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?"

Comments

Re:Article has it Right

[gstoddart]

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.

I'm sure it's not true in every case, but I've definitely seen cases of this.

Had a co-worker years ago who could crank out huge volumes of code, so management loved him.

The problem was, his code was absolutely un-maintainable crap, and he didn't like to go back and fix things. So first you needed to cajole him for a long time to even do it, and then he would do a half-assed job and go back to whatever he was finding fun at the moment.

He didn't follow any procedures, didn't bother with testing, documentation, or sometimes even putting his code in the the version control stuff -- which meant he didn't always even had the version he was trying to fix as it had long since been updated in place. In some cases, he created more work for the people around him than the value of his code.

In a lot of ways, I always found him to be a liability, since he refused to adhere to even the most basic standards we had.

But, to the best of my knowledge, he's still there writing large volumes of lousy code, and I'm not there any more. So clearly how I perceived things had nothing to do with how management did.

Let him be...

[Zapotek]

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.

Re:Article has it Right

[DocSavage64109]

I worry that people labelled as "the Brilliant Jerk" are sometimes "the guy smarter than me who doesn't go along with what I propose."

+1 on that thought. Especially if what that person proposes involves me doing all the implementation.

Re:Do unto others

[Penguinisto]

I recall seeing that happen once at a previous job. Four of us, and one gent who acted as leader/purchaser/fill-in-admin/etc, basically built an entire IT infrastructure from the ground up. Then the PTB hired this reject VP from a huge F500 corp as the new IT Director. Everything immediately goes to shit as he starts slinging around acronyms and demands that were workable for huge orgs like the one he just left, but were impossible for a tiny IT department to implement properly in the deadlines he wanted. To top that off, he whips out the microscope, looking for something - anything - to hold over each of our heads as a threat and as a consolidation of power. It just got uglier from there. It took a development admin suffering a stroke, and a sysadmin getting a heart attack before this jackass would get a clue and hire some help to fulfill his ever-increasing list of demands. Given the economy at the time, other jobs were impossible to find, so we were stuck for awhile.

There's only one person out of the original crew left, and she's likely to be gone once her degree is complete. The rest of us said 'fuck it' and pulled the D-Ring on his ass at the first graceful opportunity (and some even sooner). Last I heard their expenses went way up since most of us left (having to hire consultants all the time to fix even minor breaks is a bitch, I guess).

Eventually shit hits the fan for such people. OTOH, even if it doesn't, no skin offa mine - the job I left them for came with a huge raise, a mere 30% of the workload, and telecommuting. First 3 months felt like an effing vacation to me.

But yeah, the corp was shifting from start-up (of sorts) to full-blown. Thing is, unless someone takes control of the situation, it'll eventually crash - either figuratively (budget) or literally (as systems crap out).