The brilliant jerk programmer is making a comeback
Posted by scarey102@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 6 comments
Posted by scarey102@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 6 comments
gjosifov@reddit
Modern day innovation - the ability to create something out of nothing
or what normal people say - Lie
The ancient way of innovation - casually living your life, step into a bath, notice a thing and realizing you invent something
somebodddy@reddit
A previous employer of mine had a brilliant jerk. I was one of the few people in the company he was not jerk toward - because I was competent enough to not trigger his infamous attitude.
(this is not a self praise - the level of competence in that company was just... not very high)
I don't think most brilliant jerks are jerks because they are divas. I think they just have a very low tolerance for stupidity. Take the most famous brilliant jerk for example - Linus Torvalds. His mean comments about PRs are usually justified technically - they are just more insulting that socially acceptable. If all the PRs were up to his quality standards (which, I'll admit, are very high) we would have never seen him being a jerk.
Sometimes the brilliant jerk is not a jerk. Sometimes they just can't handle your BS.
diegoeche@reddit
I've seen some people call jerks the people that are just saying that the emperor has no clothes.
Full-Spectral@reddit
Dang, just when the meds were really starting to work...
lordnacho666@reddit
Yep. It's a false tradeoff that you have to take the downsides with the brilliance. Often people are successful with this strategy because they manage to get everyone to work around the way they want to work. If you're a blind manager, you think that one guy is doing all the work, and you don't notice the water carriers who could be stars if they were only bold enough to talk everyone into reorganizing around them.
pitiless@reddit
I don't buy the premise of this article. Programming is a social activity and nobody wants to work with a huge jerk.
Personally, I'm fine with "prickly" characters, if they're good, but there's a threshold beyond which someone is too difficult to work work with. Nobody is good enough to keep around past that point imo.