, everyone thought I was an idiot. Within the year, all of those same people had either left the company because of obviously poor management or completely agreed with me and were actively looking.
The simple fact is, knowing the company is run by an idiot doesn't mean you're poisoning the company. Understanding that something is wrong is the first step to fixing it. Of course, given the disparity is power, obviously I can't fix it, but it doesn't mean the company suffers for it - save only for the stupidity of the executives.
The simple fact is, nothing poisons a company moreso than stupid management. Looking to blame employees for poisoning of corporate culture and morale likely means you're part of the problem. That's obviously not an absolute but you should look long and hard to determine if in fact, you are the poison you're looking for; as after all, you may be trying to kill the messenger.
I was complaining to my boss once about a jerk in our department; he pointed out that most organizations can deal with any amount of ego as long as there are results equal to or greater than the cost of dealing with the ego.
Once the results go away, the ego has to leave too.
Shortly thereafter the individual left and eventually wound up working at Intel.
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
Look at my handle, what do you think? When I'm predictively correct about -everything- well in advance of management's mis-perception of reality and I outline specifically their mis-perception, and repeatedly over many years turn out to be correct: yea, they listen and modify course.
There are team players, and then there are Franchise players.
My communication skills have been... insufficient, shall we say, for a good part of my life, though I kept bringing consistent technical know-how that made my social misgivings marginally tolerable, to a point. Just make sure you never become more trouble than you're worth, however, and work on your social skills. The minute they improve, you'll become far more valuable to your company!!!
And boy are there some odd people among them!
But the majority just did what was expected, come up with novel ideas and ways to do things different and better.
It takes a special type of management/manager to point these brains in the right direction and when this happens it's great to see.
When the management isn't able to control these wizkids you will eventually have a problem but as they were between peers they usually were made to get back to producing what they were hired for.
The best you can do is to give them a real challenge and reward them with a bigger challenge.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I'd bet a good small portion of the crowd here falls into one (or more) of those categories, in varying degree.
Of course, you age and mellow out, and hopefully wise up. Or else.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Of course, he doesn't mention the smart person that shows up on time, does their work dutifully, and saves the company money by doing over and above what their job entails.
You know what's worse than a smart person who is lazy and doesn't show up on time? A dumb person that is lazy and doesn't show up on time. All of those traits he listed aren't qualities that solely belong to "smart people."
I'll take all of the above for 1000 Alex. When you can sit down and write code for 8 hours a day for 15 years you let me know boss man. Until then I'll be over here being an ornery prick that makes you a ton of money and takes a very small cut.
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
Are useful, but only up to the point when you sell the company and reap massive profits.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
A fragment. Transcribed from a cassette tape recording made at a seance in 1973.
"I PICK THE GOD DAMN terror of the fucking gods out of my nose! Pardon my language. But YEEEEEHAW, let the sons of God and man bear witness! Even in the belly of the Thunderbird I've been casting out the False Prohets; I'm busting a gut and blowing my O-ring, and ripe to throw a loaf! For I speak only the fucking Truth, and never in my days have I spoken other than! For my every utterance is a lie, including this very one you hear! I say, `Fuck'em if they can't take a joke!' By God, `Anything for a laugh', I say. I am the last remaining Homo Correctus, I am the god damn Man of the Future! I'll drive a mile so as not to walk a foot; I am a human being of the first god damn water! Yes, I'm the javalina humping junkie that jumped the Men from Mars! I drank the Devil under seven tables, I am too intense to die, I'm insured for acts o' God and Satan! I was shanghaied by bodiless fiends and alien jews from a corporate galaxy, and got away with their hubcaps! I cannot be tracked on radar! I wear nothing uniform, I wear no god damn uniform! Yes baby, I'm 23 feet tall and have 13 rows o' teats; I was suckled by a triceratops, I gave the Anti-Virgin a high-protien tonsil wash! I'm a bacteriological weapon, I armed and loaded! I'm a fission reactor, I fart plutonium, power plants are fueled by the sweat from my brow; when they plug me in, the lights go out in Hong Kong! I weigh 666 pounds in zero gravity, come and get me! I've sired retarded space bastards across the Cosmos, I cook and eat my dead; YAH-HOOOO, I'm the Unshaven Thorn Tree of the Atlantis Zoo! I pay no taxes! The Devil's hands are my ideal playground! I hold the Seven-Bladed Windbreaker; the wheels that turn are behind me; I think backwards! I do it for fun! My imagination is a fucking cancer and I'll pork it before it porks me! The say a godzillion is the highest number there is. Well by God! I count to a godzillion and one! Yes, I'm the purple flower of Hell County, give me wide berth; when I drop my drawers, Mother Nature swoons! I use a python for a prophylactic; I'm thicker, harder and meaner than the Alaskan Pipeline, and carry more spew! I'll freeze your seed before it hits the bathroom tile! YEE! YEEE! I kidnapped the future and ransomed it for the past, I made Time wait up for me to bleed my lizard! My infernal breath wilts the Tree of Life, I left my spoor on the Rock of Ages, who'll tear flesh with me, who'll spill their juice? Who'll gouge with me, whose candle will I fart out? Whoop! I'm ready! So step aside, all you butt-lipped, neurotic, insecure bespectacled slabs o' wimp meat! I'm a Crime Fighting Master Criminal, I am Not Insane! I'm a screamer and a laugher, I make a spectacle of myself, I am a sight! My physical type cannot be classified by science, my `familiar' is a pterodactyl, I feed it dipshits! I communicate without wires or strings! I am a Thuggee, I am feared in the Tongs, I have the Evil Eye, I carry the Mojo Bag; I swam the Bermuda Triangle and didn't get wet! I circumcize dinosaurs with my teeth and make 'em leave a tip; I change tires with my tongue and my tool! Every night I hock up a lunger and extinguish the Sun! I'm the bigfooted devil of Level 14, who'll try to blow me down? I've packed the brownies of the gods, I leak the Plague from my nether parts, opiates are the mass of my religion, I take drugs! Yes, I'm a rip-snorter, I cram coca leaves right into my arm-veins before they're picked off the tree! Space monsters cringe at my tread! I wipe the Pyramides off my shoes before I enter my house. I'm fuel-injected, I'll live forever and remember it afterwords! I'm immune! I'm radioactive! Come on and give me cancer, I'll spit up the tumor and butter my bread with the juice! I'm supernatural, I bend crowbars with my meat ax and a thought! My droppings bore through the earth and erupt volcanoes in China! Yes, I can drink more wine and stay soberer than all the heathen Hindoos in Asia! YEEE HAW! Gut Blowout! I am a Moray Eel, I am a Komodo Drago
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Looks like a web page designed for the blind.
If you can't work with others, then you will be fired. On occasion you make exceptions for an employee, but not to the point of having someone around that will not work with others. If your business is dependent on any one thing, whether customer, supplier or employee to make it work then you're in the wrong business.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
..isn't this how executives expect to be treated, even though they're not the necessarily smartest ones in the company?
So what's their excuse? Special treatment occurs in the workplace all the time.
"I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them."
I have to wonder which kind of employee Ben Horowitz's superiors thought he was.
The problems that you save them from are the result of decisions made where your advice was not followed, right?
The problem I have with TFA is that if the employees really ARE that smart ... how can the average person know that? As opposed to someone who happens to know a bit of trivia?
I have to work my ass off to not be The Flake. Being brilliant is easy. Showing up every day? Not so easy.
To quote a boss of mine at another company: "The user is in the center. In other words, he's in our way!"
Spoken from the perspective of an executive who expects million dollar salaries coming up with excuses to lowball the pay of his best employees without any legitimate reason.
I think #1 probably describes the companies this man runs.
I truly think that one of the worst parts about business is the hierarchal structure and the assumption that management is somehow 'superior' (think of the descriptive name of people 'above' you - superiors? PLEASE.) to the people that actually produce. And no, management, while a skill, and a valuable one, does not PRODUCE anything. At it's best, management facilitates production. If a manager gets paid to manage 10 employees, and gets paid twice the amount of any of them, then each employee's gotta produce at least 20% more at least just to justify the overhead of having a manager. How many times have you honestly had a manager that made you that much more productive?
No, management is an expense, a necessary evil. To make matters worse, poor management abounds, since one is typically promoted into management as a performance reward - even though the actual work of management has little to do with the work of production.
Managers should start at the minimum wage - and only get raises if they display management skill, rather than start off at a higher wage than their producers. Reviews should be strict, too - IME a bad manager is more likely to bring production to a stop than a good one is to completely justify their salary (IE, the producers produce so much more that the wages of the manager are offset)
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
I call this the Programmer's Ego. We all know this person. They are the person where no matter what, their code is like God himself typed it up, and any questioning that code results in them flipping out about how their code is amazing and that stuff. Those guys suck to deal with because they refuse to accept if there is a flaw in their code. It gets old and annoying
The world is how you make it
My grandfather was a draftsman for Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) back in the day before computers. How did he get his job? After applying he was given an IQ test. He was considered smart enough for the job and they taught him how to draw airplane parts. These days you'd get sued six ways from Sunday if you gave someone an IQ test as a pre-requisite for employment.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
From TFA: /. ? Clueless management seems to be the #1 complaint.
#1. Smarter than management - how many times do you see this on
#2. Addicted to coke - Seriously, why is this even in the article? Where's the editor?
#3. Undefined "jerk" - Again, where's the editor? Of course every manager would LOVE an employee who's a genius and never questions your decisions and works 120 hours a week fixing your systems because of decisions you made.
The problem is that most managers SUCK at communication.
But they don't know it because they confuse TALKING with COMMUNICATING. In the VP example, why isn't the president of the company (or the other VP's) doing anything about it WHILE IT IS HAPPENING?
I seem to remember a time when tech culture was better tolerated, if misunderstood. Post dot-com era, the old conformist culture has reasserted itself with it's fucked up, ultimately self-defeating expectations, where feelings matter more than fact, process matters more than results, and blind loyalty matters more than earned respect. This is the primary reason technical people run into trouble at work.
Sure, there are assholes in every field, but the best technical people are rarely if ever socially well-adapted. Their minds are world-focused, not people-focused. This is what allows them to do their jobs well in the first place. Their caustic (to non techs) attitudes manifest because they are often focal points within their organizations that end up interfacing expectation (often hollywood trained) with technical realities. PHBs don't give a shit about the details, they "hired you to make it work, so make it work" even while they refuse to grant you required resources/time/training because they lack proper understanding in the first place (and often lack the desire to learn the basics so they can manage properly). Being less people-oriented already, that pressure often blows off in lots of dark, satirical sarcasm, one-liners, and other nuggets of wisdom that, more often than not, hit too close to home for insecure management and coworkers. Instead of encouraging hyper-sensitivity, culture in general needs to toughen up if it wants to be effective in solving problems. In short, many techs would have better attitudes if they were listened to a bit more (no I do not mean despotic deference). They will never be warm, people-pleasers, but, trust me, you don't want them that way.
I suggest all the would-be well-this-is-how-real-'professionals'-like-me-work posters stop and think about how stressful their situations are and/or how good they really are before they preach to those they'd dismiss as anti-social malcontents who need to get with it. Neuro-typicals make mediocre techs at best, that's why they hire us in the first place.
1. The Heretic, who convincingly builds a case that the company is hopeless and run by a bunch of morons: I have worked with hopeless organizations, with no money to commit, no leadership and no philosophy. check.
2. The Flake, who is brilliant but totally unreliable: I have been unreliable, but it was not my fault! Honest. check.
3. The Jerk, who is so belligerent in his communication style that people just stop talking when he is in the room: People have just stopped talking while working on a project in the same room because I have talked too much. I assumed it was because they where assholes, weaklings or just not team players. check.
One thing to keep in mind is that Venture Capitalists are there to maximize the amount of money they can get for a company. That often means forcing the smart company founder(s) out the door for the least amount of money possible. While there are folks that do fit his his categories to a tee, there are plenty of other people who are smeared or manipulated by the VCs into those positions.
I am the walrus. Koo Koo Ka-Choo!
The fact of the matter is that I really am brilliant, but I'm lazy as hell. I know it, my boss knows it...everyone knows it. They overlook shit that I do. When they REALLY need something done they will call on me and my expertise to guide people who aren't flaky through getting the issue resolved. Otherwise I play by one set of rules and everyone else gets yelled at if they try that shit.
On the plus side I am a helpful flake. I just don't like doing shit myself. I'd rather post on /.
And thereby do we traverse the tortuous path from intelligence to wisdom...
You can absolutely have employees who are productive enough, and make substantial contribution enough that they get their own set of rules. I've seen those people, and I've *been* those people. However, you can't have employees that are so difficult to work with that they provide negative contribution to their coworkers' environment. In those cases, you need to either get them away from the coworkers, or get them away.
I have been both the Flake, and earlier the Heretic.
My personal feeling and experience is that these people are just missurable. I know for much of it I was. And this was for many reasons.
1.) Many "smarter than the average bear" folks are VERY aware of their faults, and thus are quite insecure about certain things (while over confident in others).
2.) It's very hard to make and keep friends when you are this way. Many end up embrassing this wearing t-shirts that say " Doesn't Play Well with Others"
3.) Many have personal challenges like ADD, ADHD, Obsessive/Compulsive, Asperger's etc. If they don't know, or refuse help, this can make them VERY difficult.
4.) Many have been this way their whole lives and honestly have NO idea they are how they are.
I know it's hard, but have some pity. Trust me, anyone who makes others unhappy is very often REALLY unhappy themselves.
The parent post has been the most insightful comment I've seen in this thread. Please MOD THE PARENT UP.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I was gonna be all "blah blah IQ tests don't actually measure intelligence so it's a bad way to do hiring" - but for a draftsman, when you're going to do all the training on the job, it's actually not bad.
I'm still gonna sue, though.
I won't comment on whether I am or am not on that list. But the company did bend over backwards for the person I replaced. They thought they had to have them to keep the company operational. He thought he had a job for life, no matter how belligerent he was. I applied for his boss, but ended up not accepting the position. However, I expressed an interest in his position (without knowledge of who was in what position or any of the internal politics, but just a "that's not what I'm looking for, I'd rather have XXX"). So, the next time the prima donna had a hissy fit and threatened to leave, they accepted his resignation when he didn't really mean to give his resignation. And poof, the company cut off a very large anchor that they thought was necessary. And they've done better ever since.
Everyone is replaceable.
Learn to love Alaska
He's actually very smart, but he's always taking the quickest, dirtiest route to the goal. If a hack will do it, he'll do it and make that part of any critical process without a second thought to architecture, interdependencies or anything like that. If a manual workaround is faster, that's what he'll do - or mostly instruct others to do. For that he's known as a problem solver and is in high regard with management, which means nobody gets to rein him in.
What they don't see is that every system runs like crap and is impossible to understand because there's weird kludges upon kludges upon kludges. Many interdependencies are completely irrational, you're afraid to touch anything to break it. That all the manual workarounds are choking the efficiency of everyone else, which are of course blamed when the endless manual steps and "remember this, check that, copy this field to that then save, alter status, execute this job" gets too complicated, error prone and slow. And he's mostly oblivious to this himself, he praises how the quickfixes help us even when quickfixes are the reason it's such a huge and complicated process to begin with. What's saving him is that nobody can do better, because everything is such a clusterfuck they don't understand anything and so full of special cases and other mine fields that the answers are bound to be wrong.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If the Heretic was so smart, then why would he reveal the idiots? Consultants make a living preying on dumb (and dieing) companies everyday. n fact, you can alway tell a dieing company because they lay off their employees and "outsource" high paid consultants to run their business.
A smart Heretic I would think would quietly high them drive their company in the ground and make lots of money in the process...
During most of my regular career I was sort of the person that had my own rules because I was central to many of the things that had to get done. When the company president was to be fired the board called me to be sure I wouldn't quit. I worked hard not to abuse that position but you would have to go back to my former co-workers to see how successful I was. In a small group working in a very specialized field there may be several largely essential people. If any of them are jerks life can be hell.
Where was your boss during that time? Why wasn't he (she) MANAGING your time and projects and resources?
And you're okay with that, right?
Again, where's your boss?
SOMEONE has to be the dick and say "NO" to some requests. Or to demand business justification. And so forth.
There's no reason for you to be the jerk if your boss is correctly fulfilling that role.
If your boss isn't, then you have to.
I don't consider John Madden's experience relevant to IT management.
I wish I had a mod point for you.
One summer between semesters I was doing web dev bullshit in an office full of alcoholics and Xanax addicts that abused DayQuil to stay awake during work hours. My boss was a pickup-driving meathead. I hated everyone in that place. One week I took two unannounced vacation days. The next Monday I called them to let them know I would come back (I'm not a complete jerk, I didn't want to leave them hanging), and when my boss asked me where I was I told him it didn't matter.
He fired me. Less than 40 minutes later he called me and asked me to come back.
I spent the rest of my short time in that place flagrantly violating dress code. They wanted me to stay but I just had to get out of there.
If it's working AND they don't plan to be around for the collapse then they aren't morons.
They are implementing an agenda that you don't agree with. And they have different priorities.
The problem is that their agenda depends upon you attempting to follow your agenda (keep the company running) while they undermine you with their agenda (take as much money out as possible and bail out when it collapses). This is usually maintained via deception and articles about "heretics" and "team players".
I prefer to hire adults who understand their job obligations (and the employer obligations), can balance their personal lives and needs with their jobs and accomplish their jobs.
When I have had to hire one of the types of people mentioned in the article, it was always for a special job and I let them go when the job was accomplished (this was stated up front). They are too disruptive and demoralizing to the other employees. When I had one of these employees by default, they were usually fired as soon as I could find a replacement; I don't need extra aggravation in my life, nor do my employees
The skills they have are worth money (usually worth more than what they are willing to accept), so they should ask for the bucks up front (I liked to give completion bonuses, so we're both happy when the job is done) and then deliver; we'll all be happier.
I used to work with one of these brilliant jerks. For years he did a job only he could do for the company, and he knew it. However, he thought he was always right because he was good. I used to be one of these brilliant jerks, too, but I was saved early on by a good manager and I was taught the opposite, to be good, you have to be always right. He was constantly telling people that they weren't doing their job and screwing things up and causing more work for him. However, he made mistakes. But his ego was impenetrable... "of course I'm right!" So how did I deal with him? By always being right. Checking my facts, double checking them, testing, retesting, drilling down, using logic, and presenting my conclusion. And then I'd fire off my email including his manager and mine and simply presented the facts. When I got no response, I knew I had one, because the onus on fixing whatever screwup there was fell properly in his lap. If he was right, I never had to fire off the email because I had already checked my facts and moved on. And yet the guy respected me! He never said he was wrong, but we were on excellent working terms.
That's how I dealt with him. How did management deal with him? Hint... follow the money...
One day several years ago he walked into one junior VPs office and essentially said "I want an X dollar raise or I'm walking." He figured that he could do his job on a consulting basis and make more money personally than working for this company. And he was right. The higher level senior VP at the time wanted to fire him, but the junior VP said "we can't afford it, because he's right, no one else can do that job" So he got his raise. He was good, so he felt he must be right. It worked that time.
A year later the software he was working on was transitioned to a completely new package. It still performed the same function, but it was different code base, different design package, and in general, more people were familiar with it's inner workings. So he suddenly went from "irreplaceable" to "very valuable, but replaceable." I don't think he ever acknowledged this to himself. Well, I don't know all the details, but word is he said the wrong thing in an email that included another VP, and next thing you know his manager is escorting him to the door.
Our company has found a way to do his job without him just fine.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
are usually bright enough to not appear the smartest jerks/heretics etc.
Actually it's not that bad. It's even worse and more widespread when stupid people make bad employees believing they're smart.
Interesting. The last company I worked for gave me an IQ test to determine if they should hire me...
When the companies goal is to profit through wage arbitrage, I cannot help to rebel.
Worth Reading:
http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_07_22_a_talent.htm
You tell me. How many times have you ever had no manager and had to: budget, purchasing, strategic planning, handle legal, handle customers, handle clients, handle vendors, and all the other things that management ends up doing? Think doing all that might add up to 20% longer workdays for you? I bet it would easily add an hour or two on to every day you work, and you know it would too.
No such thing. If the role were not valuable enough to an organization to justify their existence, they would not exist. There are definitely individuals who are poor managers, and do not fufill the duties of their role. There are definitely poorly defined or unnecessary "boss' nephew" management roles that get created in organizations. But "management" as a skill is very much a necessary part of an organization, and calling it nothing more than an evil and a drag on productivity is a tremendously dishonest practice.
*Bad* managers are a drag. *Incompetent* managers are a drag. That doesn't mean that "management" is unnecessary or useless.
Saying that the actual work of management has little to do with the work of production is like saying that the actual work of architects has very little to do with the work of building. All the architects do is just push around bits of paper and drawings all day. How does *that* help us erect a skyscraper??!!
Perhaps Forbes and the population at large should embrace the idea that not everyone should be a cubicle dweller.
The idea that stupid people are the foundation of a good Army applies equally well to any large beaurocratic structure.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Let the smart ones keep their freedom and innovate on their own or using ad-hoc collaborations through the internet. Have the govt provide a basic income and fund challenges to encourage the creativity of individuals without the need for management hierarchies and the social games that prevail in offices.
I've had a hell of a lot of difficulty with dealing with this kind of thinking. Do as you're told and shut up and show a happy face. I can probably only do two of those. Some companies seem to thrive on average people who just happily keep on repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again.
Your post pretty much describes my development process. Only that the company I work at does not have much in the way of mandated modeling utilities. So when I'm at the "mostly there" stage, I tend to start writing a skeleton of the program in actual code. Preferably in an object-oriented design, as this makes it easier to maintain the overview.
Next is filling in the actual functionality, which means another cycle of improving things piece by piece.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Sometimes the listed difficult personalities can be tempered by the character traits of other team members. I'm a bit of the Heretic, but that's balanced out by my boss' unbridled optimism, something I expected would simply annoy me, yet it has become strangely infectious.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
This is why you need smart, capable managers to manage your smart, capable employees. Anything less and you're asking for trouble.
It's far worse when they don't know jack, but convinced the interviewer they do.
I suffered through a team lead who was combinaton all three in his attitude and effect on morale. But in the end he totally screwed up the project due to the fact that he was completely clueless. He took us down a path that was not only completely unproductive, but took a lot of effort to fix once management got wise to him and rid us of his presence.
As a musician, #2 "The Flake" is the norm. The flakiest-yet-most-brilliant people I've ever worked with are fellow musicians. Guitarists, for some reason, seem to be the most guilty.
As someone who works in a support role (training development) for a software company, #3 "The Jerk" is pretty common as well. There are so many smart devs and engineers that lack any sort of tact or personal communication skills (and I don't mean the stereotypical introvert), it amazes me that they can't see the value in communicating well. Maybe it's an engineer mentality of everything being cut-and-dried, with personal skills being outside of the scope of their immediate requirements.
I might be a little of #1, "The Heretic" for even posting the above, but it wasn't described very clearly to me, so I'm not sure.
In many cases, yes. And do not forget that multiple cases can apply to any single situation.
Management also cannot state what they DO want because they're looking beyond that to the new house with a pool that they want with the raise from the promotion they're going to get from the software that they want you to write.
I prefer the term "magic".
They believe that if they say the right words, the situation will change to become their new house dream.
Techs (the good ones) know that this doesn't happen. Physical laws remain physical laws. System limits remain system limits.
If you perform enough miracles for management, eventually they will believe that they are the ones performing the miracles.
10 smart can _easily_ outsmart 100 mediocre programmers.
Can the companies afford 100 programmers?! OK, fine with me.
Speaking as someone who actually got fired for being #3, I never make the mistake of assuming I'm smarter than the people I work for. I thought my boss was a complete idiot, right until he walked me out the door. Then I learned who the stupid one was.
Heretic here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sen8Tn8CBA4
I walked into Head Office and the receptionist screamed across the office, "The Prima Donna's here!" Then suddenly realizing what she'd said she turned "We mean that in the most loving way." I'll bet. 3 department heads raced across the office all trying to get to me first. By the end of the day everyone's project was back on track. Prima Donna's don't know how to integrate their talent's into a group so you have to teach them. Someone who is developmentally disabled scores about 60 on aptitude tests while an average person scores 100 and the gifted score over 140. The difference between the Prima Donna and the average person is greater than the difference between an average person and the developmentally disabled. That is where the 'is everyone an idiot?' comes from and the answer is "yes, compared to you everyone is an idiot but you don't know everything, you aren't always right and you don't always have the best idea so get over yourself. It is up to you to articulate your argument in terms we can understand so we as a group can come to consensus. If you can't do that we can't use your talents."
... at least half the time. Way to ruin my day Slashdot.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Ever work with someone who is not that good at what he/she does but the boss always waits for this person; because, he/she knows how to knead the bosses balls? This is what I noticed is SOP out of the business community; kneading balls really well will get a person in those 'make up your own rules' positions every time regardless if your incompetent or not.
"The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender
Yep. And their opinion is that anyone who works for the wage you do and depends upon THEM not to look out for themselves is a moron.
It's a simple matter of conflicting agendas.
Yep. And I bet that said VP was making a LOT more than you were. And that was the VP's priority.
Management is often the problem.
The question is whether management's agenda aligns with their actions and conflicts with your agenda or whether they really ARE morons and are hurting themselves as well.
Management can be a problem WITHOUT being morons by being deceptive. See "Enron".
I've worked with the jerk. Learned a lot from the guy as I'm certain he's the most intelligent individual I've ever been in close contact with... but ASS WHOLE. From the company perspective, he's conceived and driven the majority of major changes within our department for years.
The Heretic: This is Terry Childs. Genuinely brilliant but also assertive (or aggressive enough) to stand up for his principles against those he thinks are in the wrong. I don't mind this so long as the "Heretic" can be pacified with genuine change or being proven incorrect. (Unfortunately, Childs never saw change and was proven correct... and punished nonetheless since he technically broke the law in his crusade.)
The Flake: This is a bad label since the example was of a guy who had two separate (though possibly interactive) psychological/biochemical disorders. In fact, having worked with kids on the autistic spectrum and thus having experience with a various psych situations, when the author described the person's extreme success and abysmal fall, I immediately thought "Bi-Polar or Manic Depressive".
The Jerk: I went to school with one of these. Brilliant person. Brought up comfortably, and even made personal efforts to keep within the ethical confines of his religious upbringing even if denies the existence of a higher power. He was also completely tactless. He didn't seek the best way to say just about anything and was surprised when, even in public, he would get glares from people as he walked by speaking his mind. He did so innocently. He was still a great friend to those who made the effort to understand him.
Then again 'generally tend to listen to me more' has plenty of weasel words.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is an obvious copy/paste job. I read about these personality traits years ago on a female oriented blog. Hence the forgotten to edit "she" references after the remembered to edit he in the begining. This guy is a real self serving plagerist.
The guy that I love to hate is the serial entrepreneur. Not all of them but one very special strain. This is the guy who is an abusive asshole who once made a boat load of money on one of his ventures. Because he made so much money he sees this as validation of his asshole ways. In his mind that only way to make more money is to continue to be an abusive asshole only he steps it up a few notches. Unfortunately, the Silicon Valley is overrun with these clowns.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
And anyone else thinking about the "robot" guy from grandma's boy?
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/vit-D-theory-autism.shtml
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
Maybe you can have the best of both worlds? :-)
(Posting AC as I have mod points used here.)
Pretty much, a company that treats people poorly will eventually pay for it.
I know for certain that if the economy improves in the US, employers are going to be in for a very rough ride, especially with tech employees. Companies have thoroughly maltreated most of their tech staff for years - assuming that they're interchangeable, flattening pay scales and not giving raises, bonuses, whatever, while management and sales get raises & bonuses - and the net of it is that no company employing tech staff should assume any employee loyalty.
The same free-market, no-union, every-man-for-himself knuckleheads who run companies and run roughshod over staff will perhaps not like it when the employees use those policies to their advantage....
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
There is no reason to be a jerk, ever. But a lot of really smart people get put into positions that are downright miserable simply because they are the smartest person in the room, get frustrated, and then turn into jerks.
A lot of smart people don't understand how the world works, how much humans are dictated by a herd mentality and it comes back to bite them in the ass. For example, an extremely bright recent graduate gets a job at a company staffed mainly engineers who are 5 to 10 years older than them. The young, smart fellow may think "if I work hard and showcase my talents I will soon get ahead". Sadly, the world does not work that way. People who have been working for 5 - 10 years in a job don't like to see people younger than them master it in 1 or 2. What they hate even more is having to work for a somebody younger than themselves. If you think we live in a meritocracy you've never worked in an organization with more than 2 levels of management.
I've seen many young, brilliant engineers apply themselves, get chewed up by the political machine, and become abrasive assholes simply because they don't understand "its not what you know, its who you know". My advice to them is to quit the job and start their own company. Never work for someone dumber than yourself. If you think you know everything, prove it.
Hmm,a citation would be nice.
The first thing a sub-contracting IT company interviewed me with was an HR "test that all their employees were given." It had about 40 math / analogies and a 12-minute limit they forewarned me not to race against* (score higher if you do answer perfectly the few ones you know.)
Nothing IT related, but I feel ripped off because it's tasty personal data they now own and will sell in agregate or worse; I never even got to work with them.
* Very similar to this one except many questions go like "what is the second letter of the last word that starts with an S in this sentence? _____________" (weeding out secretaries for not following precise instructions in filing jobs, for example.)
Brilliant jerks are jerks because they get rewarded for being jerks. Start rewarding them for _not_ being jerks and the problem will go away. Works every time.
...Ever work with a person who's so good that he/she gets his/her own set of rules?...
Never better illustrated than with the case of the Ohio State football players who were suspended from playing five games next year, but were allowed to play in the Sugar Bowl last night.
Proverbs 21:19
... when the occasion calls for it.
1. The Heretic, who convincingly builds a case that the company is hopeless and run by a bunch of morons
I don't see morons; only people making moronic decisions. I point them out when people are afraid to say anything to see who chimes in (IT people are shy). If enough people agree, I might bring the issue up diplomatically but candidly. Behind the scenes, of course, I'm venomous. I don't like moronic decisions governing my job, and I line up the facts to make my case.
2. The Flake, who is brilliant but totally unreliable
I am more reliable these days. However, I work overtime and I'm at least twice as productive as my colleagues. I don't make a big deal of it (I actually like working stupidly hard) but people know this and nobody complains if I get to the office at 11am.
3. The Jerk, who is so belligerent in his communication style that people just stop talking when he is in the room
I have learned *some* diplomacy, but there is too much going on to pussyfoot around every issue. Call a spade a spade, politely lay out the facts of the argument, and defer gracefully to authority (sometimes they actually get it right - who knew!) before a fuss is made.
What I'm getting at is these traits aren't bad in the appropriate moderation. They don't fit in well when management focuses on process instead of context, people, and good discretion. You don't have to "stop the bus" for this, but as management you do need to apply actual human judgement and wisdom, which is management's true yet much neglected role.
RIF.
I said that management is necessary, it just doesn't PRODUCE anything. And - management IS more likely to be a drag on productivity than not.
You may not be aware, but the phrase 'necessary evil' does not actually imply 'evil' any more than 'military intelligence' implies 'intelligence'. Again, with "management is an expense, a necessary evil" and "management, while a skill, and a valuable one" I DIDN'T say that ""management" is unnecessary or useless".
What I DID say was that the management hierarchy was a problem within business, and that it wasn't SUPERIOR to production. I was curious if anyone would comment on that, but I guess not. I'm glad you agree with me on every point but those two, though. *chuckle*
ps. just to be clear, architects produce blueprints. They ARE producers...
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
There is no reason for a company to put up with people like that, but there is also no reason that smart people have to be like that. In many cases, the destructive employees don't realize the effect they're having on other people. If someone is belligerent, the proper solution is for their boss to take them aside and say, "You have a communication style that often offends people. Let me give you some tips about how to interact better." If someone is a flake, the proper solution is for their boss to make it very clear that they are expected to fulfill their commitments, and unreliableness will not be tolerated. If the employee refuses to improve, they should be fired. But in many cases, they want to improve and just need guidance on how to do it. If their boss doesn't provide that guidance, it's the boss who is failing, not the employee.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
These are all extreme cases:
1. Heretic - Is often right, but will leave you on his own regardless, unless he's also a moron.
2. The Flake - Is either being given the wrong priorities and thus not reliable about what you think he should be doing, but is doing other things. Or he's got a side job. I've never met a natural genius who is incredibly high value but never works. Through work comes knowledge and understanding. If he's got insight, chances are he's doing something for someone, harness that.
3. The Jerk - This is a self regulating problem, because these people usually fall victim to friendly fire, no matter how smart the person us westerners are not terribly tolerant of "House, M.D." One way or another, this person is going to either leave or you will fire him with cause.
Now there are some really high value employees I've worked with past and present who channel these personalities, but you know they're high value because you never would think about wanting them gone if you have any sense. In fact I've worked with lovable Jerks, who are so over the top that we intentionally invite him to meetings for the comic relief. The pinnacle of my time at this job was when he said "YOUR DESIGNS ARE ALL CRAP!", I mean seriously? Sure, he was absolutely right but he also knows why they're all crap and why that's not a bad thing necessarily, but he can't help but insult everyone present. But the meetings were a riot, we'd go on with "Well my crap is less expensive than his crap, but has a crappy problem with that other crappy circuit. Got any crappy ideas?". At the end of my life, I will remember those meetings fondly and when this guy got fired (he insulted the wrong VP) I was bitterly angry, not only was he a major positive influence on our designs, he made the job enjoyable. Why? Because my manager managed his team effectively, and we knew where we stood.
I can't stand working in an environment where everyone acts like an HR textbook and there's no scenery. I find this environment is full of a lot of people who see things wrong and won't speak up (which is just as bad as DOING wrong, or not doing at all), or people who go with the flow reliably when some things management asks us to do need to be resisted delicately (flakes are very useful for projects exec's have tagged for going overseas).
Eliminating personalities that you don't like simply because you don't like them is a certain sign that you have managers who are there for the money but who don't actually have interest in management.
The No Asshole Rule argues persuasively that, at least for the case where it's a jerk, it's actually a bad idea no matter how "good" they appear to be.
I've rarely met anyone "totally" unreliable. I'm a little flakey around the edges (hah!) but I can mostly do what I'm supposed to be doing, though it helps if people remind me.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
You tell me. How many times have you ever had no manager and had to: budget, purchasing, strategic planning, handle legal, handle customers, handle clients, handle vendors, and all the other things that management ends up doing? Think doing all that might add up to 20% longer workdays for you? I bet it would easily add an hour or two on to every day you work, and you know it would too.
Managers don't do any of that stuff; they delegate it.
He's apparently a pain to work with, is extremely demanding, but he's forced the company to make brilliant products.
I've worked with lots of prickly, anything-but-well-rounded people. Some of them have been a joy to work with. Some I would rather cross the street to avoid. But they have the ideas, the insights that keep companies going. Good companies know that if you want people who think differently, you need people who are themselves different. I'm certainly different.
Then there are the assholes. I've never met any who were as good as they thought they were, let alone good enough to get away with being such assholes. Because there really is no excuse for such behaviour in the workplace.
I've never met a female asshole. Prickly women, yes. I'm one myself. Asshole women, no. I wonder why?
...laura
"You can act lie a prima donna, but you had better be a prima donna."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I was one of these people once. There is a dearth of evidence from being consistently in the 99% at least until I got to grad school at which point it all became a lot fuzzier anyway. A consistent frustration of my life is the quizzicle look that exposes the rarely communicated lack of following of my words. A part of that has been my insufficient communication abilities and I continue to work on them in order to hopefully produce more optimal results. The rest I can't fix even though I'll try my best.
I created a software integration demo for a company for a trade show in 3 months, integrating a large legacy system with the start up that I was working for's capabilities. It gave the company venture funding and later became the flagship product of the company for a time until applications with larger markets were created based upon the core components of the first. Among the feedback I received was that the work I had accomplished (I did get some great help from an excellent coworker at the tail end of the project) was more than entire teams had been able to produce in years. Admittedly there were too many 80 hour plus weeks to get there. There are reports that the start up seems to be approaching profitability these days but I couldn't say for certain because once the culmination of the pattern resulted in a little bit of burn out in me and tight money for the company, I was laid off with little thanks for my years of consistent contribution and personal sacrifice. Probably also for my choice to ignore politics for the organizations gain. It was dumb of me to let it come to that and I've worked on that front.
I was a bit of a jerk during the process of getting out the demo. To be charitable, I was extremely blunt and to the point and I expected everyone to be a big person about it. I never tried to hurt anyone or bruise their pride. In some cases I really wish that I'd been treated with that same respect because it didn't feel like I got the same support in return. The timelines of development accounted for no space for time wasted on bull spit so in order to keep the pace, that behavior was demanded of me, even encouraged at times (of course, this was always in private). When anyone got in the way of productivity I said so. A lesson I learned was that stating the problem is not helpful, though it is the first step on the path to progress. Better is isolating the concern involved, stating it in non-confrontational terms, getting everyone on board, and moving forward together. Unfortunately, those better steps take more time and required much more of me, straining my resources. I tried but I am only human: incomplete and wanting. My successes earned me endless work loads placed upon me and even less time to accomplish the work with what seemed like an increasingly irrational environment. Stress and burnout mounted and the personal resources I needed to maintain my performance waned. The requests I made to protect the maintenance of the unstable situation (in personal, infrastructural, work practices, etc.) were often ignored and the costs of doing everything predictably increased over time.
I was smart and asked to do a lot because of it. But this intelligence, the ability to perform at a high level, seemed ignored when what seemed true implied cost for someone other than myself. It seemed the management wanted me to accomplish voraciously and get in my way at the same time. In the extreme, I was asked to be the source of all direction and punished if the direction wasn't perfect or perfectly in line with the latest fad of the office months later. It was a situation of no requirements and complete responsibility without any authority or power. In other words, I ended up being made to pay exhorbinantly for being smart. I paid because I didn't have the time to communicate with my team why I was taking the actions I did, why I was so assertive about the choices we needed to make over others. I paid because I never had the extra resources or time to try and work out a more sustaina
And just to be clear, *good* managers "produce" leadership, direction, vision, and a whole lot of roadblock-clearing, and "produce" time for the engineers to do their work by acting as a liasion when their team needs something.
Your statement that they are an "expense" strongly implies that they are a *drain* on the overall process, rather than adding something useful to it. By this definition you're trying to weasel into after the fact, developers and everybody else is "an expense, a necessary evil."
If it's necessary, it's an investment in producing your product, it's not some sort of albatross you have to carry along with you just because somebody else decided that you have to spend an extra 200,000 dollars while producing your product.
I say the answer is no. If the person exhibits any of those traits they will be more destructive to morale and progress than their benefit could ever offset. Very smart people who are eccentric or have some odd quirks are workable, but with strongly negative, and especially bitter or arrogant traits, it is a no go. They become a cancer that will destroy a team in no time and all, and no matter how smart they are, a team of 1 does not work. I have seen this in my experience.
Haha, was the answer "The only word starting with a capital S in that sentence is the actual letter 'S', which has no second letter"?
Ok I'm just being an ass I know :)
"These days you'd get sued six ways from Sunday if you gave someone an IQ test as a pre-requisite for employment."
Hardly. As long as it tied to the job requirements you can give intelligence tests. And personality tests.
Hell, tests that routinely discriminate are routinely given by employers with no legal downside. While technically illegal, it's very hard to prove.
There's a trap here which you have to have experienced once.
Although I say so myself, I'm not too shabby at programming and at getting systems to run smoothly. There obviously are better people around but I don't meet them too often. I know that I have communication issues and I avoid talking to people about technical issues as my opinions may be too strong for the faint hearted. But I'm a kind person and I will make people feel at ease and I will crack a joke or two.
Anyway, I once tried and became less coarse and soon enough people started thinking that I'm not that good and they started to take advantage. I was encouraged to join the company I was contracting for (cold shivers down my spine) and at one point I had to leave just to get rid of the idiots that became a trifle too amicable with me.
There must be some psychological phenomenon that explains why people appreciate the eccentric as more capable than regular people. The trap is that if you assimilate, you loose appreciation and respect you had before when you were yourself.
I don't advocate being a bastard but I say to remain true to oneself, to have one's fair rules and if the bus must wait for you, well then so it must be then.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I was the third heretic in a row at my last job. All three of us (overlapping stays) still can't believe just how idiotic the place was. I was not a heretic before that place, and my current place is pretty well run (rarity I've learned).
My conclusion is not that it was us, but rather that the place really was run by idiots, and was loathsome to change to get into the new market space they wanted to (i.e. the reason for hiring us three from the outside). Writing off heretics as malcontented prima donnas does have the potential for an "emperor has no clothes" situation, where in those who are telling you the hard truths are consistently alienated and ostracized.
The place in question still has not been able to hire a replacement for me after a year or the guy who left 3 years ago, as they have earned an very ugly reputation for being stuck in the 80's/90's, being slow, not listening to their experts,etc. Networking in niche specialties can bitch once you've earned a bad rap. So as they tout their brilliant move into new areas of microwave test equipment, they are down to a single microwave design engineer, who is only stuck their due to being underwater on his house. Meanwhile they have a handful of junior woodchuck engineers trying to apply RF solutions to microwave designs and doing abysmally (they didn't heed our advice on who not to hire either...).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"I’ll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world’s most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises—no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."
How is this anything other than a failure of management?
Why blame the employee? This is a standard performance management issue - either remediate the behaviour or move them out.
The issue is a deeper one - is management willing to compromise (standards and perhaps other things) for results? Is management too proud to admit they made a wrong hiring choice?
Yes you can argue cost versus benefit or sunk costs (concorde fallacy), but it doesn't change the fact that it is a people management and integrity issue.
-I.
> 1. The Heretic, who convincingly builds a case that the company is hopeless and run by a bunch of morons;
But what if that's the actual case?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Did you get the job if you passed? Or, if you failed? Tim S.
The AC might never know. The company likely used consultants and their patented, trademarked or secret tests for hiring.
"Ever been that person yourself?"
Isn't this the American dream? To be so good at what you do that you get special treatment? At my last place of employment, I actually worked with a guy that was like this. Code changes on a Friday at 4PM? Not a problem for him. Code changes implemented before he went on vacation for a week? Done multiple times. The problem is that overall he did contribute positively to the company. His boss and his boss' boss basically had no power over him and he got to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. Left during lunch multiple times to play basketball for a couple of hours during crunch time. No one could do anything because although no one is irreplaceable, he was close to it.
Yes... bitches. Now give me a bonus.
[signature]
I thought they put up with me because of my good looks and funny jokes...
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
No, I only work with robots, and they are all smarter than me.
Software freedom...I love it!
Yes, all three, and they were the business owners.
Software freedom...I love it!
These days you'd get sued six ways from Sunday if you gave someone an IQ test as a pre-requisite for employment.
That's why you develop your own test in-house and call it a work-related aptitude test.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Management is responsible but seems all too often to shift blame while expecting the higher paycheck that is supposed to be for the extra responsibility of "making it work."
Me, I've been one of the bad employees; although, I would contend that I was one of the few good ones and that everybody else was bad. Given the number of people in the public who agreed with me and their lower status since.. I was correct. Nothing is more political than an unmanaged group of people who's organization can't go out of business - they can spend most their work days making sure they don't have to actually work.
The trick is to look to have negative or insightful judgment while not giving much away; they will fill in the blanks with the best answers given the right contextual setup. (a good blank look in the right context can do so much... its like the power of negative space in design.) Downside is that everybody is intimidated and that can make it hard to get them to work with you (they fear you'll find out how much more inept or corrupt they are.) Confident honest people are not impacted by this or take it the wrong way; but since there are so many dishonest or inept/corrupt people out there pretty much everybody reacts. It is also useful in spotting the good ones since they will be immune or respond with improvement. The really dysfunctional will wage a war, scheme, seek out or encourage faults in the hope of defending themselves or their egos.
What's the deal with this? This isn't about smart people. There's no one so smart that they can't be replaced with someone just as smart, but a better fit for the group. (Of course, if the team leader is the problem...)
Also, one group's jerk can be another group's solid team member.
Someone should probably sent this storyline to mythbusters. I've heard this story plenty of times, about how the smart jerk is dragging down overall productivity. It's my observation that the guys doing negative work (i.e. incompetent folks) are the productivity drag, and that middle managers are the jerks in the work equation. Just saying.
And thereby do we traverse the tortuous path from intelligence to wisdom...
And at the end of the road we realize that we should act just as we did in the beginning, not because it's a more productive way to work, but so we can get a little damned peace and quiet!
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This doesn't match with my experience at all. The smartest people in the company tended to be very humble. Granted I am talking about engineers here but I would expect the same would apply elsewhere.
My guess is the author isn't any good at picking out the smart people. I have seen people that fit into these categories. Maybe management thought they knew something but their peers didn't think so.
I can see this happening in sports: athleticism, genetics, and practice are the important factors for success. But with intellectual work, people who fall in to the author's categories are not humble enough or maybe not mentally capable to learn something new.
profit!
imagine your boss literally starts fights between coworkers by telling lies. he sexually harasses the staff and fires people for no reason, while keeping favorites on who lie and cheat on their projects. he doesnt want to learn anything and thinks you are all morons. of course, the 'good managers' elsewhere in the company cant do or say anything about it, because thats 'undermining the chain of command' or whatever. so badboss sits there, driving 20+ people out of the company in 2 years. good people. thats how life works. your 'example' is nice, but ... there is no 'positive outcome' dealing with a sociopath.
the bitter, angry coworkers tend to be the best people, because they are the only ones you can trust, and who have some semblance of honest human feeling left inside them, while the gossiping smileys are the most likely to stab you and leave you to die so they can get a better job review.
I've worked with the three types of people you've mentioned, and the
funny thing is, those are almost always the people I get along with
better. Personally I don't really care if someone's an asshole, as
long as they operate on a solid ground and when you work with solid
arguments they're able to reconsider their positions, and that they're
being given a chance to show their solutions and are held accountable
to it. A lot of smart computer guys are like this, their world
operates on more of an objective basis than the other disciplines: the
stuff works or it doesn't, it's not depending on someone's opinion, it
crashes or it doesn't, it runs under 5ms or it doesn't, etc. Most
people's jobs are judged in entirely subjective terms (e.g., people)
so they're not as harsh about their work.
I would argue that the software business is different in general; in
software, the tremendous differences in skill follow a power law: the
best do 10x better work than the average, and the average do 10x
better work than the worst. Thus, I would argue that you're probably
better off sticking with the weirdos and the assholes if they're very
samrt because their actual contribution--not their *perceived*
contribution, which, if you're a non-technical manager you likely have
little or no idea how important or not it is, regardless of what all
the other softies around him say--is likely to be disproportionate to
what you think it is. Software environments are tough; you can decide
to have a pleasant environment with people who don't deliver, or a
small team of guys who argue and speak too loud (and even get nasty to
each other), but who'll deliver something possibly exceptional.
You deal with these guys like this:
- You deal with facts;
- If you disagree, you need to provide alternatives;
- If you make bold statements, you need to show creds about the
solution you're championing (i.e. you need to know what you're
talking about).
- If you don't know something, you need to say you don't know instead
of "winging it"; be honest.
I specialize in learning things extremely quickly, and coming up with simple elegant solutions to various problems. If you don't understand what I did or why I did it, than it is clearly neither simple nor elegant on my part.
I can and have on several occasions, accomplished something in days that someone else struggled with for a month.
I may whine about bad code, but I'd do so with a sparkle in my eye and a grin on my face, because there's absolutely nothing I enjoy more than making sense of things that make no sense.
If I were on your project, you would notice the code base slowly become easier to understand. The program would speed up dramatically. And every now and than, I would present you with a radical new feature that you either though wasn't possible, or you hadn't thought of at all, but you would certainly agree is the coolest thing ever.
I work well with just about everyone. I think its my job to make lives easier, not harder, so if I come up with a solution that requires you do something, I'll talk to you about it, and I'll feel super guilty about adding work to your load.
So, to the question, should you do whatever you can to keep me, even if I'm being a bad employee?
NO.
If I'm doing those things, than it means the challange has run out for me, and unfortunetely at that point I'm pretty much useless.
It happens. Especially as companies grow up. People like me tend to thrive in start up companies, where there's a ton of things that need to be done, new skills that need to be learned, and not enough people to do it all. Eventually that wears out. Most of the challenges have been finished, theres a large enough team that you don't have to learn new skills anymore, and maintenance tasks start having higher priorities over the interesting things. And once you get to the point where my strengths are no longer needed, the only thing left will be my weaknesses.
Easy or mundane tasks take me weeks to complete. My desire to be challenged and my desire to make things easier will be at odds with each other, and I'll continue to procrastinate even more.
I'm very undisciplined. I have poor time management skills.
I get restless when I'm not being challenged, and that could lead to disruptive behavior.
Its sad, since its such a strong contrast from before. And since I've been so helpful with everyone, than its hard not to think that it'd be worth doing anything to keep me on. I was extremely useful before, and maybe one day I would be again.
But the truth is nothing else will motivate me. Money, promotions, respect, fame, power, loyalty, even friends. None of that will get me back to the great employee you knew me as.
The challenges have run out. My skills are no longer neccessary. Its time to let me go.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
I'm the Heretic Jerk, to no small degree. I like to dual class.
For a sysadmin, these are (to some degree) important and necessary skills, assuming the person knows when to use moderation and play their cards properly (particularly in a larger organization).
If you're not a jerk sometimes, you'll be walked all over.
If you're not a heretic, people become complacent and then you get hit by the bus - driven by others' incompetencies.
Of course, there's always the option of finding another job while you're ahead. Right?
Personally, I've been the guy who the bus gets held for, and I've been hit by the bus. In the later, it was for the better. I (metaphorically) broke my arm, but it grew back with adamantium infused. Also, the bitch didn't know what she was doing.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
that is the police department that uses testing as a low pass filter
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Is that why now it takes 25 years to make a new fighter jet?
Wheres the secret mach 8 planes, or is the F22 paying for black projects, hence the missing 10 trillion in dollars from the pentagon over 10 years?
No one makes accounting mistakes of that magnitude.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
While it does occasionally lead to lawsuits, people are frequently given intelligence tests as part of the employment process. Often, it's a Wonderlic test.
Everyone in the NFL, for example. And many police departments. Can't have players second guessing calls or police being too smart for the job and getting bored after you've dumped a ton of money into training them.
If you want a manager who knows how to do the job and who is also willing to take on the bullshit administrative overhead, you need to offer more.
If someone said "Ok, you can be a technician for 50k, or you can be a manager for 50k", which are you going to choose?
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
1) the guy who actually realises the company is hopeless and run by morons
Kind regards,
the guy who actually realises his company is hopeless and run by morons
1. He is disempowered—She feels that she cannot access the people in charge and, as a result, complaining is her only vehicle to get the truth out.
2. He is fundamentally a rebel—She will not be happy unless she is rebelling; this can be a deep personality trait. Sometimes these people actually make better CEOs than employees.
3. He is immature and naïve—She cannot comprehend that the people running the company do not know every minute detail of the operation and therefore they are complicit in everything that’s broken.
Why is the author mixing up he and she ? Is this a common way to write?
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
There's no end. It's arrogant to even think otherwise.
*fap fap fap*
Notice the predominant insistances on categorization, name calling, over-emphasis on specific delineations for each, inexperienced pronouncements of cause and effect, ...
Now the need to understand the management process is fraught with multitudes of personal interpretations and "management" is unfortunately being done by class "z" mechanics attempting brain surgery. Most managers are buddies in the system and not really advancing the discipline an iota.
The true waste, the biggest problems, are the unexplained, unaccountable, idiot decisions on adoption of "solutions" - show me a single project, in any industry where the requirements lead to proposal selection criteria, selection of potential solutions, complete objective evaluations, and cross-over analysis, prior to rammming it down the oganizations interests. After thousands of hours of analysis, even projects that were restarted, clearly and abundantly demonstrated executives in charge of that process have little or no clue and rely on some additional huge expense in terms of consultants, then resting confident and secure that the latest PM/IM/IT/[whatever sht the purveyors of these "disciplines" pull out of their hat and offer as the best practices - whether it be: ITIL, BA, etc] are guarding THEIR interests and are offered up as proof or testimony that everything is ok. Despite any resulting outcomes, executives will spin the project as a success and or bury the real costs.
People may be generally cowed in the work place due to management's negligence and incompetences but their crap projects, over runs, and protectionistic philosophies (emperor's new clothes) will never see the execs accountable nor forthright. That would signal that the current situation is not ideal. You can start blaming employees when there is transparent process, engagement that culls the knowledge and experience of human capital, and management is far less rewarded with the teams being the heros getting the bonuses.
There is a generalized idiotic reference to management/administration/government by the public/pleebs which supposes these " l e a d e r s" know what they are doing and have the many's (your) best interests at heart. Show me any place that is taking place.
While the research is not new, neurological studies are proving the ability of the brain to learn and fully engage requires an individual emotional appreciation to reach that state, but completely manageable in group dynmaics at a very young age where comorbidity and intensities are not clearly classical. Even the DCD's (conveniently grouped together in the DMS4 to create higher potentials for drug revenues - Scientific American - dupability 2010 (ritalin is the most closely related known chemical compound to cocaine) are now under question since the drive and development has been under devising some easy-of-management scheme and norms or undeveloped 'standard' ratings that are preclusive and show no intelligence in the analysis of variations and development models for people. Some researchers and doctors now are saying more than 30% of the positively diagnosed individuals with a DCD "disorder" is wrong and that brief tutoring and coaching will permanently alleviate the so called symptoms of those previously diagnosed conditions.
In many cases it is just interpretations of questionable results or situations, and as the armed forces prove just a bunch of reach arounds beleiving they are normal condeming others.
Combine all that with the laziness and persistent clinging to safe interpretations of things and "categories"/labels/names that leads the public to be easily thrown off the track about where the real problems lie. You live in a fkn matrix and have no hope of making corporations and government accountable nor, actually, really caring about people. You console yourselves that the dribble in scrumming over what-are-not-the-problems is advancing human understanding and leading to solutions - an entertainment diversion.
Yeah there are pps out there with the solutions but are actively sought out for squelching and part of it is your fault from fear of being an individual.
Filled out those several times in later stages of job interviews here, though nobody actually calls it an IQ test. The last one was one set of logic tests, one set of math tests and one set of reading comprehension tests. Plus a big personality test - of course nobody calls that one a test as everybody's different. Yeah, right. As if there aren't some qualities that are good and some that are bad...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I am the jerk at work, because I know I have a lacking in the communications or social department, no matter how good my prog skills might be. I have felt tensions rise, when all I was trying to do was communicate how something is amiss and we should be trying to fix the problem. I have been told by my superior that I should ease up on something , once I have explained it, and I get upset when someone cuts me off in the middle of explaining something, so I try even harder to make sure they heard correctly, and I guess this is what is abrasive to some people.
I see it this way, if I did not do my all to convey a message that would avoid the company losing money, time , man hours, then I haven't tried hard enough...others think I go too far or don't let go quick enough. I am trying to work on this problem, but find it hard as I do not even see the problem, the way they do.....I do always get the bus held up for me though, as I usually put out 5 times what others do here.
"It is difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent." -- Q, ST:TNG
There's no end. It's arrogant to even think otherwise.
And not very funny.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If someone goes to work and "just does their job" that's a pretty good employee right there, or am I wrong?
If however this person shows the potential to do much better but is: frustrated, unmotivated, thinks the boss is a moron... Well that's a management issue.
Am I wrong?
After reading the article, and other poster comments, and my own experience, I get the feeling that what is being referred to as a "bad employee" is just a target for anti intellectualism.
There really is no excuse for being a jerk, but if you believe that someone is a jerk ungraciously pointing out a mistake in policy, well, I'll put it this way.
Were standing on a railroad track (don't ask why, we just are, and there's a train coming and you don't hear it, (again, don't ask why), I yell out look out! A train's coming! while pointing at it with my middle finger.
You:
a) Quickly get out of the way.
b) Get offended and call me rude.
Bad management breeds bad employees.
Great management yields results.
Struck a nerve, did I?
and - Produce leadership? Roadblock-clearing? Produce TIME?
And you claim that _I'M_ trying to weasel?
An investment in producing a product is not production in itself, kiddo. Tell me, is warehousing production? Is shipping? Does the backoffice produce? Office services? Is buying frigging stock 'production'? Are you going to claim that anything that maximizes profits 'produces' capital? ROFLMAO!
You have no idea what it is to actually PRODUCE anything, do you? This is part of the problem in the US today, at least. (BTW, in most businesses, IT is an expense - it has nothing to do with the production of goods that the business capitalizes on. Not everyone is an ISV, consulting house, or contract business) You have no idea what an expense IS, do you?
Let me guess - you're republican, amiright?
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
At last! A real comment!
The answer to your question really depends on whether I enjoy managing or technical issues.
I never said that management was not a skill, neither did I say they shouldn't be paid well. What I said was that they aren't superior in any way _because_ they manage. I say it's foolish to 'reward' producers with management positions because (most of the time) the skills needed to produce have NOTHING TO DO with the skills needed to manage. So you turn an excellent producer into a half-assed manager when you reward someone with a management position... An employee might be an awesome tech with the social and negotiating skills of a 12 year old, but the awesome engineering skills that the company depends on. Should said employee reach the top of their pay grade then be rewarded with the *ALWAYS* higher pay managers get? Should they be 'promoted' into management? If not, do you honestly think they won't have morale problems when they see people _without_ their skills (skills the company depends on) get rewarded with the higher pay that management STARTS with?
This whole problem is what cripples larger organizations as they grow. It's the reason why startups are considered better places to work. It's why large organizations produce LESS per person than small - frankly the hierarchal management structure that the previous poster is so enamored of is overhead - and it kills productivity. It does allow one to have 'serfs' who are 'beneath' you though, so it holds great appeal to many. When management is the goal, management-heavy is what you get, after all. And that means less produced, higher overhead, slower reactions to the market, and less adaptability.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
I'm not a Republican, in fact.
Now please enlighten us, what purpose does that question serve, other than to try and distract from the fact that you're an idiot and backpedaling furiously in an attempt to preserve your point, which is simply untenable?
I'd guess at your political persuasion, but I'm afraid I don't know which party morons typically belong to. Should I godwin the thread, in an attempt to outdo your ad hominem? Or would you prefer to rant a little more about something you clearly have no clue about?
I assume I've been that person my entire career, as I violate rules left and right and nothing bad ever happens to me. Of course, nothing good ever happens to me, either. :-)
You modded it up. Good call. Many thanks.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Not quite. But I once worked with a guy who thought he was so good that he deserved his own set of rules. The worst of it was that, over time, he'd gotten a director wrapped around his little finger so he, effectively, did get his own set of rules.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Easily worked around. Hire people into three-month "evaluation" positions with a view to permanency. At some point during those three months, send around a "completely optional" IQ test. At the end of the three months, transfer the ones who completed the test with an appropriate score into a new team or division. Let the other people's positions expire and lie that you were very impressed with their work and you'll keep their CVs on file for projects coming up in the next twelve months.
Alternatively, just ask useful questions at the interview. Or would that involve pulling smart people away from their jobs to be the panel?
I once went from being a smart jerk to a Helpful Harry and back to a smart jerk.
As a young smart jerk, I was promoted in a large organisation's technical division to a higher-level team. I decided that this was a chance to see what all this 'teamwork' and 'getting along' stuff was all about. So I reinvented myself: ate better, exercised more, wore corporate dress code, listened intently to what other people had to say, collaborated, etc. Drank the Kool-Aid, basically.
And I got completely screwed over. So I went back to being a smart jerk, but at a higher rate of pay, and lived happily ever after for the rest of my many many days at that employer. It did help that later, for the first time ever, I acquired a boss who was actually able to run rings around me, and it shocked me so badly that I went along with his sneaky plots purely for the coolness factor.
...and I'm not talking ballet or opera, either...well, maybe Opera...while it was still in development....
(T)he (O)ld (M)an
And just to be clear, *good* managers "produce" leadership, direction, vision, and a whole lot of roadblock-clearing,
I'll give you roadblock clearing. That's a real, concrete function. Leadership, direction, and vision? Sorry but that's a big pile of nothing...pointless bullshit. Managers are the "life coaches" of business.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
Nobody 'backpedalled'. I repeated myself. I don't usually do that. Feel honored.
Learn what it means to 'produce something' rather than manage it. *hint* one does not 'produce' time, one might 'conserve' it. One does not 'produce' leadership, either. 'Use' != 'Produce'.
And as far as morons go, I've noted that morons are usually right wing. Not always, just usually.
Given your ignorant management-speak, I assumed you were republican. Sorry. Didn't mean to insult you.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!