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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?"
Here is a link for those of you unfamiliar.
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?
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 think there was a time when that was true, but not really any longer. IT isn't quite the basement-dwelling, bitter social outcast draw it once was. Not to sound immodest, but I like to think I'm really good at interacting with users. And for the most part, I feel like my co-workers are pretty good at it too. We have a lot of friends in other departments.
On the other hand, maybe I'm just fooling myself.
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...
Your first clue is that you refer to them as "users" :)
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
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'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!
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.
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."
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."
Of course if your company is a morale-sucking hellhole, problems may develop post-hiring process. If more interviewees used the interview process as a two-way street, most of these companies would be weeded out during the interview process. That sword cuts both ways.
A fairly small percentage of crazy individuals will make it through an interview without displaying some alarming signs. If you do contract-to-hire, most of these people will be weeded out during the contract phase. If there are any crazies left at that point, they're probably good enough to justify their quirky behavior.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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'
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 */
You'd be amazed how many people are oblivious to design.
But in this case, I think AC is not really talking about design, but a mental cantrip where you use the far better modelling system of your brain rather than a wall covered in sticky notes that some people prefer, in order to some up with a truly holistic design.
I do the same, and find it baffling when other cannot do it.
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
I have found that smart people are really bad at simple, repetitive, boring tasks.
They get bored, start daydreaming, and make mistakes.
I find that they automate away the problem, and then spend their time doing whatever they want while pretending to work.
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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.
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.
And thereby do we traverse the tortuous path from intelligence to wisdom...
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...
This is why you need smart, capable managers to manage your smart, capable employees. Anything less and you're asking for trouble.
I think there was a time when that was true, but not really any longer. IT isn't quite the basement-dwelling, bitter social outcast draw it once was... ....On the other hand, maybe I'm just fooling myself.
Of course you are fooling yourself. Everyone in our IT shop is near-ASD; one more symptom each and we'd all be eligible for disability.
Now don't be moddin' me flamebait, bucko: this works out just fine and we're all pretty chuffed with it.
OCD and high IQ are perfect for the IT work place and we all get along quite well, thank you, when left alone to play with our systems and networks. No one's bothered by the given examples; most think that the heretic would be a fool to think any different, the flake is just ADD/ADHD and just needs a PM to keep on track, and the jerk is really just NLD (possibly Tourette's if he has a tick) and doesn't mean anything nasty by what he says. Besides, it's all quite entertaining as long as there is lots of work to do and the pay checks keep coming in.
As for me, I'm just a freakin' ASD rainbow.
The great thing is, everyone is bright and all dive deep into the knowledge well. The answer to any problem is close at hand. Also, everyone has coping strategies and has learned how to communicate depending on who is being dealt with.
This is just business as usual. ;->
Maybe he means that he 'fights for the users.'
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.
Yeah, I've yet to run into a "normal" person.
I think Temple Grandin said something like: if we were all neural-typical [er.. normal], we'd still be sitting in the dark in a cold cave having lots of conversations.
Thanks goodness for Asperger's.
BTW: there is some science to communication with "eccentrics". In particular, look up "social stories". You have to modify it a bit to use in the work place but this method works surprisingly well with the Ferengi as well as the tech-droids.
I deal with the goddamn customers! I have people skills!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Well, sometimes that;s not practical, and sometime they are needed.
I've been at startups where a really smart person was the one t get everything running andf now the company is moving along and that level of innovation is no longer the fore front of making the company successful.
Also, there are uniquely intelligent people that truly do things it would take a large team to do.
However, I have never met anyone like that who was also an actual flake.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
He's apparently a pain to work with, is extremely demanding, but he's forced the company to make brilliant products.
I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Fuck you and your crass generalisations. People with ADHD are not fucking flakes and can be very reliable.
Yes, I have personal experience.
ADHD doesn't stop someone being a completer-finisher, it just means you need to keep them interested and tolerate a degree of divergence and distraction. Since it's possible to channel that distraction towards other productive areas you can get a lot of productivity from them. Reliability is entirely fucking orthogonal.
Amen.
One of my interview-filters is to ask about favorite operating system, Linux distro, etc. If I find an Apple hater, or a Windows hater, or a Ubuntu-hater, or a RedHat-hater... they ain't gonna work in my company. Haters, in my experience, are universally team-breakers and disruptive, and nobody's so good that we need them that badly.
Ditto for software licensing models. I always ask about GPL awareness (if for no other reason than to ensure we get someone who understands why mixing GPL code copy-pasted from the Internet into a proprietary module is bad bad bad), and if I find someone to whom GPL is a "religion"... they don't work at my company either, for security reasons. I don't want someone whose philosophy tells them that intentionally disclosing protected proprietary source code is more moral than following the NDA you set your name to.
Ditto for attitudes about customers. If someone exhibits contempt for potential customers (including customers of the competition), they're out. Someone actually had the temerity to use the word "sheeple" in an interview once to describe how he viewed people who bought products made by the competition of a previous employer. Yeah. Gone.
Haters, purists, jackasses... they all have one thing in common. They're "right" because they're "smarter than everyone else, especially YOU", and that's the end of it. Experience, task-specific knowledge, position within the company, necessities of keeping cash-flow-positive, maintaining partnerships, generically being a decent human being... none of that matters to a hater or a purist. They know it all, and they'll do what they want regardless of instructions otherwise because they know better. By no means are all eccentric (meaning: Asperger's archetypes) IT folks haters or purists. I've worked with plenty who are productive, relatively easy to get along with, and valuable. Got a nice Aspi streak in my own personality. But since the topic at hand is "being THAT guy"... my policy is that if YOU'RE "that guy", you're out. Just not worth it.
(I got shitcanned for being The Heretic once, and I deserved it.)
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
"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.
What were you supposed to fucking be doing while you started typing this? Stop being such a flake and be productive or I'll enter you in a contest. 1st place is a nice set of steakknives, second place is you're fired. Interested now?
Signed,
Your fucking distraction-channeling boss
P.S.
Go fuck yourself
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Perhaps I should elaborate.
I never said anything about forcing bad tools on anyone; that came from your mind, not mine. I'm sorry someone did that to you in the past, but that's irrelevant here. You're projecting, seeing pointy-haired bosses everywhere.
What I will say is that anyone who says "because I like this one OS/development environment/whatever for tasks that I happen to be good at, any other OS/development environment/whatever is always inferior. And so are the people who prefer anything that isn't my pet whatever." That's a hater. And that's someone that doesn't understand that THEIR pet tool is not universal. One of the characteristics of skilled developers and IT people is that they recognize that there is not now, nor ever shall be, one set of software tools that is universally superior in all environments for all purposes. They also recognize that widely-used tools are good for something, otherwise they never would have become widely-used. Another sign of willful ignorance: "If I don't see a good use for something, it doesn't exist, and never did."
As a corollary, sometimes there are excellent reasons why tools that aren't ideal for a specific task are used. Interoperability, licensing constraints, expense, the ability to hire more people who know how to use a wide-spread general-purpose software development tool vs. a hyperspecialized tool... these are all factors that are important in the big picture which a developer or IT person might not see, or might dismiss because it's not their personal problem to solve. It's seldom malice which leads to a directive that "we must use X to make this". Good companies expose those reasons internally, of course, but exposed or not, the reasons are always there.
Or, to restate, anyone who says "All Apple stuff is crap" or "Windows is garbage" or "GCC is the perfect compiler for everything" is willfully ignorant, and is looking to start arguments. Why would anyone hire someone who deliberately wallows in ignorance?
Holding customers in contempt... there's no defense for that. Ever. Customers may not have the extensive education necessary to produce a product, but they're the ones who have to use it, and they're the ones you have to convince to pay for it. The customer is not always right, but they're always the ones you have to take care of (or you don't get paid). A company that doesn't have sympathy for its customers (particularly a company that makes consumer-focused software) is doomed to failure. It's also a personal failing; any time you assume someone who isn't skilled with a given sophisticated tool is an "idiot", you can bet they're trash-talking you and everyone else around you behind their backs. These are the team-breakers. Not cool, not acceptable, not hired.
You accuse me of being pure-dollar. Hardly. The overriding theme here is that I believe that hateful prima donnas do not produce good products, that being a bad person does not make up for good talent, and that the care and feeding of a single superstar at the direct expense of everyone around them is just not worth it. I also feel that treating a hostile-but-talented worker preferentially is unethical, as it directly rewards bad behavior and directly harms others exhibiting good behavior. If I were pure-dollar, I'd be stating "we're not here to hold hands and sing Kum By Ya, and NeckBeard here writes the best code, so suck up his tirades, you average workers". Exactly the opposite. I believe that teams produce winning products, not superstars, and that whenever you have to choose between the single superstar and the hardworking regular team, you choose the team.
Never coddle a jackass, no matter how talented. And may the Flying Spaghetti Monster help you if a jackass working for you comes into contact with an "idiot" customer and behaves... predictably. Your company and your jackass will instantly become a YouTube star, and not in a good way.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Your first clue is that you refer to them as "users" :)
Yeah, instead of "lusers" or "id10t errors".
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Eh, I worked for the same company three times (never fired, quit over pay each time), refused to be in the installation or service departments (the owner of the company told me what to do, no one else), laid out often, told the boss "fuck you" several times, walked off of job sites, refused to do certain jobs and told a helper I'd kill him. I refused to wear the company uniforms, I would not carry the pager if I did not want to, and I refused to call in for POs or to justify any part, piece or tool I decided I needed on my service van. If I needed it, I bought it using the company account or CC. Not to mention wrecking a truck and running into the shop (two separate incidents). Thing was I was a valuable employee because I could fix any piece of HVAC/R equipment, estimate jobs in half the time of our estimator, sell upgrades and new jobs, interact with most customers very well, and would run twice as many service calls with the same percentage of call backs as our "best" service tech, and would consistently bill out well over 300k a year. Some folks are actually worth having, no matter how PITA they are. And that, 9 times out of ten, is based on the money.
That's pretty cool that you really knew your stuff, you had high billables, and they obviously tolerated you. But have you tamed down the 'tude over the years, or are you still as much of a jerk? Nothing personal, I don't know you at all, but it seems from your post you actually know that you can be a pain in the ass... It's not like you are unaware of how you "come across" - some ppl are clueless of how they come across, I was in that boat once. Or was it just that particular employer or that industry that pushed your buttons? LOL. Just curious, I don't come across too many people who are "that" good and don't have to be diplomatic at least a little.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
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.
I believe all Apple stuff is overpriced and not as great as apple enthusiasts make out. I am irritated just trying to use any given Apple device. This is my opinion. I don't look down on others for using it, I know why I believe it's overpriced and I don't believe people really understand the reasons why they say they buy it. It's 90% marketing and 10% other factors IMO.
I may shorthand this to "Apple stuff is crap".
Glad I'm never going to have to work with some jackass who can't tell that people shorthand and don't necessarily mean harm or insult to others just because they state their opinion but know that others may not want the full carefully thought through dissertation on the subject. People are free to disagree with me but if they disagree with you sounds like they won't be getting a job.
Just the way it sounds.
www.nodicerpg.com - Some RP stuff for free, some not so for free, but still cheap.