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I once left the most toxic organization I could ever imagine. I was initially very excited to work with people so experienced, but I slowly learned it was just

I once left the most toxic organization I could ever imagine. I was initially very excited to work with people so experienced, but I slowly learned it was just people experienced with being jerks for decades with minimal brilliance to accompany. I turned into an Alice trying to deal with at-best-mediocre/at-worst-negligent Bobs. The article has nailed things pretty accurately, except that the ability of the Bobs was the poorest I’ve ever seen in about 10 years of working. Every success of mine was accompanied by huge failures on their part, and they felt extremely threatened, which really exacerbated things. The worst strategy, which was effective for them, was to constantly spread misinformation about their work, as well as mine, and to organize secret meetings. This created a false perspective that they have a bigger picture in mind, even though each lie fell apart weeks to months later. If you find yourself in an environment where your Alice-jerkiness is forced to grow significantly to deal with Bobs, you should leave if you can. My fondest engineering experiences are working with Alices. I’ve worked with kids fresh out of school that have made me a better engineer; debate is healthy, and no one knows everything. When you encounter a situation with people who refuse to accept that there are things they don’t innately know, and are offended at the prospect of debate, you have Bob. Another strategy of some Bobs, which wasn’t mentioned specifically, is for Bobs to try and make Alices (really anyone who won’t submit to their egos, or who work off of objective evidence) out to be Bobs to avoid arguments and to make unilateral decisions that are not empiricallly driven. Not all Bobs are like this, though, which is part of why the Brilliant Jerk archetype tends to overfit, IMO. Edit: these Bobs were “too experienced” for code review, pull requests, design planning, and testing of any sort.

forcedin2jerk 9y ago
Just so anyone reading can take something away that might be useful if they find themselves in a similar situation... In the first one, I became a hardcore Alice, specifically got promoted because of it, and the jerkiness on all fronts accelerated. There are cultures where jerks thrive. Another culture I’ve previously worked in appreciated people that could “level” their brilliant jerks because management didn’t want to replace them (growth stage -> acquisition). I’ve found sometimes people turn into brilliant jerks, and it’s allowed/tolerated, in part due to compensation inequality. These people were hired at a lower salary for whatever reasons, and in exchange received freedom to be a brilliant jerk because they became hard to replace at a certain price. The jerks in question were working their butts off to move up, which never happened in any significant way. So there can definitely be multiple sides as to why someone is behaving like a jerk.

forcedin2jerk 9y ago

Just so anyone reading can take something away that might be useful if they find themselves in a similar situation... In the first one, I became a hardcore Alice, specifically got promoted because of it, and the jerkiness on all fronts accelerated. There are cultures where jerks thrive. Another culture I’ve previously worked in appreciated people that could “level” their brilliant jerks because management didn’t want to replace them (growth stage -> acquisition). I’ve found sometimes people turn into brilliant jerks, and it’s allowed/tolerated, in part due to compensation inequality. These people were hired at a lower salary for whatever reasons, and in exchange received freedom to be a brilliant jerk because they became hard to replace at a certain price. The jerks in question were working their butts off to move up, which never happened in any significant way. So there can definitely be multiple sides as to why someone is behaving like a jerk.