The brilliant jerk programmer is making a comeback

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gjosifov@reddit

“In a time like now, where no-one knows what’s going to be hot in six months and no-one knows where the innovation’s coming from, I think you want a bit of this X-factor and the ability to create something out of nothing.”

Modern day innovation - the ability to create something out of nothing
or what normal people say - Lie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_(word)
The exclamation "Eureka!" is attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He reportedly proclaimed "Eureka! Eureka!" after he had stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose, whereupon he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged.

The ancient way of innovation - casually living your life, step into a bath, notice a thing and realizing you invent something

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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.

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diegoeche@reddit

I've seen some people call jerks the people that are just saying that the emperor has no clothes.

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Full-Spectral@reddit

Dang, just when the meds were really starting to work...

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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.

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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.