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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.
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.
Your first clue is that you refer to them as "users" :)
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
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."
Many places don't want individual thinkers in all positions, they want 'team players,' where team player means someone who shuts up and does what they're told. The larger the company is, the fewer outspoken people they want.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
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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