What Should Start-Ups Do With the Brilliant Jerk? 480
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?"
Do unto others (Score:5, Insightful)
Clown question bro (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Clown question bro (Score:4, Insightful)
The word 'jerk' is just a label we use for others, never ourselves.
That's what makes this topic so fruitless. Go ask the biggest jerks you know of if they believe they're jerks. Most don't think they are, but they'll probably volunteer a list of many "others" that fit the label.
Re: (Score:3)
The word 'jerk' is just a label we use for others, never ourselves.
That's what makes this topic so fruitless. Go ask the biggest jerks you know of if they believe they're jerks. Most don't think they are, but they'll probably volunteer a list of many "others" that fit the label.
Agreed. It's like asking someone if they think they're stupid or a below average driver or lover.
Re:Do unto others (Score:5, Funny)
as you would have them do unto you.
There are things some people want done to them that I do not want done to me.
Re:Do unto others (Score:4)
WARNING: High-Risk-Of-TMI Zone has been reached. Click with caution.
Re: (Score:3)
as you would have them do unto you.
There are things some people want done to them that I do not want done to me.
This is actually quite true. We should treat others according to our best estimate of how they'd like to be treated. The original proverb selfishly judges actions in terms of our own preferences.
Re: (Score:3)
The US military has lots of non-citizens in it. In fact, that's one of the easiest and most direct way for foreigners to become a citizen. Serve a complete term in the military and its automatic with no tests or anything.
Sounds like Starship Troopers. Interesting...
Re:Do unto others (Score:4, Insightful)
The Jerk (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Do unto others (Score:5, Insightful)
If we remove the adjective "Brilliant", it seems that the original post is saying that people who produce things are jerks and business people aren't. That would be the opposite of my experience.
It also sounds like he's saying, "We have a guy who did all the work to get us off the ground. He's not as necessary anymore, so the PHBs want to sideline him and reap the benefits of his hard work."
Perhaps you should think about giving HIM a golden parachute like you would one of your "Brilliant Business People" buddies.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't this how most business people think? IME, I've never in my life encountered a group of people who are so prejudiced toward those that actually do the work. And the further one is removed from actually getting their hands 'dirty' and doing something, the more they're praised. No wonder society is so screwed up.
Re:Do unto others (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re: (Score:3)
Removing an adjective from a sentence can change its meaning by a non-trivial amount.
So while what you say is true, I don't see what [non-obvious] point you're trying to make.
Re:Do unto others (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article,
When he spoke, everyone became quiet and listened â" not out of excitement for what he was going to say but out of respect.
He was always the first to cover for doctors who were on call. He was always the first to volunteer to work on holidays
This is a jerk?
I think the "boss" blogger needs to get up and have a big cup of reality.
This is the complete opposite of a jerk, the kind of person who keeps the business ticking along as usual no matter what is thrown in his way. The kind of person you dont want to piss off into leaving by calling them a jerk behind their back.
So he hasn't got much business acumen, that's not his job, that's yours (the boss). Chances are you know fsck all about his job and would have a very hard time replacing him.
You dont find something to "do" with a person like this, you give them something to do. Finding the work is not his problem, making sure the P&L statements look good is not his problem. His problem is doing the work that your clients pay for.
easy (Score:5, Insightful)
brilliant business people are the opposite of productive.
Jerk in any way shape or form is not needed in any business.
Taking part at the start, but not in at the finish (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:easy (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is that as a business goes from a startup to steady growth over time, you need people who are willing and able to delegate, otherwise they get stretched too thin, whether they want to admit it or not. That doesn't mean everything needs to be delegated, but some things that are essentially following the same steps every time can always be handed to a subordinate with proper training. Brilliant Jerks have a sense that other people cannot be trusted to do the jobs as well as they can, so they are afraid to lose that precious control, and want to do it themselves instead.
The example in the article was of a doctor who brought in twice as much revenue as some other doctors in the practice. That means he was either 1. seeing twice as many patients as the others in the same amount of time, meaning he was not having as many meaningful patient interactions or more likely 2. ordering unnecessary and expensive tests. Brilliant Jerk doctors like him are the reason healthcare in the US is in a crisis.
Re: (Score:3)
The correct answer is: GET HIM LAID.
Seriously though. If he's brilliant, he's valuable. No one is perfect, and this concept of we must all get along is nonsense. Never seen a place advocate firing people as much as /. over the dumbest trash.
People will have conflicts. Some people really really suck at "inter-personal skills", buzzspeak for they dont get along well with other people. Some people make your company tons and tons of money. Sometimes these two people are the same person. That's why the Tom Smyko
Re:easy (Score:5, Insightful)
brilliant business people are the opposite of productive.
That's an ignorent statement.
The whole point of being a brilliant business person is to let others produce for you while taking full credit/full benefit from it while exerting the least amount of time making that happen.
And i'm fairly sure it's ignorant.
Re:easy (Score:4, Interesting)
The whole point of being a brilliant business person is to see an opportunity and to be able to take it in order to make profit from doing something that the market wants.
Of-course in the absence of free market there are other possibilities, like buying influence from politicians to establish yourself as a monopoly.
Your "definition" doesn't cut it at all. Workers don't produce out of nowhere, they have to be hired and told what to do and before they can be hired there has to be a case made to hire them, savings have to be allocated to hire them, tools have to be acquired so that the workers can be productive. Throw a bunch of 'workers' together without any purpose, capital, tools and management and see how far that takes you in terms of productivity.
People who take the most business risk are not those who accept salaried positions for jobs that somebody thinks to be necessary to make more profit, it's people who take the risk in terms of putting in their own savings, capital, time and effort into a venture that nobody ever guarantees to be a winner.
Re:easy (Score:5, Informative)
Throw a bunch of 'workers' together without any purpose, capital, tools and management and see how far that takes you in terms of productivity.
Pretty far, actually... [wikipedia.org]
Re:easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Business people and bosses aren't inherently lazy by nature - you've just got a bad one.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd go further than that. All people that I personally know that started and run their own businesses are nearly insanely productive or at least are trying to be insanely productive. All of them had to work their asses off for at least 3 years to get somewhere, before the business would turn even 0.6% of return on the yearly investment. The problem with the majority of people is that they never even thought about running their own business, they are not thinking in those terms, they think they can hold a
Re: (Score:3)
Stop talking out of your butt.
Sure, the best general in the world can't win a battle on his own.
But the soldiers are pretty unlikely to win without one.
Re: (Score:3)
- take that for example, should the people who were hired by a successful startup and were promised something in case the company succeeds get more than those, who take more salary upfront?
What about various Google employees who became millionaires, do you think they were not "productive"? They got pretty wealthy as a result of "options".
I wouldn't say they were, on average, necessarily more productive than the average tech start-up employee. Getting rich from stock options is basically like winning the lottery. You luck into being one of the first few employees at a company, and your company lucks into being one of ones that happen to make it. Right place at the right time.
I've met tons of really smart, productive people toiling away for a salary with no equity upside. I've also met tons of really unproductive people who never have to work
Re: (Score:3)
FYI, your "fact" that "the only growing sector of the economy is government" Is utter bullshit. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Government jobs have declined nationally since June of 2010 -- Remember because of all the budget cuts. Mean while the private sector has added jobs every month since March of 2010.
Wanna talk about villification, lets talk about the vilification of Government, instead.
Re:easy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just anecdotal, but most start-up owners I've worked with were already quite wealthy and/or had a family cushion to fall back on in the event of failure. Sure, they risked some start-up capital, but orders of magnitude less risky than literally putting your life on the line in a dangerous job. I know a guy whose family is quite well-off, who started and failed about 4 or 5 businesses before one finally happened to take off. He could keep spinning the wheel of fortune because he knew that regardless of what happened he wouldn't starve or be homeless. That sure doesn't sound like risk-taking to me.
That said, I have met a few who had their personal savings and home equity loans on the line if their start-ups failed. That's, for sure, respect-earning balls-out risk. Those guys definitely deserve their returns.
Re:easy (Score:4, Interesting)
Henry Ford's biggest fans describe him as "obsessive, dictatorial, abusive and utterly without conscience". He built an empire on the backs (and not infrequently, the blood) of his workers.
And Sam Walton? Seriously, you want to use a guy who built such a great empire that towns go to frickin' court to keep it out, as a role model of what businessmen can do for us?
You're a fucking moron.
Re:easy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, you can torture and enslave people, extort them, kidnap their families and be widely hailed as a brilliant business person. There's really no requirement at all that participation be "voluntary". Plenty of existing businesses, and even more historically, are or were based on exploitation of workers and/or customers.
No, same mistake. You're confusing "worthwhile human being" or maybe "brilliant statesman" with "brilliant business person". Have you ever heard a first person account of how Steve Jobs interacted with Andy Herzfeld? Jobs was brutally verbally abusive, and used his ability to intimidate and dominate Herzfeld to create key components of the system that enriched Jobs (and, to a much lesser extent, Herzfeld) without any consideration for how this might harm anyone. Yet everyone considers Jobs a brilliant business person!
There are thousands more examples, from the New England slave trade to modern Chinese labor practices. I wish you were right, but you've added some things (like, basic human decency) that are not a part of this generation's definition of a brilliant business person.
Re:easy (Score:5, Interesting)
That's an ignorent statement.
That's the funniest thing I have read in ages.
Re:easy (Score:5, Insightful)
I got mine about 3 years ago, it is part of my transition from technical 'jerk' to affable manager
A 'good' businessman is part PT Barnum and part Blackbeard the pirate, it takes a lot of puffery and cut throat decision making to get a business afloat and frankly, 20 odd years of writing code and jockeying servers really had not prepared me for it.
As a technical person I was looked at as essential to the success of the company, but it was a bit of a risk to bring me into business meetings since I might quote something out of Alice in Wonderland, identify the immediate failings of our business plan or rant about the need to spend a bunch of money to shore up security before doing anything else... stuff that business-people would rather ignore once that they are in PT Barnum mode
My solution is a technical one... put your technical jerks in a DMZ, control your ports of access in and out of the DMZ, give them the resources that they need and (if you really want to trot them out in public) invest a few years in preparing them to be 'seen' by non-techies
BTW, if you really think that all of the 'jerks' are technical and not the business people, then you are missing out on the other half of the story
Make him CEO, fire him, rehire him. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Make him CEO, fire him, rehire him. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except for the jerk part, your assertion is accurate. Woz was and is brilliant.... Jobs OTOH was a narcissistic panty-boy with sociopathic tendencies (lying, conning, getting others to do his work then claiming it) who's "contribution" lives on in its pure, distilled form in Apple's lawsuit against Samsung.
Fuck Apple.
Why Are They Jerks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
RFTA. The jerk in question sure wasn't introverted.
Re:Why Are They Jerks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Based on reading the article, the author's definition of a "jerk" is someone who doesn't understand that they were just a resource to be used during the founding of the company and then thrown away. Pretty much the worst thing the author lists as something the "brilliant jerk" does is bothering management by assuming they will deign to talk to him. The author is assuming that we all share his implicit understanding that the people who built the company will stay down at the bottom while the company grows and the managers will grow with the company adding more and more layers between them.
Re:Why Are They Jerks? (Score:5, Interesting)
But why is direct management of other people the only thing that's important? And who says that the brilliant person in question isn't good at drawing up plans and handing over the implementation to others. The author of the article seems to simply think that the natural place for "low-level tech person[s]" as you call the people who did all the work to make the company a success, is at the bottom. Is it just stupid sentimentalism for a company to pay its dues to the people without whom there wouldn't even _be_ a company?
How would you possibly avoid the distance increasing?
By not considering every middle managing paper pusher the company later hires (with the money that they wouldn't even have without the people who built it up to start with) to be more important. By promoting them even if the promotion doesn't involve a block of people being under them in an org chart?
Maybe I'm just a little bitter because I've been in a similar situation. I worked essentially for free at first for a company that simply couldn't have existed without me (and my fellow "low level tech person[s]") because virtually all it consisted of was us. The promise was always of the company succeeding and us sharing in that success. When they actually got the large investment they were after they went on a hiring spree. They hired marketing people and sales people and HR people and all kinds of management all of whom were pretty much above us as well as more "low level tech person[s]" like us. All of us who started with the company and had once been nearly the entire workforce were now only a small percentage of the employees, and not a single one of us ever got promoted. There were internal job postings and we applied for management positions and even just other jobs in the company we were perfectly qualified for, but everything went to outside hires or even to other people with our job descriptions who were hired later. I was far less jaded at the time and didn't really see what was going on very clearly. Now I think that our founders just didn't have any respect for us because we'd worked so hard for them for so little at the start.
In the end, I could see that the company was doomed in the long run. I left for an opportunity with another small startup. I waited until the day of my performance review and gave my notice to my supervisor right after it. I still remember how enthusiastically he told me that he'd managed to get me a raise up to the level of the other people with my job description who were hired after me.
Not too long after I left, they went under and sold off what was left to another company. It wasn't much of a surprise to me that they couldn't sustain themselves as a company with more than twice as many administrators and managers than actual productive employees.
In any case, I've been in the position of being actively marginalized in a growing company that I felt owed me at least a chance to grow with it. It wasn't much fun for me, and it wasn't what I would call good business practice either considering the effect it had on morale.
Re: (Score:3)
If they kill plural "people" they are a mass murderer.
If they kill plural "people" all at once, they are a mass murderer. "just killing people", which is what the original AC wrote, means it's an ongoing thing, which means they're doing it one after the other. Anyone who kills people one after the other is a serial killer. Motive is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if it's because they're a mafia hitman or a psychotic doing it for fun, or they committed one murder then killed a bunch of unrelated people the same way to draw away suspicion.
Basically, a mass murder
Article has it Right (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Article has it Right (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes the best tactic is to let the creative-if-blustering types do what they do well: create and bluster, but in the back room. Serial entrepreneurs often do well because they have the ego needed to push thru ideas into really profitable businesses, with a few dead ones along the way. No one is perfect.
High collaboration and creativity is very productive, and productivity is helpful for rapid growth. Then move the blusterers out into new ideas, where they can regenerate. Some people are really good at cash-cow business, while others know how to start low and do rapid business building. Some will grow with a business, others need new challenges. It's not a talent easily given to aphorisms. And sometimes, it's not pretty.
Re:Article has it Right (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Re:Article has it Right (Score:5, Interesting)
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: (Score:3)
I was sort of getting that vibe from the article as well. Maybe the doctor in question had legitimate reasons for "why the group couldnâ(TM)t do some things and shouldnâ(TM)t do others". But the non-doctors, like the author for example, do not understand the reasons and as a result see this as being a jerk.
Re: (Score:3)
Intelligence and knowledge are two different things.
Just because someone is smart, that doesn't mean they are right.
Re:Article has it Right (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Article has it Right (Score:4, Interesting)
I have been the jerk and karma has certainly made me pay
About 20 years ago I was working on GIS for a local government. The challenge was to present our Pavement Management System data (from a beloved DG Mini) on our spiffy new GIS system. I proposed using dynamic segmentation (new concept in ArcInfo 6) and set about learning what needed to be done. My boss assigned his bestest buddy to ride along on this and even split the coding responsibilities down the middle... The bestest buddy decided to work in awk and sed instead of the software tools that were part of ArcInfo... Pissed me off so much that I kept all documentation in my head and set about finding another job. When I left, it took them about three years to get back on track...
As luck would have it, I walked into a new job where people had been pulling the same stunt for the last decade. Every day of my life was debugging undocumented code and re-creating wheels. These days I invest a lot of time into cross training, documentation and making certain that my developers are happy
Re: (Score:3)
I'll agree with you that obscure hacks suck, even more so when they are rife with regular expressions and scant man pages like awk and sed...
My approach was to do things in a repeatable manner so that the next time that I ran into the problem I already had a solution in my head that I could either apply directly, or extend in a common manner to handle the problem at hand. I can not tell you how much it pisses me off to have a single developer apply a different solution each time they run into the same probl
Re:Article has it Right (Score:4, Interesting)
Because, at that time I lacked the business acumen to take advantage of it... I had led the development of postscript based high resolution mapping and even got our agency to receive national awards for the work. My first inclination was to give lectures to other GIS-folk on how to do it themselves. My first presentation was 20 minutes of me talking as fast as I could and a room full of people who looked like a pterodactyl had just swooped over their heads... complete and utter incomprehension
At that point, other ArcInfo users started hiring me on contract to apply the methods to their systems, and even then I horribly undercharged them for the work and spent my own time training their people to take it over
That is to say, I had no idea on how to profit from my knowledge and I missed on out on a prime opportunity because of it
Re:Article has it Right (Score:4, Interesting)
In that context, I absolutely agree ... that doesn't change the fact that his code was utter crap.
Some places are just more willing to sell utter crap if it makes the quarter.
But an amazing amount of companies can't always correlate long-term costs associated with a project and the like.
I've seen projects at many places where once the sales guys have cleared their cheque, nobody keeps tabs on what it really cost to deliver what was sold. And I know for a fact that in many places, it ended up costing more in the long run than the revenue.
Re:Article has it Right (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen projects at many places where once the sales guys have cleared their cheque, nobody keeps tabs on what it really cost to deliver what was sold. And I know for a fact that in many places, it ended up costing more in the long run than the revenue.
Most places are like this, but even if they put in a control like "Check Clearance + 90 days", the salespeople can adjust things so that they don't go south for 90 days. Remember, good sales people are master manipulators. Sales will always maximize its own benefits, if you try to rein them in, great sales people will just leave for another company that pays better. (If we follow the article's author's advice, we'd just fire all those pesky sales people, since they're in it for themselves, not the good of the company)
Re: (Score:3)
Not just that....
I have a friend who was telling me about an issue at his workplace. They brought in a jerk... possibly not a "brilliant one" but...it hardly matters....
Because his being a jerk actually prompted the two really brilliant researchers who did the core development of their product line leave....
I don't care how brilliant this guy is.... I have a hard time swallowing that he could be so brilliant as to be worth the damage caused by pushing key people out the door.... unless pushing them out the
Re: (Score:3)
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.
What you say is perfectly reasonable, but actually the 'Brilliant Jerk' in the article is described as being brilliant. In fact, as far as I can see, he's only described as being brilliant - I'm not really sure where the 'jerk' part comes from at all. The author labels as a jerk the doctor who put more than anyone else into the startup, generated the most revenue and was always the first to help out the others, and why? Apparently because he said that there were things that the company shouldn't do.
The arti
Re:Article has it Right (Score:4, Insightful)
Hi. "Rockstar"/"Brilliant Jerk" programmer here. I'm responsible for maintaining a niche piece of software that's used by call centers, and I'd like to offer another perspective that my current day job has helped me to understand deeply.
So, this piece of software is closed-source. It's also buggy, wonky, inconsistent, breaks basic Windows UI conventions (like using alt-tab to switch between windows), is inexplicably slow, implements its own widget set (poorly), and is a downright piece of crap. For example, to create a formula, it gives you an interface a lot like Crystal Reports if you've used its formula editor, but instead of allowing you to type on your own, it forces you to use drag-and-drop. Want to do len(myfield)? First, you have to browse through a squinty tree of haphazardly categorized functions and operators to find the len function, drop it in your formula, then you have to find myfield in another squinty, non-alphabetical list of every variable in the system and drop it in place as an argument.
Now let's put this into perspective before your (or somebody else's) knee jerks and goes "ah ha! a n00b using len and Crystal Reports, this is obviously the Brilliant Jerk in the wild!" (Incidentally I gave up on Crystal a couple years ago in favor of \LaTeX{} and gnuplot.)
First of all, all but a few of my co-workers (I'll get to those few towards the end) will tell you that I'm the first to admit when I've screwed something up. I screw things up all the time. I'm human, and I'm not perfect. I hold my abilities in high esteem and strive to take pride in my work, but that doesn't mean I think my understanding of programming is the end-all be-all. If somebody points out something I've been doing wrong, I'll correct it and thank them for showing me the light.
The problem is that when things screw up, it's not always something I've done wrong, and sometimes it's not even something I can do anything about. In case you missed it above, the software I use for my day-to-day tasks is closed-source.
I have indirectly dealt with the Brilliant Jerk. You see, the vendor who shall remain nameless that sold my company this closed-source turd that was the reason I was promoted (originally my job was to be temporary, to transition accounts to the new software only) seems to employ a lot of Brilliant Jerks and Rockstars. And yes, trust me, there are reasons I haven't just replaced this software with some kind of Ajaxy Vaadin-ish Web 3.4.2 RC1 portal that are beyond the scope of this post. And also, inasmuch as the user-unfriendliness of this software is the reason I now have a new car and a mortgage, there's only so much bad I can say about it.
The point being, the Brilliant Jerk just about describes, as far as I can tell, the software development staff of this nameless vendor. They're always right, and you're always doing something wrong. If their software can't do something that it needs to do, you're wrong for even wanting it to do that thing! You can't win. For 2 years this software was randomly locking up and losing data, but it took intervention from the owner of the company I work for before they even acknowledged that a day-to-day reality for the folks on the call floor was even happening. Even then, they never really acknowledged it, and they never apologized. It just magically got better release after release until it didn't happen any more.
The reason I called myself a Brilliant Jerk in the start of this post is because that's how some co-workers perceive me. One of the mottos in the call center world is "perception is reality." My counterpoint is that if I perceive that I should fly if I jump off a building, it's not very functional to blame the concrete that splits my head open at the bottom of my "flight."
As I mentioned before, my job was meant to be temporary. It turned into a permanent job, because it turns out that the CTO (kind of a software developer, network admin, and graphic artist all rolled into one, quite the talent
Wait, What? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
If he is a jerk to the extent that the article is talking about (causing problems within the organization meeting its goals) then he is not brilliant. If he is simply cut throat with competitors and vendors, he would not meet the definition of jerk being used in the article.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Wait, What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because your mom carried you for nine months, then spent huge amounts of time and effort raising you doesn't mean you owe her any loyalty; once her usefulness has passed, kick her out the door.
But seriously -- I hope you're being extremely metaphorical with "kick them out the door." If they did that much for the company, they at least deserve some stock or a good severance package, and a glowing recommendation.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
To carry the analogy back, if you have an employee who did a bunch of work, but is also also an asshole, holds the company hostage to get his way, and can't believe he could ever be wrong, and who you're sure any company would be better off without... kick him to the curb.
Sometimes people are so nasty that there's no way to live with them. Sorry that person had to be your mom, man.
Re:Wait, What? (Score:4, Informative)
And.. what problems did this particular brilliant jerk cause?
From TFA: " A growth company needs enablers, not disablers."
That's really the most damning thing said about him during his employment with TFA's author.
Basically, the author is complaining that somebody had the audacity to tell management that there were problems and flaws with their brilliant ideas. The Jerk wasn't being a jerk, he was approaching issues from a problems-first perspective. Management *hates* when people hear their wonderful new idea and tell them what's wrong with it, or that the whole thing won't ever accomplish what they want because of this or that, or that it won't work unless this or that is also done or stopped.
It's been my experience that management only likes to be treated like a 6th grade english class. There are no wrong answers, everyone's right, yippee feel-good-happytime!
Anecdote: I once worked for a place that spent in the neighborhood of 2.5mil to distribute a procedure across many employees that had previously been centralized. They had 3 people doing that job, and spent all that money so they could eliminate 2 of them. They were making ~40k/year. Even if you assume their total benefits ran the company 80k/year, that's still ~15 years until they hit a break-even point. And that's not taking into account that from the start, their distributed plan was executed poorly (despite employees having pointed out those problems before anything was installed) and the quality was decreased (as the employees who were forced to take on a new task weren't really able to perform it well, it was an industrial environment and there simply wasn't the time for them to dick around with something else and still keep pace with the machinery and other employees). That was also pointed out, and ignored.
The next year, despite more protestations that the idea wasn't going to work and calm explanations why, another 1.5mil was spent installing more crap that was slower and more unsafe and more prone to failure than the previous procedure.
Decision makers don't like being told their ideas aren't all brilliant, and when their decisions only affect the jobs done by those below them it's pretty simple to pass off any failure of their idea to work as a failure of the employees, not of the idea. Anyone who points out the problems with the idea is labeled a jerk.
In my book, it's the dingleberries with the inflated egos who are unable to take criticism of their ideas productively who are the jerks. But hey, what do I know. Wait, no, scratch that. What I know is irrelevant. All that matters is WHO I know, gosh I'm dumb!
Re: (Score:3)
Seriously, he's never met a brilliant jerk MBA business guy? He needs to get out more.
Yeah, I thought I'd run into a brilliant jerk MBA recently who said he was running for president. Then he gave a speech and it turned out that guy wasn't brilliant at all.
Article says get rid of them ASAP (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Re:Article says get rid of them ASAP (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen it happen more than once in an engineering software context. The trajectory of the company is typically as follows:
- initial startup fueled by technically-capable professionals
- company growth requires ancillary services including marketing and HR
- sales and marketing takes over leadership of the company, HR takes over hiring
- HR hiring significantly dilutes levels of technical acumen and professionalism
- original professionals are gradually tossed over the side or quit
- company reaches apogee, is taken over, and disappears
It strikes me that the article can be succinctly summarized as an argument for mediocrity.
Re:Article says get rid of them ASAP (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, rather than actually doing some "management", and figuring out how to best fit this person within the company, let's just terminate him.
Who cares if they were (from the article):
- Respected by their co-workers
- Producing twice the revenue of some of the other founders
- First to volunteer to work on holidays.
- First to get new training and share it with others one-on-one
- etc.
As well, article seems to define a "jerk" as: "anyone who doesn't agree with management"), just fire them. I'm certain their co-workers find firing these people very inspiring. At least their inspired to shut up & not criticize any bad ideas management may have.
Who's the clown that wrote this anyways? All I can find about him is he got a bit lucky with a single startup (STI Knowledege), sold it for around $12mil, and now is going to be the host of the reality show "The Next Tycoon". Not exactly stellar credentials.
Let him do what he does best (Score:2)
Sack him. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Isolate them (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Isolate them (Score:5, Insightful)
There are smart people who aren't jerks. Get them instead.
This. There are plenty of great people out there if you look hard enough (though often you have to poach them).
Of course you have to look at both sides. The brilliant jerk may not actually be a jerk, he just is willing to speak out about managements failings where others are unwilling, "Oh yes master, whatever you say master, you are always so right master.."
Personally in my business I want people that are willing to call me on my bullshit. If I'm doing something stupid don't just hang on for the ride, I honestly may not see the mistake I'm making because I have horse blinders on or similar. Maybe I have a fuller view of what is going on, and the concerns are unwarranted, but then I should be clearly explaining why those concerns are unwarranted not just some brush off, "Trust me." Which is the biggest bullshit line ever. If you've put sweat equity into our product I owe it to you to explain I'm not driving it into the ground when from your perspective that's what the situation appears to be.
Re:Isolate them (Score:5, Informative)
The difference between somebody who disagrees with management and a jerk: When the boss presses the dissenter for more details, the non-jerk can produce information about exactly what's going wrong, why it's hurting the company, and what they propose to fix it. The jerk, when pressed, on the other hand, will announce that the boss is a moron who will never "get it".
And yes, the greatest managers in history tolerated all sorts of dissent. For instance, Abraham Lincoln dealt regularly with cabinet secretaries (e.g. Samuel Chase) and top generals (particularly George McClellan) who hated both Lincoln and his other top officials.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
However, that's what the IT industry in USA appears like, especially gaming industry - silly amounts of overtime, little job security, not that great salaries and little in the way of retirement benefits.
Prepare to jettison booster on 5, 4... (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Manage them accordingly (Score:4, Insightful)
Best use for Brilliant Jerk (Score:2)
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.
Maybe (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe he wouldn't be a jerk if the rest of you weren't all so stupid! Ever think of that?
Easy (Score:5, Funny)
Promote him! Seems like that's what happens where I work.
Let him be... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Stop focusing on growth and scaling so much (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
OK, I read TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Jealousy and self rightousness (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
What do you mean my Jerk? (Score:3)
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.
Here's a crazy idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Change the relationship (Score:4, Insightful)
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
different people have different strengths (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Brilliant jerk or won't share with MBAs (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Fuck you, Cliff Oxford (Score:3)
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?
Had one of those at Divine (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Actually Manage the "Jerk"? (Score:3)
Re:The Jerk (Score:5, Informative)
The word 'jerk' has gone through a transformation from when it started. First it was someone cool, then it was someone who behaves strangely (when that movie was made) and now it means someone completely rude and annoying.
When I was growing up (before the movie) in our neck of the woods, a jerk, as applied to a person, always had the third meaning (rude, annoying), unless one was referring to a "soda jerk" in old time movies. I've never heard of the other meanings, and even my Merriam Webster dictionary doesn't define the other meanings you gave, not even in a historical context. But I'm not surprised either, as all sorts of regionalisms exist that I've never heard of (especially when doing NYT crosswords).
Re:The Jerk (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Jerk has always been a way to call someone an asshole without swearing.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:The Jerk (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know the origin of the word 'jerk' but I wonder if it had to do anything with the kind of people who normally did the "jerking water" job. I could see that being shortened down to 'jerks'.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:The Jerk (Score:4, Interesting)
The word 'jerk' has gone through a transformation from when it started. First it was someone cool
No, "jerk" was never a synonym for "cool". It was originally coined to label the kid that had a job pouring soda at the drug store; "Soda jerk". In short, the uncool guy, the guy that had to take all the cool kids' shit or be fired. It transformed from there to mean "dweeb" or "dork" (the Steve Martin jerk) and finally morphed as a euphamism for "asshole".
Re:Hire us instead (Score:5, Insightful)
The author of the article will only consider you not to be a jerk if you know your place. Which, by the way, is way down at the bottom of the org chart. You have to remember that, no matter how reliant on your skills the company is, and how interchangeable the MBA-types are, you are always less important than anyone with an MBA.