I have similar experience. People known within the company as "geniuses" are most likely to get offended when you suggest an improvement to their code. The aver

I have similar experience. People known within the company as "geniuses" are most likely to get offended when you suggest an improvement to their code. The average coders will be like "yeah, whatever". Of course, there is a difference between being a genius, and being perceived as a genius by the managers. But sometimes there are people who are insanely good at some things (and everyone knows that) while having blind spots in other things (and get extremely sensitive about them).