[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.