How to Deal With Brilliant Jerks You Work With

http://www.wired.com/2014/02/smart-jerks-old-people-hard-things-company/

by rohunati • 12 years ago

34 49 12 years ago

e40• 12 years ago

Why do we need senior people at all? The short answer is time. Hiring someone who has already done what you are trying to do can radically speed up time to success. But won’t they just ruin the culture? This question must be taken seriously. However, bringing in the right kind of experience at the right time can mean the difference between bankruptcy and glory.

Wow, that's offensive.

Jedd• 12 years ago

Indeed.

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).

protomyth• 12 years ago

I started assuming it is stupidity/ignorance unless its April 1 or they are paid to be funny (e.g. comedian, The Onion).

zhemao• 12 years ago

I'm not even sure why that's part of the article at all. The piece is originally about dealing with smart jerks and suddenly the author switches to talking about bringing in older employees?

jt2190• 12 years ago

The article is "[a]dapted and excerpted from The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz." Seems like the editors did a clumsy job when combining two sections [1] of Ben's book.

[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.

kenkam• 12 years ago

Senior as in age? Or senior as in someone who has the experience?

I interpreted it as the latter... although I live in England and when people mention senior I think of people who has experience.

collyw• 12 years ago

Usually they go hand in hand.

grahamburger• 12 years ago

The paragraph heading said 'Old People.' Particularly poignant for me - my dad is highly experienced but was recently laid off and has been searching for a job in the tech sector for months. Ageism in tech is brutal.

thesoonerdev• 12 years ago

Indeed. Maybe someone just decided to take the most provocative pieces of the book and stitch together an article, and used a data driven HN-baity headline generator program? :-)

fhd24• 12 years ago

That's what I thought. Makes the j-word seem rather appropriate for the author, ironically.

HellaMedusa• 12 years ago

Seriously. Even as a young person, that stung.

fhd24• 12 years ago

Yup, should sting for anyone really. Everyone gets older.

pcrh• 12 years ago

Well, he did have a harder time justifying why not to hire older people, compared to drug addicts.

patmcguire2• 12 years ago

Didn't Ben Horowitz basically publish this already as Old People? http://www.bhorowitz.com/old_people

patmcguire2• 12 years ago

Ah it's basically a smush of two things... http://www.bhorowitz.com/when_smart_people_are_bad_employees

moron4hire• 12 years ago

    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?”

Whaaaat the fuck does any of those have to do with anything, or each other? The last one in particular kind of pisses me off.

fhd24• 12 years ago

Wow, that one is even worse, pure ageism. He might as well write about "when to hire female people" etc. Somewhat sad that "culture" is mostly a meaningless buzzword these days, used mainly to exclude people you don't like.

00134111015• 12 years ago

And yet people will listen to this guy because he is a VC and will create cargo cult leadership to hang off his every word.

6cxs2hd6• 12 years ago

Although he makes some good points -- it can be tricky to hire people with more experience than you, especially in the areas where you're weakest -- the title is pretty awful.

"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.

lomnakkus2• 12 years ago

Is it a Poe[0]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

00134111015• 12 years ago

Jesus Christ, is that top picture of a hellish working environment typical? I have a panic attack just looking at it.

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.

[0] http://www.gopivotal.com/

segmondy• 12 years ago

Hey, if most people were able to study/learn in school like that, why can't they work like that? Just saying. I've pretty much accepted my fate. I will sit on the floor or in circles or in that format, just pay me and pay me well.

00134111015• 12 years ago

Because I demand more respect than that from my employer. It is a layout designed to cram the max number of people into the cheapest space. These people are shoulder to shoulder. You have zero privacy and anything you do on your screen 2 other people are going to inevitably see it. In that way it is also your employer enforcing their will on you- you will feel embarrassed to take a perfectly normal break to look at Facebook or Twitter or whatever.

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.

nilkn• 12 years ago

Other than grade school, I rarely ever did serious work in school while sitting shoulder to shoulder with people as in this image. The only time I can think of being in this sort of setup in college were labs, and I only remember those as being chaotic, loud, hectic, and annoying.

mh-• 12 years ago

it looks familiar to me- I think it's Pivotal.

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/

00134111015• 12 years ago

Thanks for the link. Yup, that is anathema to me, you couldn't pay me enough to ever consider working there.

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.

latchkey• 12 years ago

It is somewhat amusing to me that they re-used an image taken at Pivotal Labs for the header of the article, I'm in the image.

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. =)

azth2• 12 years ago

is that top picture of a hellish working environment typical? I have a panic attack just looking at it.

It's all about the "culture" man, you need to get with the times.

lomnakkus2• 12 years ago

The home page is incredibly bland. "Are you data-driven?" They might as well be advertising shampoo or something.

thewoolleyman2• 12 years ago

Things are not always as they seem. The goals of this (Pivotal Labs') office layout and the company values are actually contrary to what you might assume.

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):

--------

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.

--------

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.

--------

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).

--------

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).

-------------

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.

thewoolleyman2• 12 years ago

[edit: I've been at Pivotal Labs since '06, not '96. In '96 I was at IBM Global Services.]

morgante• 12 years ago

Most executives can be pricks, dicks, a-holes, or a variety of other profane nouns at times. Being dramatically impolite can be used to improve clarity or emphasize an important lesson.

I hate that such behavior is considered normal and acceptable.

itsatrapnooo• 12 years ago

Ignoring the out of place second half of the article...

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

Eduard• 12 years ago

The first example read like the employee was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, so we fired him. Ouch. Try to be supportive and help at least once. Then reconsider. Else, the jerk is on you.

warfangle• 12 years ago

Not only that, but bipolar disorder is a protected class under the ADA. Drug addiction not so much. But that's why your company has mental health included in its health plan.

It does, doesn't it?

Sheesh.

fhd24• 12 years ago

Wow, I don't know what's crazier, that they promoted him or that they fired him. I can't believe Ben Horowitz. It sounds like he's in the slave business.

rdl5• 12 years ago

He was also a drug addict, from the book, and it was in the context of nonperformance, at a company which was dying.

From his response, I think at a less-critical ("peacetime") company stage, they might have tried to help him within the company.

rdl5• 12 years ago

The good argument against hiring experienced people is that they will be highly opinionated about how they did things before. (Plus, the purely practical concerns around cost and availability) I don't think this closely correlates to age -- a 45 year old consultant who has done short engagements at hundreds of small companies (qsa or something like that) has entirely different characteristics than someone who ran a specific function at one successful company right out of college and nothing else. I'd actually argue the 45yo in that case is less likely to be an "old person" than the 24yo! In a less pathological case, certain roles are probably more likely to make people into jerks (or select for jerks to retain) than other roles.

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.

peterwwillis2• 12 years ago

Holy shit. I would never work with/for this writer.

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)

00134111015• 12 years ago

Holy shit. I would never work with/for this writer.

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.

peterwwillis2• 12 years ago

I don't really care who is becoming wealthy from what. But I will certainly take a more critical look at any company I think of joining that has this guy as a backer.

subdane• 12 years ago

Ben's perspective is strongly influenced by his experiences at Netscape and Loudcloud and looking for and funding rocket ships. Are these cultural artifacts - working w/ jerks, hiring young, working 72 hours in a row - the inevitable outcome of venture funded tech? Are there strong counter examples?

rdl5• 12 years ago

If you look at a lot of other highly creative disciplines (art, music, etc), the non linear performance (by person, task, and time) is also common. Temperament, drugs, etc might be factors.

dbbolton• 12 years ago

It turned out that Arthur was bipolar and had two significant drug problems.

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.

h1karu• 12 years ago

I love remote companies because they can afford to give their employees the freedom to have drug habits or kids who demand a lot of attention or whatever else. There's no pressure to "keep up appearances" so as long as his communication on git and hipchat is professional and his code quality is high.

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.

How to Deal With Brilliant Jerks You Work With

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