> A “No Jerks” Policy Must Be Built Into Your Culture. It is entirely possible to be extremely passionate (and even brilliant) without being a jerk. A “no jerks” policy must be preached and practiced from the highest levels.

Following simplistic rules like this is usually what leaves us knee deep in the proverbial.

Maybe I've been lucky, but I've never worked with anyone who's as much of a jerk as described in the article. In my experience, talented developers are usually intelligent enough that they can make up for their shortcoming in the social area by consciously adapting their behaviour. They're not "normal" but they function well enough to work with others.

I've worked with plenty of jerk-ish, abrasive, opiniated, "take no prisoners" people who can be very fiery in meetings and can be highly critical of other people's work. Yes, they can be a giant pain in the arse - they're just so damn challenging. But in my experience they're normally challenging because they want the company to do better.

But I've seen many times (mainly in large companies) teams that were populated and led by people who were very consensus-based, had superb social skills, and had a genuine drive to succeed - but didn't because there was not enough fire in the team to make the right choices.

To me, the business of software development is way too complex to apply a simple "no jerks" policy. Brilliant jerks are often to be found at the beating heart of successful software.