How to Deal With Brilliant Jerks You Work With
wired.com
wired.com
The argument for is time, and that you might really want those opinions. It just doesn't mesh well with "everyone is equal, we are doing something new, so everyone contributes ideas" way of thinking at the earliest stages, and it is possible the conventional wisdom (or at least the version embodied in the experienced employee) will either be wrong in general, or at least wrong for your specific case now. It is probably more important that "experienced" people be polite and reasonable than that "brilliant" people be polite and reasonable, actually.
The biggest jerks seem to be people who have had one or two early successes and little or no failure.
In example one, the writer refuses to take responsibility for the fact that they had unrealistic expectations and encouraged unhealthy behavior. If a guy works for 72 hours straight, you don't reward him for that, you tell him to take 3 days off and get some sleep, because nobody can be productive at a pace like that. At the very least it's incredibly unhealthy for the employee.
In the second example the writer basically is suggesting that you should fire people who speak out against the company. What a ridiculous notion! If your culture is so bad you're producing "heretics", you should probably take a serious review at what you're doing to cause such behavior, and why you couldn't detect and rein it in before they "went public" with their concerns.
In the third example, again, before the "jerk" can "destroy" communication "across the team", why didn't somebody notice and maybe have a talk with this chap? Why not work out counseling, or find new ways to work with the person? There are a lot of avenues available to improve communication between employees. "The pound" is a failure to deal with the communication issue.
The ageism of the rest of his post is just the nail in the coffin. Instead of adapting your culture to support different viewpoints, he suggests filtering out anyone who doesn't think the same. Instead of providing a facility for all employees to come to consensus and work together productively, he suggests you should simply be cautious that the old person could be more politically-savvy than you - essentially, to be 'on your guard' around them. And the idea that an old person has some specific knowledge you need is not only irrational, it ignores the real reason 'old' people have an advantage: they may not have specific knowledge you need, but they have [probably] failed more, which gives them the experience of knowing what doesn't work (in their experience), and to a smaller extent, what does.
Dealing with "geniuses" should be the same as dealing with regular people. If you take an active role in caring about your employees and their experience in your company, you'll find out before problems come to a head, and be able to work out solutions that help everyone. (Or you could just fire anyone that causes you problems, which seems to be his suggestion)
The writer is Ben Horowitz:
>Ben Horowitz is cofounder and partner of Andreessen Horowitz.
Therefore there is a good chance that if you work at a successful Valley startup you are indirectly working for this guy and making him even more disgustingly wealthy from your labour.
Does anyone happen to know what company that is so I know to avoid them like the plague?
EDIT: OK, figured it out, it is Pivotal[0]. I have absolutely no idea what they actually _do_ based on their website, exactly as I would expect for the kind of company that would have that sort of office.
I also dislike that a lot of the spaces there are for people with laptops. I personally would never accept a company laptop. It implies that your employer wants you to work at home or on travel. Fuck that. I want a desktop, and I will work for you when I am in the office. If you want me to work at any other time, pay me to come in.
Stand up for yourself. Start-up culture is increasingly bullshit and toxic, luckily I am getting out in a few weeks and do not intend to return.
Does that apply mainly to SV, or have you had/seen similar experiences elsewhere?
edit: you edited while I was writing my reply. :)
edit 2: if you didn't see this, is related- http://www.wired.com/2013/11/pivotal-one/
>As each pair works, neither engineer is permitted to send email or text chat — much less surf the web
>The engineers don’t go onto their laptops unless it’s absolutely necessary. They don’t use their phone unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
Anyway I will try to avoid buying whatever their product is, I don't want to support companies that would do this type of stuff. This is also why I refuse to move or work in America- I am dead serious, your employment law and corporate culture scares me.
What you are looking at is the pair programming setup. Two monitors, two keyboards, one computer. It is a bit weird at first, but once you get used to it, you really start to see the advantages of it. Sure, it isn't perfect, but their model is proven and works well.
Pivotal is also one of the few places I've worked where there was very few jerks and a majority of very smart people. Pair programming really weeds out weak links pretty quickly as nobody will want to pair with you if you're a jerk.
I made some good friends and I loved my time there. I was a contractor just doing a ~6 month stint to learn about pair programming and help capitalize my startup. =)
It's all about the "culture" man, you need to get with the times.
In fact, they have evolved to help avoid and weed out the type of employees which the original article warned of - i.e. "The Flake", "The Heretic", "The Jerk"...
I've worked at Pivotal a long time [1], and here's the reality behind what you see in that picture (http://wrd.cm/1rseFPe):
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Close Quarters
Most of the people in that photo are programmers who are pair programming, or are designers, produce managers, or testers working closely with programmers. The close quarters are intentional, and intended to facilitate quick and easy communication between all of those team members, and minimize all feedback loops.
This means that the any one of those people can immediately ask another about any question or problem they might be having. A tester can ask a programmer about an edge case; the programmers can ask a product manager to clarify some requirements; a programmer could ask a designer to clarify exactly how a UI is intended to behave; etc...
The other thing you don't see is the huge open space in the rest of the office. It's an entire floor, with large areas for sitting, eating (catered) breakfast, playing ping pong or guitar, or having a morning standup meeting attended by several dozens of people.
These folks can get up at any time, and take a stroll, get one of the many free snacks or beverage, or step into a Tardus-style phone booth or privacy room for a private phone call.
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Privacy, "Anything you do on your screen 2 other people are going to inevitably see it"
Exactly. At least for the pair programmers in that picture, what they do on your screen is not private. Because it shouldn't need to be.
Because of pair programming and frequent pair rotation, there is collective code ownership. Two people always work on the same workstation. When a pair is working, they are working - not reading Twitter, not playing with their iTunes playlist, not reading email. They are programming, and always open to questions and interruptions from anyone else on the team.
There are no assigned workstations. Pairs switch up all the time, and work on new stories. The iMacs there all have a secondary monitor, keyboard, and mouse attached for pairing. At any time, the machine can be automatically re-imaged as needed.
Any personal email or other personal activities can be done on separate dedicated email machines at the end of the aisle, or on a personal laptop or phone, but NOT when you are pairing.
Of course, due to the nature of their jobs, designers and product managers, and sometimes testers, do not pair, and thus have dedicated workstations or laptops. But there's still no need for what they have on their screen to be "private", other than email or documents, and nobody is going to bend over and start reading someone else's email over their shoulder. It's a non-issue.
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Company Laptops
Most of the people with laptops are either designers, product managers, or testers. Again, because of the nature of their work, they tend to need dedicated machines, unlike programmers who are always pairing. They also tend to need to be more mobile. E.g., product managers taking their laptops to an iteration planning meeting to discuss a backlog. Also, company laptops are assigned for production support, but usually only to be used in during unexpected production incidents or after-hours deploys (which annoyingly don't always observe regular working hours).
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Expectation of Working from Home or while Traveling
There is no expectation to work from home at Pivotal Labs. In fact, a 40-hour work week is strongly encouraged and enforced for sustainability (http://pivotallabs.com/crunch-time/). Standup starts at 9:05 (after catered breakfast), and quitting time is 6 PM, with a regular lunch and 15-minute game of ping-pong. No expectation is ever made of working from home, or putting in overtime. Plus, everybody keeping the same hours supports the other values mentioned above - frequent pair rotation, close communication and tight feedback loops. And yes, laptops can be used while traveling, for employees which need them (e.g. product managers or production support programmers/ops).
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So, again, all of these things work together to avoid having employees like TFA mentioned - "The Flake", "The Heretic", "The Jerk". Those sorts of people just don't work out. In fact, because the Pivotal Labs hiring process involves pair programming, including interviewees live pairing with a Pivot on a real project, the most egregious of these personality types never even make past the initial interview stage.
Of course, not everything always works out exactly like I've described. But they do most of the time. The important thing is that they are embedded in the company values and culture, and fully supported from the executive levels and founders - not just paid lip-service.
On a personal note, I have worked at several different types of companies, including ones where I had a dedicated office (with a door) and personal workstation, ones where I had a dedicated cubicle, and also working from home as a full-time remote employee. I will say that Pivotal's arrangement is, in my opinion, by far the best. The energy and enthusiasm that flows through the air is powerful, with so many bright and talented people working hard in the same space, sharing, collaborating, and helping each other out. And playing ping pong.
[1] I've worked at Pivotal Labs (the consultancy) since '96, prior to their acquisition by EMC and subsequent incorporation into the newly-formed Pivotal company.
In real offices there is too much wasteful drama/noise around 'perceived slackness' that often does not correlate with the actual facts. In a remote environment everyone is being judged on the same time-scale by the same exact criteria which has nothing to do with their age, sex, lifestyle choices, sleep habits, etc.
I hate that such behavior is considered normal and acceptable.
The first question you might ask is, “Why do I need senior people at all? Won’t they just ruin the culture with their fancy clothes, political ambitions and need to go home to see their families?”
If you read the book, there were only a few fairly badly communicated or stupid parts, and they made a lot more sense in context (it is partially biographical, so he includes mistakes and why they were mistakes).
The "old people" is one of those which made more sense in context. It was a bad idea to let it be pulled out like this, imo.
"When to hire 'old people'?" <-- is a ridiculous question.
"Should you take asshat advice?" <-- see Betteridge's Law.
Edit: Depersonalized the target of "asshat" because I'm not in a position to judge the person, just this particular post.
Then it's very likely that his extremely productive coding marathons were during manic episodes and/or while abusing stimulants. Certainly not something you would want to bank on either way.
My dad was bipolar and also one of the hardest-working men I knew (even during waves of depression). He actually had a couple (prescription) drug problems too. But when he started up a manic episode, it was still abundantly obvious. Basically what's described in the article- seemingly endless pools of energy and stamina despite little to no sleep, always working on or planning some kind of project (for my dad, it was usually some kind of restoration), and never relaxing.
I think he was probably an exception to the rule, because when he was depressed and taking heavy doses of benzodiazepines, he still managed to get his fair share done. I'm not a psychiatrist and I don't know Arthur, but I'd guess both his absences and drug use stemmed from his depression.
Wow, that's offensive.
But note well -- the question must be taken seriously!
As I get older I'm finding it harder to distinguish parody from stupidity/ignorance (aka Poe's law).
[1] I "looked inside" the book at Amazon. The article is made up of two sections from the book, and rewrites/reorders the paragraphs a bit.
I interpreted it as the latter... although I live in England and when people mention senior I think of people who has experience.
Whats most troublesome to me about this article is in the first example.
> On his third day, we gave him a project that was scheduled to take one month. Arthur completed the project in three days with nearly flawless quality. More specifically, he completed the project in seventy-two hours: No stops, no sleep, nothing but coding. In his first quarter on the job, he was the best employee we had and we immediately promoted him.
This is the monkey getting his hand caught in the jar. This is Chewbacca thinking with his stomach and getting hung upside down by Ewoks.
Behavior like Arthur's is unsustainable. The human energy to stay up for 72 hours writing code has to come from somewhere. Burnout in these sort of cases is inevitable.
Why oh why would you promote someone like this before waiting for them to display an ability to be consistent? We should see these sort of things as red flags. Instead, the dream of having a programmer that can get month-long projects done in three days is too sweet too ignore. It's ironic that his downfall was giving in to drugs, which provide short term gains at long term costs -- the company was guilty of the same, with Arthur as their drug
It does, doesn't it?
Sheesh.
From his response, I think at a less-critical ("peacetime") company stage, they might have tried to help him within the company.