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What Should Start-Ups Do With the Brilliant Jerk?
First time accepted submitter glowend writes "Cliff Oxford writes in the New York Times 'I define Brilliant Jerks as specialized, high-producing performers. They are not, however, brilliant business people, and that is what companies need during periods of rapid growth. There are a lot of hurdles to cross when companies move from start-up to growth, including dealing with chaos and changes in culture. But the biggest hurdle is dealing with the human factor — how you move, shift and replace people as the company grows into the next level of success.' So how do you make the best use of the Brilliant Jerk as your company grows?"
as you would have them do unto you.
Steve Martin made a movie about this. It contains all you need to know.
brilliant business people are the opposite of productive.
Jerk in any way shape or form is not needed in any business.
Worked for Apple Computer Inc.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Some types of autism or personality disorders make people come across as "jerks" to other more extroverted people. If someone is just quiet or short with you, it doesn't necessarily mean they're a jerk.
The article has it right
"So what’s the right answer? Get rid of the Brilliant Jerk as fast as you possibly can"
First, the brilliant jerk isn't as brilliant as he or others think he is. Often, it is right after your superstar leaves that people covering his work find out about the shortcuts he took.
Second, his positive contribution will stay stead, but his negative contribution will grow proportionally to the size of your company and the number of people he works with.
Third, the longer he stays the bigger headache it will be to get rid of him.
Fourth, be sure he realy is a jerk and cannot be reasoned with.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I define Brilliant Jerks as specialized, high-producing performers. They are not, however, brilliant business people
Seriously, he's never met a brilliant jerk MBA business guy? He needs to get out more. Many business types are jerks, some are even very talented and smart.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Why would you ask that here? What would slashdotters know about being jerks?
I can think of no better way to inspire under-performers in a growing company than to jettison the worker who has been a superhero to date in a small company. This article is baffling to me and I don't understand why the author thinks dealing with super-performers should be different based on the company size. And the premise that it is unreasonable for the guy who constantly pulls backsides of others out of the fire to become a little irritated is odd.
Just so I have this straight, in order to drop the "jerk" suffix, a super-achieving worker who fills in for people when they are on vacation or sick, does not take vacation himself because the company is so reliant on his performance, and probably isn't getting credit for how many times he saved his coworkers must a) always be cheerful, and b) not speak up when he believes management is heading in directions that will increase reliance on said worker and make life even more difficult.
Basically the mind is cutting the heart out of a company, when both need to recognize each other's strengths and capitalize on them instead of picking a "winner".
I'd say make him a chief engineering officer or chief software architect or some other top R&D title. "Brilliant Jerks" tend not to be people persons (obviously) so they tend to shy away from client/investor/public facing roles like CEO, where they can do real damage. If this person insists on such a role, perhaps let him find out the hard way that if he wants a management role, he has to minimize his role in R&D doing the things he actually loves. I think he will make the decision on his own that he'd rather be head tinkerer than run the day to day of the company.
There are a lot of brilliant jerks who aren't brilliant business people, but that's true of any group. Brilliant jerk and brilliant business person are not exclusive properties.
Honestly, I've never met a brilliant jerk who actually is.
People only get genuinely brilliant because they're capable of introspection, because they're capable of looking at themselves and seeing in what areas they can improve and then they go out and do exactly that, they improve that area. If they could do that, they wouldn't be a jerk because they'd recognise it as an area of improvement.
People who are jerks often think they're better than they are and simply don't have anyone above them competent enough to call them out on their bullshit.
1. Give them a sandbox where they're the autocratic ruler and sole resident.
2. Slowly make that sandbox not at all relevant to the core of the business, by creating alternative approaches to solving the problem that the jerk used to solve. Other people will naturally route around the jerk whenever possible anyways, since nobody wants to deal with a jerk if they can help it.
3. When the sandbox becomes irrelevant and socially outcast, fire the jerk.
There are smart people who aren't jerks. Get them instead.
I am officially gone from
Kill them.
My brilliance* varies from topic to topic. My biggest problem is I want to apply my brilliance to everything. Over the course of time, I fail. I learn, I re-attempt, but it has taken me a while to admit defeat. So I am quite happy handing stuff over to whomever is better at it these days. I have a ton of great ideas, but I really suck at running a business. I can give you a really good concept and the best implementation, but I will fail to succeed on my own. Therefore, I suggest you convince your brilliant jerk that only his best are brilliance is needed, and you'll surround himself with other brilliant people in areas where he falters. naturally he will gravitate towards that too. All you have to do is convince him that the other people are on par with him in their areas. Which, admittedly is not always the case. But in those cases you can have a plan. That such brilliance is not yet needed, but can be acquired (malloced) when needed. She should be content then to do what he does best and work with other people.
*Admittedly I am no longer the most brilliant person where I work. This can be hard to swallow, but it is easier if you bring them in under someone, rather than place someone above them. To do that move, you have to convince them that they can do the job better. I was not convinced of that and left. The company wanted a "yes man" which I was not. Later I found out the "yes man" left because he couldn't say yes enough to please management, because well, management was flawed. I knew that. Management was family to others in the company and they they hired a name whose ego surpassed my own. The thing is, he ran the company into the ground. many of my friends lost their jobs due to his mismanagement.
So my other tip is poll him frequently, about everything, even outside his area.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
The guy sounds like a booster rocket. At some point it has to be cut loose or you won't reach orbit. Just one thing: people aren't hardware that you can just let burn up. Make sure he gets a nice severance. The next problem you have might be "they chew people up and spit them out". Who wants a reputation like that?
Find managers that can bridge the communication gap between jerks and the rest of the business. There are plenty of business people who know how to talk with someone like a specialized programmer for instance, without having any practical programming skills themselves. Every business success or failure is about finding the right people, culture, etc. Productivity is only one measure and people must be in place to motivate and communicate with all types of people.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
Put him in his own cube with his own projects. Half the job, in any job, is being able to interact with others in a productive and professional way. BJs are constitutionally incapable of doing that and eventually cost you in productivity and morale.
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Maybe he wouldn't be a jerk if the rest of you weren't all so stupid! Ever think of that?
He was always the first to cover for doctors who were on call. He was always the first to volunteer to work on holidays. He had the most articles published by the American Medical Association. He was the first to get new training and share it with others one-on-one. And by the way, he was the highest revenue producer of all the doctors in the group. In fact, he was producing twice the revenue of some of the doctors. He had been the third doctor to join the group and without his revenue, the start-up could not have been successful.
OK.*
1. Covering people? He likes putting people in his debt AND he probably doesn't have a life because he's has issues.
2. Most articles published: again no life.
3. New training to share? Nice but more than likely it's because he likes being a know-it-all expert.
4. Revenue? Please! My local hospital had this HUGE controversy (and subsequent lawsuits) because one of its cardiac surgeons was by-pass crazy. Come in with chest pains? Open heart! even if it was just gas. He pulled in a SHIT load of money so the hospital turned its head because he was pulling in so much money.
He was a quack.
Then again I know a surgeon, who is constantly turning patients away (ortho - back surgery) because their REAL problem is their fat gut and sitting in front of the computer 10+ hours a day.
* - I know because I was just such an asshole and I've been paying for it every since and I'm making an effort to change.
Promote him! Seems like that's what happens where I work.
If the "brilliant jerk" can learn and it's believed that they'll be able to grow with the company, provide greater value, and learn enough social skills to avoid being a detriment, then keep them, no question.
If they're unable to learn, though, and will simply be a hindrance for the indefinite future, then what I've seen work (especially in government work) is to have that person isolated. Keep them alone, make them feel special so they are happy and productive, and they'll stay away from people that would otherwise alienate or insult.
If none of this is possible...then perhaps the person needs to be given the stern warning that either they are "brilliant" enough to learn how to deal with people, or they should no longer work for your company anymore.
They may be real good with some stuff but not so much with say other business people.
Now you don't want to not have them and having people that are business people may end being good at business but as a PHB where they don't known much about the nuts and bolts.
Hire those of us who are brilliant and who are not jerks.
Give him his own office, a supply of fast food, sodas, coffee and energy drinks and let him work on the weird stuff that would defeat the others.
Why did everything get so touchy-feely all of a sudden? Why can't a guy just work in peace without having to tip-toe around the feelings of all the precious little snowflakes?
Now, if he goes out of his way to piss people off and promote general chaos and destruction then kick his ass out, otherwise suck it up.
what about a good Doctor that may not be the best at working with Business people on non doctor Business should be gone?
There's a need for and room for a certain number of large-scale companies in this country and in the world. There's also a need for and room for countless smaller and medium-sized companies. They're all integral parts of a functioning society and economy. Most small/medium companies will never be big and shouldn't be. When you fully understand business scaling, you realize that both in theory and practice it's *impossible* to scale a company without changing the product or service being delivered to your consumer.
Think about the quality difference between say, Famous Restaurant Chain and that long-running Small Family-Owned Restaurant near you that makes incredible-tasting food. If you think the difference between the two is that the big tasteless one always sucked at making food but had a brilliant business guy at the reigns, and the small one, while tasty, simply lacks the business sense to scale up their operations and make real money on their talent, you've completely misunderstood how businesses scale.
Most of those famous large-chain restaurants and fast-food joints actually started out as a single family-owned restaurant that was doing very well financially because customers loved the place. They genuinely loved the food, the service and price. The low-quality form they exist in today is the direct result of scaling; there's simply no other way to do it. Quality of the goods and services *always* falls when you scale up, but you make more money. Many of those successful small family restaurants that stay that way are constantly under pressure from peers and partners to expand and are perfectly capable of handling the business process of expansion, but they relentlessly resist because they don't want to ruin a good thing.
At a small scale, each employee really matters. You do need some people who are brilliant at their respective jobs to be successful. Moving from there to the large scale is all about commoditization. It's about building a self-sustaining organization that delivers a consistent product or service regardless of which employees come and go over time. It means trading out the special people that make great things for the ability to turn out consistently mediocre things cheaply using random sets of mediocre employees. It's a hard transition to make, and it's a constant process as you grow rather than a one-time thing. If you want to grow, you have to hire people that can work with that process. People that can take themselves out of the picture personally. People who can instead design and operate an ever-expanding system where employees are just cogs in a machine which always runs smoothly even if some of the cogs are a little warped and misshapen, and even if there's a regular pace of cogs just leaving the machine and randomly-different ones replacing them sometime later.
So if you're a businessperson, or business owner, or investor, this sort of scaling and growth is what excites you. You're not excited by making the best fajitas this side of the Mississippi, you're not excited by making the best firewall software man has ever seen, etc. You're excited by creating systems out of human cogs that scale up infinitely and keep giving back ever-increasing monetary rewards. But so many business people in the world want to scale their small-to-medium company into the next behemoth and most of them will fail. Scaling is hard, and there's only so much room, and your already-larger competitors already have a big leg up on you. Most of them shouldn't even try to scale. It's perfectly ok to stick to your smaller size, not frustrate everyone with scaling attempts, and simply keep re-investing profits into making it the best damn small company anyone ever did business with.
The "brilliant jerk" isn't necessarily the problem. Maybe he's perfect for that small company, and the problem is your unnatural desire to scale things at the cost of quality, destroying a beautiful and functional small cog in the economy by trying to make it too big.
11*43+456^2
Jobs was the business guy, Woz was the "brilliant jerk".
I read TFA, assuming that the definition of "Brilliant Jerk" in the summary was, in fact, summarized, and that the whole definition actually defined the "jerkiness" as something other than just not being a "business person". But that wasn't the case. Later in the article were some half-assed examples of what the author means by "jerky" behavior, but still no real definition. He ended up a competitor, so? He poached employees? He started legal battles? Competitors do do that, as we've seen with Apple, Samsung, Google, and countless smaller companies.
How many "business people" do you need? Someone's got to treat patients or develop products or otherwise provide some goods and services for the salesmen to sell and the marketeers to market. And if everyone says "yes, let's do it" to everything, you'll do everything without even thinking about it.
If an employee just doesn't fit in anymore and everyone's unhappy about it, then sure, end the relationship as quickly and amicably as possible. But why label someone a "jerk" just because the business changed? If you now need a hammer but keep trying to drive nails with the saw, that's your fault. Blaming the saw for being a saw makes you the poor workman who blames his tools.
I am not a crackpot.
The truth of the matter is Brilliant Jerks are what run your company in the background. It's not necessarily that they are "jerks" but that they don't have that "political jargon" speech a lot of managers have. For instance, they say "no" instead of "I think there is a better way we can do this." Yes, you can fire all of them, however keep in mind if they truly are "brilliant" they will be bringing more to your company than your "regular" people.
I just interviewed at a place that embraced the brilliant jerks instead of isolating them. They made it 'part of their culture' and they multiplied. Needless to say, I won't be taking their offer.
For the subject area(s) that the guy is "expert" in, in the context of the Dreyfus model:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition
just get out of the guy's way, don't micromanage him, and let him use his intuition to do great things for you.
...what the stupid jerk thinks of the brilliant jerk?
I'm finishing up my PhD in a year (or twoish) and I'm looking forward to leaving academia and joining a small, growing company not related to nuclear physics. I can see myself bringing quantitative and technical skills to an otherwise lacking company.
I'm not interested in becoming a jerk.
How do I monitor the transition of the company and allow myself to feel out new roles and responsibilities?
I've always though that being a jerk disqualifies a person from being "brilliant".
You need to be the whole package in order for me to call you "brilliant".
TFA read like a breakup with one side telling their story while the other side was not allowed to speak.
What is most telling to me is the authors willingness to judge and place blaim on others while demonstrating his own lack of leadership.
I started to read tfa, and from what I can tell, there is a paid consultant coming to speak with a group of 25 Doctors. There he makes snap pre-judgments and starts name calling, then publishes a blog about how right he is... What a waste of time and effort...
Tell them to create a product that is 10x better than the current product. Give them funding and support. If you can, have them work offsite.
Try to hire another Brilliant non-Jerk to manage them. Brilliants Jerks are less offensive to other Brilliant people.
Look at the greats, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple. All headed by brilliant technical people. If you are the CEO of a tech company and aren't a brilliant engineer, it might be you that needs to go. Just sayin'.
Unless you have a lot of guaranteed equity in the company it is never, ever worth the hassle to go above and beyond the call of duty. You make enemies. Its just not worth the hassle. You can keep the pay checks coming and ride the gravy train by doing alot less. Now you don't tell anyone you are doing that, cause they won't like that. Employers will be happy to use you up and fire you when they are done. However it is not in your personal interest to work all that hard.
Note that in the IT business, the employer often has a ridiculous non-compete against the 'brilliant jerk' that might make it hard for him to find other employment. As a rule of thumb, you work somewhere and all of a sudden you get a long legal text they want you to sign that you don't really understand. Do NOT sign it. Especially if they pressure you to sign it right now and give you the 'just' excuse. We just want want to protect ourselves. This is just our standard agreement. There is a good chance they will fire you before the ink dries. Google did this to a large number of employees at a company they bought a few years ago.
I generally like to keep to 40 hours. If I work late one day, I take time off. I don't ask. I just do it. There are some corporate cultures where this is considered alien and you are expected to work insane hours. If you refuse to work the hours, you are often considered the company jerk. You get 'but others have to do it'. No they choose to do it and call it a have to. I'm ok with the work waiting until tomorrow. What I have also found is that if you are smart enough to see the writing on the wall, get a new job and quit on them before they are ready to get rid of you they go crazy. So its best to just get a new job and quit by email. I look at it like I fired them. This way I don't have to deal with them. Employers will lie to you and tell you you are great to keep you around just until they want to get rid of you.
I have also found that alot of companies do things in a way because that is how they have always done it. This often leads to running around like a chicken with your head cut off and leads to longer hours. Some places will listen to you and let you help improve things. Others will go 'we have always done it this way' or give you their reason for doing something. Well there is always a reason. It doesn't make it a good reason. Few places want to step back and look at the bigger picture. If people are salaried they would rather just force people to work really long hours then bother improving things. Most people are lemmings who will work the hours because they are told to. If you refuse, then you are the 'jerk'. As I said, I keep to 40 hours and if its a problem, I just go somewhere else and I go abruptly. Its not worth the hassle to give notice to a place that wouldn't rehire you. Just send an email.
One issue I have had recently is that there is one group here that specifically requests my help on issues over and over again. There are other people around, but they prefer to go to me. Then I get a review and find out they are complaining about me. Yet, they keep coming back. Managers never give names, but its obvious who it is. The simple solution there (and one only I would want) is to use the passive aggressive approach to get them to not request my help. This way I don't get the complaints in my review. These days employers use excuses to lower your rating to give you a lower raise or no raise at all. So in the future when they come to me for help, they will get silence in response. Eventually my manager will ask me to work on it and I'll say, I have been swamped with something else and I'll get right on it. I won't. Then I'll eventually respond back with something that will not be very good. I won't say why I did this. I just won't be able to figure it out. Eventually they will go to someone else. This gets the negative comments off my review and frees me up to work with people who will say positive things about me. This is a conversation you can't have with anyone you work with. Your manager will give you a blank stare if you mention and go 'oh we don't want that'. Of course you don't, but under performing will get me a better review and a better raise. So I under peform.
Do you mean introvert, nerd, slightly autistic?
Or you you mean backstabbing, businessman.
If the former, put him in control of your product design, it sounds like he knows how to get things done (and being the most popular man around the water coolers does not help the company one bit). It worked for jobs and Woz.
If you mean the second. Their is nothing you can really do about the boss. He is not going to resign simply because everyone hates him.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
For the Brilliant Jerks...
They key to surviving is to take 2 (or 3) jobs at the same time and collect all the salaries.
This way your energy is diluted across companies and you don't irritate as many people
I do this as a consultant in a legit way
I have , however, seen this pattern multiple times by guys with FTE positions.
These are Brilliant Jerks.
I hear Apple is looking to hire a new CEO.
How about if you stop calling the people who built the company "jerks" and plotting how to get rid of them behind their backs?
Just a thought. It might lead to fewer people realizing that they don't like working with you, leaving the company, becoming competitors, poaching employees and starting legal battles over stupid things that could easily have been sorted out between people who aren't jerks.
But what would I know? I'm probably a jerk too.
I suppose I could sell my business to someone else... :p
Please!
There are all kinds of companies with environments to suit all kinds of people. Interesting But Mediocre is great for some; not for others.
A homogenous environment is cheap and easy for a business to create. When is cheap and easy ever bad?
So give the brilliant guy a truly insanely difficult looking (caveat) challenge for a breakthrough product.
Once he's evaluated the entire set of options and possible solutions, which are documented so everyone can meet with the rest of management and see what the odds are of a possibility of a breakthrough.
Use people for their skills.
I think that the situation as described is incomplete or missing part of the picture.
What he is describing is what happens when you have a highly valuable and contributing team member who has a vision for the company that differs from what everyone else wants.
Assume we have 10 employees.
Lets say Employee X has a value of 1000, and the rest have a value of 100 each. The company has a value of 1900. Clearly Employee X is valuable and to get where you need to be, you need to accommodate his views. He is basically more than half the company
Now you grow to 40 employees. Employee X is still worth 1000, but the rest of the group is worth 3900. Employee X should not be dictating where the entire group wants to go, even if he carries so much influence.
Employee X did not become less valuable, he did become less important. The only time Employee X becomes a Jerk is if Employee X allows his ego to think he is still more than half the value of the company.
The solution is that Employee X needs to be treated as a consultant or contract. Let him be the rock star that saves every ones ass. But as good as he is, he cannot lead if no one wants to follow him, and he should not lead if the place he wants to lead is not the place the team wants to go. And Employee X should not be allowed to prevent someone else from leading if his plans do not add as much to the group as the other guy.
A good leader is not the guy who is worth 1000 to everyone else's 100. A good leader is the guy who can get a value of 120 from people with a base value of 100.
END COMMUNICATION
As with most things in life, generalisations like "brilliant jerk" are wrong the vast majority of the time.
Dealing with your "brilliant jerk" will depend entirely on many factors such as his personality, strengths and weaknesses. And those of the company.
Whenever I read a business article, it's always full of truthisms. But then read another article and it's full of truthisms that are completely the opposite course of action. Go read a dozen case studies, find the same thing. The best course of action depends on making the right call in the specific situation - and being able to execute it. All the stock management strategies, tools etc are just guidance, there to help you think objectively and formally.
I was in a situation where we had a very bright and capable college intern, and we hired him when he graduated. The kid was the kind of person you could throw an amorphous ill-stated problem at and he'd work out a solution. He also had mad Linux and OSS skills which was sadly lacking at the company I was working for.
However, he was a bit odd, like Sheldon on Big Bang Theory (but a bit nicer). He was nervous with strangers. He had a certain way of living his life, and did not like change.
So (after he was moved out of my group) the company came along and put him on the road by himself to visit customer sites across the country and meet new people in unfamiliar cities. He melted down and was let go after a few months of that.
Some people were not meant to work with customers. Some people were not meant to work on amorphous technical problems. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. A good manager will recognize that, and maximize the performance of their reports (along the lines of the theorem of comparative advantage).
I'm not saying you should never challenge your reports or encourage them to push their limits, but you should recognize that pushing them too far may break them.
Grain of salt: I'm probably one of the Jerks this guy is talking about.
To me this seems like it was written from the perspective of a higher-up who can't get his way. I've been that person (I work at a LARGE corporation).
An example of this was our leadership telling us to use a particular set of tools for our work. I was excited at the new suite of stuff because it was going to fill some gaping holes in our processes.
However, after taking them out for a spin (usability and performance) we realized that this set of tools were going to fold under the load we were going to put them under. We had several other teams also working with the tools, but they were doing a fraction of the work we were doing.
My team wrote papers, talked to upper management, and pulled every string we could to not pursue that contract.
Because of that, I kind of committed career suicide, I was pushing the hardest not to use the new toolsI was labeled not a team player, and not being supportive of our corporate overlords.
Thus, I shut up and put my head down to work and changed areas. (I have a house and kids, so switching jobs outright would be rough).
It’s now 4 years later, and at the cost of hundreds of millions, we’ve dropped and transitioned that particular tool suite.
TL;DR: The Jerks typically do have good ideas, they just don’t jive with leadership.
Quite frankly, you should go to hell!
- Brilliant Jerk who used to be just "Brilliant", till selfish vampires such as yourself sucked the blood right out of the our veins along with any tolerance we might have had for your arrogant self.
I have seen these fights before and it usually comes down to shares. Often the Brilliant Jerk has a founder's fraction of the shares 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 and the new MBA types that have been hired (usually mostly in a sales capacity) are envious that when the big sale comes along that those few founders are going to get all the cheese. So they convince them to dilute but the so called jerk will say good for you, dilute your shares, mine stay as they are. He knows that the new MBA types are very replaceable now that they can just offer them a salary.
The other variation of the brilliant jerk is that they have again a founder's share and the other founders are business types. The brilliant jerk did the programming of 10 to earn his share but now they have hired 20 programmers and the business people suddenly decide that the original programmer isn't carrying his weight anymore while they do all the big deals. So as the really big sellout comes they resent that while they "made it rain" that the brilliant jerk will get just as much as them. They rationalize that even if he is worth 10 programmers that they can now just hire 10 programmers for far less.
Rarely, if ever, have I seen where the original founders were causing a problem for anyone except for getting in the way of self-entitled jerks.
The brilliant jerk is the CEO. He was brilliant enough to hire someone (a badass that everyone loved and respected) to handle the day to day operations of the company, unfortunately he's also jerk enough to tie his hands to the wall preventing him from doing anything of substance. He got fed up and left and has since been replace with a smarmy douche.
"He was always the first to cover for doctors who were on call. He was always the first to volunteer to work on holidays."
What a tool!
Clearly the authors vision is different from the top producer, and most likely rightfully so. Your definition of moving forward is probably the same as everyone else's because its what you were taught and just follow a blue print for success. As much as i hate to admit Apple had this same scenario, they fired Steve Jobs (a real asshole) because he was not in line with the vision that all the other sheep had. After figuring that "the jerk" was a valuable assets they had dismissed , re-hired them and became one of the most profitable companies in history. On the flip side , "the jerk" should have no worries and should welcome new challenges just in spite of his previous employer.
They are a bit like spiders. They produce that great silk that beats everything known to mankind, but they just can't be farmed because they eat each other.
The solution : take their silk producing genes, put them in sheeps and cows, and milk these.
Alternatively there have been some experiments at putting them in small individual cages, attached to a machine that extracts the silk. I wonder if that could be somehow applicable to coders.
It sounds as if the author is describing a resentful employee. Whether (s)he's brilliant or not is pretty immaterial to that issue.
Frankly, if the person's contributions were as pivotal to the success of the company as the piece makes them sound, and the employee didn't get to enjoy a fair share of the rewards of that effort, they have some justification for being resentful.
I read through the definition of this brilliant "jerk", and I can't understand why it's tacked on.
I see no indication that the aforementioned person is being a jerk, but so much as not really contributing to growth.
On the other hand, he appears to be helping to keep the status quo, which is by no means a bad thing.
Are you telling me you're going to fire a perfectly good worker because he may not have the best marketing skills?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
He was always the first to cover for doctors who were on call.
He was always the first to volunteer to work on holidays.
He was the first to get new training and share it with others one-on-one.
Does this sound like a "jerk" to anyone?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Dear Cliff,
I might be a brilliant jerk at my company, but you appear to be an ignorant asshole with low IQ and a way too high self-esteem.
I don't want your overrated rapid growth, I don't want to see your sloppy management methods mess with our team, and I don't want to end up in more meetings that I need to, especially if they're not on the technical side.
Now, get off my lawn and go find another company to vampirize!
"The likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Roger Ailes have had no problem showing Brilliant Jerks the door, and all built world-class brands faster and better than the rest of us. "
These guys are renowned for meetings resembling verbal wrestling matches.
Naturally you don't tolerate insubordination yet the giants never shy away from vigorous argument and disagreement.
This consultant must be a real idiot to imply causation between firing "jerks" and success of these companies while still expected to be taken seriously by anyone.
Every situation is different and unique. Accepting this consultants antidontical evidence for a cookie cutter response is illadvisable.
No he got fired not only for being an asshole but a lousy businessman his division was loosing money and taking others down with him. The kick in the ass made him growup kinda.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Depends on his age.
If in the younger category (under 30), give him a position as a "secret advisor" for the top dogs. The rule is, in order for him to keep his job, that he has to provide his secret excellent awesome information to the superiors in a polite and well-rounded way or it will not be taken into consideration. If the ideas are well-presented and used, he will get public recognition and an occasional appearance under the right conditions, but not always visible.
Wait, it sounds like I'm describing raising a bad kid. Well, that's my advice, and I'm sticking to it. :)
I went to work for a really terrible company. The kind that once you're there for a couple months you realize was the inspiration for numerous 'Dilbert' comics and possibly the entire script of 'Office Space'. Except I didn't see it coming because it was a small-ish company; 75 employees when I started.
I probably should have immediately found another job, but they hired me under the auspice of needing someone to help them "scale their infrastructure" because they were "rapidly growing" and my experience and skill set fit the bill. Neither could have been further from the truth.
They had a CTO who was woefully under-qualified for the job and a VP of engineering who wrote something once in the dot-com that was snatched up for a pile of cash (it had since disappeared from the face of the earth, as far as I could find). I would come to find that both of them were very threatened by anyone who had the audacity to suggest their approach to something might not be the optimal one. And that they had been the original architects and authors of the company's current infrastructure. This ... was a bad combination.
Leaving that company was quite possibly the best thing I ever did career-wise; I'm much happier now, am doing far more interesting work, and am actually appreciated and encouraged by the company for which I now work and its management. I should have done it sooner. Since then (3 years ago) their entire engineering group has turned over. A couple of them I poached, but most just moved on when they figured out that unless you smiled, nodded, and said "awesome!" to everything ... you were a "jerk".
The article describes a spectacular failure of being able to retain and accommodate creative talent. When company grows and management consultants move in and start laying out verticals and org charts then the bureaucracy sets in and top talent leaves because there is too much red tape to deal with. It looks from the article that the company failed to setup non-management vertical and allow people who have no desire to become managers to grow. The thing is that CEO or COO or another acronym would have benefited greatly from direct communication with Brilliant Jerk instead of relying on management vertical to percolate the message through. Lots' of successful tech companies have "distinguished engineers", "product fellows" or other non-management positions that report directly to the top management. Technology changes every 5 years. Getting rid of Brilliant Jerks is a direct path to obsolete products and becoming irrelevant in the marketplace. Examples are readily available: look at RIM, Nokia, Windows Mobile spectacular failures. You just cannot manage you way out of this one.
The Jerk must be fed ... with pizza and Coca-Cola.
It must be kept cool and in the shade during summer days and kept warm and cosy during the harsh storms of the winter.
Always keep the Jerk dry and away from women.
Do not talk with the Jerk unless about jerky things.
The Jerk needs better and faster machines than the others, whom we do not want to mention here.
That is the way to keep the Jerk ... to increase your wealth and wisdom.
The point of the article was a person who was the lynchpin in starting a business out of nothing and turning it into a rising star is often not well suited for steering a growing corporation, that is, managing a team that's grown large enough that not every decision is made by consensus of all the participants. When the business moves to this state, arrogance and stubbornness--the very qualities that made the "brilliant jerk" indispensible during the incubation of the company--make them jerks to the company trying to go mainstream.
True enough.
The correct way to deal with this is to divert them away from the corporate leadership structure and into a new start-up venture, where being brilliant and pig-headed once again becomes an asset. A good "brilliant jerk" can probably spark four or five new companies before the rough edges get worn off. Look at Steve Jobs, for example.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"Jerk-Faced Butthole" is a something of regional insult, here in Minnesota.
I know two guys who use it routinely -- both Native Americans, maybe it's a native thing -- and several other people who have picked up the phrase, perhaps from those two guys.
-kgj
People that are brilliant at business AND brilliant at technology. That person would be the starter of the business. But if a business is started by someone that doesn't meet both requirements, then they need to be brilliant at ONE of them AND also have the personality to GET ALONG with and WORK WELL with people who are brilliant in the other realm.
BIG NO NO: do NOT require someone to be brilliant with both realms. Do not even require them to know much of the other. What is needed here is RESPECT for what someone does know. And that respect needs to work both ways. Ideally someone who is brilliant with business and ignorant of technology should get along with someone that is ignorant of business and brilliant with technology. It may help to have someone that is at least fairly knowledgeable of both to help make that work.
I get to diss manager types in general because I know a few who are absolutely great at what they do. Same for techies.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Oh my goodness, that comment and the related article are among the most vicious things I've ever seen.
Both of you even admit you're begging for superhuman miracles at the beginning. "Look how fragile our business is!"
But then when it begins to "require new staff", and all the meetings set in, "K Thx Bye" is the recommended course? If he doesn't have Priority Rights to stock and such, then it sounds like he's getting screwed. Why should he ever have bothered to start the business at all if he had foreseen this endgame? It's just fancily worded treachery. Yuck.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
i may be a jerk and i am may be brilliant but... what was that third thing you called me
Very clever, had a hard time with showering and dressing. Obnoxious, loud, and full of unpleasant remarks, but mostly very productive at our small start-up.
We didn't have to deal with him - he got dealt with by the police. Turns out his drug habit got him involved with not nice people, and in order to repay the money he owed them, he stole all the computers and monitors from our office once night. Some of my office mates got to see him arrested, as they left work after him one night.
Brilliant, but impulsive, with no long-term thinking. He was like a 13-year-old boy in many regards.
He got off on all charges, as he was coerced into committing his crime.
He gets to be jerk because he is a brilliant specialized, high-producing performers? Then it sounds simple, as the company grows, the range of jobs in the company grows. Give him the one that will use his specialization and high production to the maximum. Since he is high producing, give him also a raise.
You may also fire him, but other people may then stop trying to be high producing. What is the point of trying hard if the high producing people get to be fired?
You should note that you redefined the original definition of jerk. They guy in the article did nothing jerky, he did not treated people badly, he did not manipulated and did not cheated. You do not want him in you management circle, because he is not like you. That is fair enough, but hardly a reason to call him jerk. That choice of word actually says more about you than about him.
From the article:
*rolls eyes* Oh yeah, sounds like a TERRIBLE person to work with.
The office jerk is pretty much never the smartest person at the company. If he was, he'd have the sense to shut up and realize when he's just being an ass. But he doesn't, because he's not brilliant; he only thinks he is.
So what do you do with him? Fire him and grab someone who's actually a team player: Something pretty important for any tech company.
If you take the writer's advice, you'll fire Steve Jobs as Apple did. They nearly failed. Hilariously, the author cites Steve Jobs as an example of a CEO that wasn't "afraid to show brilliant jerks the door."
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"The likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Roger Ailes have had no problem showing Brilliant Jerks the door"
At least two of those could be described as their own 'brilliant jerk' and one of these was eventually hired back on, the other couldn't be fired. The jury's still out on how much damage he did to the computer industry. Roger Ailes is President of Faux News.
AccountKiller
There is this nice concept called "the holiday startup". This is definitely the best way to deal with it.
is mislabeling the problem.
The problem here isn't "brilliant jerks", it's people who made important contributions to the company in the past, but whose *current* behavior is harming the company. Many "brilliant jerks" are a mixed bag, but continue to be of great value to the company (for example Steve Jobs).
The answer is much simpler when you define the problem as the employee having become a net negative contributor. If you can't fix that fast, you get rid of those guys. I personally learned the hard way that by trying too hard to fix a troublesome employee, you end up being unfair to all the people who have to work with him.
If gratitude is a psychological obstacle, give the guy a fat bonus and then fire him. Suppose the employee is costing you a million dollars a year. That's not hard for a well placed bad employee, who can wreck projects multiple teams are working on, lose key customers, and mire you in consequences for years to come. So the guy is going to cost you a million bucks next year. *Split it with him*. Give him a half-million dollars to go away, and you're *both* a half-million ahead of where you would have been. That sounds insane, but it's less insane than burning a million bucks and *nobody* benefiting.
As for actual "brilliant jerks", their contribution and net impact have to be regularly evaluated.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
udachny is a sock puppet of roman_mir and does not deserve to be modded up.
What? Early on, decisions are made by consensus so someone arrogant and stubborn does well? And then a large business is not run by consensus so arrogance gets in the way of what now? Nothing you said makes the slightest sense to me.
Jerk or not, brilliant people are rare and incredibly useful. If you can't figure out how to minimize the jerk aspect while maximizing the brilliance, then you're not being very effective. In fact, this ability is one way to define an excellent business leader.
The point of the article was a person who was the lynchpin in starting a business out of nothing and turning it into a rising star is often not well suited for steering a growing corporation, that is, managing a team that's grown large enough that not every decision is made by consensus of all the participants. When the business moves to this state, arrogance and stubbornness--the very qualities that made the "brilliant jerk" indispensible during the incubation of the company--make them jerks to the company trying to go mainstream.
True enough.
The correct way to deal with this is to divert them away from the corporate leadership structure and into a new start-up venture, where being brilliant and pig-headed once again becomes an asset. A good "brilliant jerk" can probably spark four or five new companies before the rough edges get worn off. Look at Steve Jobs, for example.
Wait, what? You had me right up until that last statement. Are you saying that Steve Jobs is the exception that proves the rule? 'Cause if you're not, you make no sense. Brilliant jerk he may have been, but he was normally not diverted away from Apple's corporate management structure. On the contrary, he was at the head of it, and when he was not there, the company was not as successful as when he was.
On the flip side of this article - I worked with start-ups that followed the same pattern of growing the business to ~50 people then deciding it was because of genius management that they were successful and they didn't need their star engineers (plural) anymore. So they use the profits to give all the executive big bonuses, hire middle managers to effectively demote engineers and make it clear they're expendable. The star engineers get disgusted and leave the company, in the short term everything's fine and management congratulates themselves for removing the "egomaniacs" from the team that they clearly didn't need.
Then, inexplicably, growth starts to decline; tasks that used to take weeks are now lagging for months. New features are buggy, unreliable, and unpolished. The company's no longer getting rave reviews.
The executives decide it's because there's not enough process governing how software is developed, the company "has been lucky, but we need to grow up", so they hire a consultant to impose best practices on how features are developed and releases are handled. Involving lots of documentation, committees, and approval chains. Productivity drops further, there's a disaster or two, and investors start getting antsy.
Management will remind them of earlier successes, that it's the same management team so there's no need to worry, but to hedge their bets they have a round of layoffs to focus the team and reduce costs. They outsource the "grunt work" of software engineering to cheaper suppliers. Things get worse, and a long and painful failure ensues.
I define Brilliant Jerks as specialized, high-producing performers.
"Jerk"? This is one of the many, many, reasons that technical geeks hate business people.
I have listened to Brilliant Jerks proclaim, “I am the one who is always on call, who drives the most revenue, who is here on weekends and who has the knowledge.” And the Brilliant Jerk speaks the truth. But I have also seen him stick his head in the door and deflate an entire management team. A growth company needs enablers, not disablers.
Whoa there. Whoa. So... the guy that does the work and who knows where the big problems are, like the code is a horrible mess of spaghetti, shouldn't tell anyone what those problems are because.... it'll make the managers sad?
Really?
So what’s the right answer? Get rid of the Brilliant Jerk as fast as you possibly can.
Hey guys, there's like, one single engineer who knows how all off this stuff works. He said this thing at my last meeting? Really got me down. Let's get rid of him. We're a growing company, I'm sure those highschool grads we hired and a couple entry level engineers who handled their own section before will be up to the task. I mean, it's not like the entire code-base was a one-man spaghetti-code mess right?
Isn't that where they always end up anyway?
He was the one doctor who dampened the unity with subtle but consistent complaining about why the group couldn’t do some things and shouldn’t do others.
"Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of 'disloyalty'" is a symptom of Groupthink
Send him to Elbonia, it's worked before!
Hire a brilliant person who's not a jerk, won't drive off other employees, won't get you sued for harassment, won't pitch hissy fits, and will contribute positively to the success of the company and not just her own ego.
They are not, however, brilliant business people, and that is what companies need during periods of rapid growth.
that's wrong. you need both. you can have brilliant business people but if you don't have brilliant engineers to build prototypes and demos, you aren't going to get very far.
you might answer that you don't need brilliant engineers, you just need competent ones. if all it took was competent engineers to build your idea, guess what? someone else would have already built it ... and if not, someone else that has the same idea is going to hire brilliant engineers (or just more / better competent ones) and beat you to the bunch.
Years ago I worked at a place called Divine Interventures in their "Buzz" group. We had a guy - he was the webmaster/developer guy, one of the first employees, etc.
Guy had ideas for graph design that were better than what the designers came up with, came up with awesome ideas pretty much whenever we had a problem, but was kind of brusque.
He got laid off in the first wave (and was smart to do it - one of the only people to get a full severance package when the companyimploded, and literally started his new job the next day) and about a month after that we got written up in a magazine as being a great place to work in Chicago. There were several specific things pointed out in the article as why it was so great, and when the CEO was holding an all hands meeting to congratulate us, she asked who came up with idea one, and it was pointed out this guy did. Then idea two and... Same guy. Then idea three and... Same guy. "Well, decisions like laying him off are probably why we're going out of business," the only honest thing I've ever heard from a CEO.
If they are really brilliant, it's worth keeping them around.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Manage them well. Enable and encourage them to do the brillant. Protect others from the 'jerk' part of their personality. If they are bullying others then there should be workplace policies that you can use to discipline/correct them. Often these kinds of people prefer to work on their own anyway. Mentor them and use teaching opportunities that come up to help them to see things from other people's perspective. Keep meeting one to one with them to review how they are going. Praise in public, correct in private.
I assume, given the name that you have assigned to them, that you hate them. As such I don't feel encouraged that you would accept any reasonable suggestion.
There do exist people who deserve the appellation "brilliant jerk", but this is a far narrower category than just everyone who doesn't want to be a business major. (I notice that I'm being hyperbolic in my turn. So take that as an exaggeration of what you were saying. It's not basically wrong.)
That said, and since you appear to want them to leave, perhaps you should let them know. I suspect that they have no idea that you want them to leave, as one of the common characteristics of those who focus on technical skills is a lack of finer social skills. Perhaps you could offer to leave their names with headhunters. Working in a job where management hates your guts isn't a nice thing to discover, so once they discovered your attitude they might be pleased with the assistance...once they recovered from the bitter realization. In fact they might *prefer* to work for your competition.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Seriously. Growth is folly. That way lies greed and death. Never go public either, they force the death issue by way of requiring cancerous growth.
I've been there and done that. I'm the "Brilliant Jerk", and this time around I'm the Damn Boss too. This time we don't grow, not nearly as fast. We stay small, specialized and agile -- We found a niche, and can eat our fill. There is so much work, we turn down customers. We never have to under bid. We can take our pick of the job, and do it at a premium because this time we're a well oiled machine.
Building out more features requires more maintenance, so we keep feature creep to a minumum and only add new features once we have skilled manpower for maintenance (EoL a less used product/feature if we have to) -- There's no secondary sub-standard "maintenance" team, everyone does a small share of the drudge work, and the glamorous work as well. Work hours are comfortable, and "Crunch Time" is not in our vocabulary -- We're more productive when well rested instead of rode hard and put up wet.
I'm a nice guy, but I can be a jerk at times -- Typically when shit hits the fan, or I'm surrounded by morons. Thus, we're not going anywhere near either of those eventualites. It's all brilliant jerks as far as the eye can see. We all geek out and have a grand time giving the finger to the "best business practices" of Growth and Diversification. We're hunting for other niches in R&D, but will not grow a new limb to fill them, we'll migrate if the grass is actually greener.
To answer the submitter's question: You're already fucked if you're not the Brilliant Jerk. Either work towards becoming brilliant yourself, or Kill yourself -- You're the kind of cancerous parasite that eventually kills the host; We're all better off without you.
As a reformed previous "brilliant jerk" one of the things I came to realize was that during that time my jerkishness was motivated by being requested and incented, even required, toward such behaviors but to be straightforward, it was also a result of my limitations of understanding and experience in working with people. What I needed was someone to help me understand the social side of the business and the greater value and advantage I could drive through greater diplomacy, empathy, and constructivity within my communications.
You might just find that you evolve the individual as well as the culture of the company while demonstrating loyalty and caring to and for your employees while retaining the talent and capability, accelerating broader productivity, and improving morale.
If you let your people do whatever they want, some of them will do things you don't like. Try managing them, if you're not sure how, you can find classes at most colleges.
I've worked with "Brilliant Jerks" before. As a physicist, that's a large population of my colleagues. In every instance I've encountered a person like this, a team of "regular brilliant" people working well together outperforms the jerks by a landslide.
Being effective is different than being smart and requires teamwork at high levels.
Get rid of the jerks and get someone who knows how to use intensity, passion and knowledge as part of a team.
Well it was their own fault. They had perfectly good management, but chose to get rid of it in 1776.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why is he a jerk? Usually the really geeky brilliant people are nice although somewhat difficult to deal with socially (they're a different breed after all) but the jerks are those not-so-brilliant ones that pose as being the end-all-be-all of the business while their escapades appear on thedailywtf a couple of years later after they've flown the coop.
Back to the point, if he is really brilliant and he is really a jerk, keep him away from your customers and that's about it. Give him what he wants and you'll have a happy jerk that nobody needs to interact with.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
May I suggest that you begone, lest he replace you with a very small shell script.
Have them apply for academic jobs...
Aww, you still have your empathy intact. How quaint. But in the world of business, there is no place for such a weakness.
In other words: "How can I, as a craven and souless businessman, wring the most out of the actual creators without them putting up much fuss or even realize that I'm slipping a knife into their guts?"
The original article seems to have raised a lot of geek hackles because of the implication that you need to con bright people into performing miracles to get your company off the ground and then promptly fire them as soon as the company starts to grow.
What every one seems to be missing is that there are plenty of brilliant people who are not jerks and there are plenty of jerks who are far from brilliant. I would strongly support the idea of getting rid of jerks because I have seen the damage they can do to organisations but you are firing them because they are jerks not because they are brilliant.
Give the jerk his due. On condition that he train his replacements in the current business, spin off a new company to let the jerk pursue his best brilliant idea, the potential of which you are too stupid to understand. Provide enough capital to hire the necessary management to make it a business success if it is viable and then provide no further investment.
Seastead this.
So fire his ass.
If they are programmers, people like this crank out lots of second rate software and then leave it to everyone else to clean up. They may appear productive only because everyone around them has to compensate for their quick and dirty work.
and I'll get back to you on that.
Now, I did not go through all the comments on /., but I did read most on the blog. Here's the interesting part, if you did that, what you'd find is that the commenters on the referenced article largely said the problem was not the "Brilliant Jerk", but the management team that can't make use of the individual. Fundamentally, the point is, the article was written by Dilbert's pointy haired boss.
Key to a good manager and management team, is talent utilization. You succeed or fail here. The article, basically said, well I can't manage him, so fire him, and quickly.
So this post just exemplifies why companies and business suck. When the start-up is new, they are breaking ground all the time until they decide to become big business aka. "old business men" and start bringing in the HR, Finance and Lawyer drones. The company normally is then driven by those departments and not the founders. They fundamentally lose their soles and innovative spirit and trade it in for cash and a revenue stream. I bet if you asked most of these so called "Jerks" about their thoughts on their income they would actually care more about their problem domain than their bank account balance. This article is rubbish, imho keep startups small enough to please the founding members, or find a really good bunch of non-tech drones to make the company go in the direction of innovation no bank balances.
Why are we talking about what start-ups should do with someone like Marissa Mayer?
Oh wait, you also said "brilliant"?
Whoops, my bad, sorry.
Yeah. As a business in the tech area, you have to stay different (differentiated from your would be competition)
or you will be dead.
Lose the "brilliant jerk" and your company will likely start dying, although some I imagine can live on their fat reserves for a long time.
So my advice would be to keep the brilliant jerk in charge, but temper them with another brilliant but also more business minded
peer at the very top of the company. I feel the trouble is really going to start happening when you start letting the VCs on the board
make the decisions. You are going to get ultr-conservative and technically tone-deaf decisions and senior hires then.
So avoid that. Stay revenue-funded as long as possible.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?