How do you spot a Brilliant Jerk?

[ten-fold]

What are the signs that you are dealing with a brilliant jerk, compared to a great software engineer?

The answer I got from AI did not satisfy me as it fundamentally describes bad engineering practices, not what I would call "brilliant".

I'm looking for a list of behaviors in practical situations. For example:

Brilliant because: - can code faster than most - knows how to architect a system for scale ...

Jerk because: - interrupts in meetings - does not acknowledge others' opinions ...

What have you experienced? I'd love to read anecdotes.

(This is to add more color to an article I'm writing)

[CitrusFruits]

I think Jerk might be too specific of a term. You probably just want to be looking out for someone you don't want as a coworker.

My goto question is to ask people what motivates them. There's a wide range of answers, but I usually find that what people disclose often helps me understand them better even if they may appear a bit like a jerk, and I can consequently give them more targeted feedback or coaching. I think spending 30 minutes to get to know someone is worth every second and can really help team cohesion and productivity.

[bigyabai]

"brilliant jerk" isn't always conflated. There are lots of brilliant people who are very nice, and jerks who have no idea what they're talking about. Trying to forcibly correlate the two is a fast-track to disaster.

[AnimalMuppet]

Well, they're two orthogonal axes. Brilliant vs. ignorant and/or dumb, and jerk vs. decent human being.

I am not the original author, but I think the point is that when you're hiring, you try to hire someone who's brilliant, or at least not ignorant and/or dumb. But brilliant who is a jerk can destroy your team, so what you should be trying to hire is brilliant and "not jerk".

Too many people making hiring decisions get so focused on brilliant that they miss the other issue. But, as I said, I'm not OP, and this is just my impression of what they're thinking.

[ten-fold]

Absolutely, thanks for clarifying.

If you have never heard it before, "brilliant jerk" was a term coined at Netflix to describe their top performers who were also toxic to the team and could not be tolerated.

[aurizon]

This brings to mind high functioning autism spectrum people(of which I am a fringe one), although the spectrum is wide/deep and probably encompasses many.

[xyzzy123]

There are some really common flaws (traits?) that seem correlated with being the type of person who gets unusually good at engineering. Sometimes they're adaptive, sometimes they're not.

Uncompromising - I've had very good leaders who were technically excellent and had very high standards. They could give off strong "jerk" vibes to many because they had values they were not willing to compromise on. They helped produce really high quality output from the team when they were in a leadership position and part of their job was to keep everyone aligned. This seems to work best for tight knit groups though, this style is not very suitable for larger organisations or situations where there are wide differences between people's expectations around workplace culture (you need more scheming vizier for this). Can devolve into an out-of-touch silo or a cult if taken too far. Does not work out well for people who are NOT leading.

Contrarianism - can be a useful personality quirk or a massive time waster, depending on the person, role and severity. Good QA and security work demand at least a little bit of this or they would just be box tickers.

Technical fixation - Strong, fixed ideas about what the best tools and techniques are. Useful because they become strong specialists. OK if aligned with team and project, very painful if not.