11 ms·

When Smart People are Bad Employees

141 points by J3L2404 16y ago

mgkimsal 16y ago
Kinda scary that I see myself in that list - mostly example 1, reason 1 and 2. OTOH, it's a bit heartening to read "sometimes these people actually make better CEOs than employees" - just hard to get most people to take you seriously when you start off at the bottom (not impossible, just typically harder to do than simply getting hired in at the top).
- phaedrus 16y ago
  I have bipolar disorder and I definitely identify with his "the flake" story. I wouldn't just not show up like the guy in the story but I do have depressive cycles where I'm not sure I'm doing any good by showing up; I come in anyway. After a while the cycle swings the other way and I get heroic coding done at a (excuse the pun) manic pace. I like to think it comes out more productive on balance. For instance most recently I spent two months studying legacy code but didn't have the right frame of mind to make changes to it. Close to the deadline I had an upswing in mood and completed a total rewrite of the software in three days during which everything I touched turned to gold. Two key points: one, this was (embedded system) code a senior engineer struggled on for 2 years. So even averaging the month during which I did nothing with the week I did everything, I was still more productive by a huge margin. The second key point is I used both halves of my cycle to advantage. I knew I couldn't handle the rewrite while depressed, but what I COULD do was use that fugue state to plod through his old code like a zombie. Even though I didn't feel like I was making progress (and my boss was beginning to worry!) what I was doing was priming my brain with knowledge of what the legacy code did. That way, when the upswing did come, I didn't waste a single second of it.
  - alex_c 16y ago
    Obliquely appropriate username? :) Just curious, is your boss aware of your cycles, and does he/she plan for them? If not, what effect do you think trying to explain would have?
    - j_baker 16y ago
      I don't know about bipolar disorder or the grandparent's boss specifically, but I've learned never to discuss mental disorders with bosses or coworkers. There simply is no upside and every imaginable downside. Best case: you get labeled as someone who uses a mental disorder as an excuse for not doing your job. Worst case: you become "that crazy person" that nobody wants to associate with.
      - DuncanIdaho 16y ago
        I'm currently supervising an 37year old rookie. He had some absence issues, so I confronted him. Tuns out he is an ex-addict (that's why he's rookie at 37). I don't have a problem with people trying to straighten themselves out. He doesn't get any preferential treatment from me - because it won't do him any good. As long as he does the expected work of expected quality he is fine with me. Knowing that he is an ex addict is valuable to me so I can put our relationship in right context.
        pbhjpbhj 16y ago
        >He doesn't get any preferential treatment from me [...] [knowing about his past] is valuable to me so I can put our relationship in right context. I don't understand how knowing about his past should matter if you're not going to behave differently towards him? That's like asking someone’s sex on an application form - if you're not going to discriminate why do you need to know.
        sophacles 16y ago
        He is differentiating that the past was a problem rather than the present. See, if the guy was a 37yo rookie because of current, actively on-going problems, then the past would still not matter, but there would be good reason to be wary. So finding out that the thing is in the past is an exercise in finding out enough to dismiss qualms. You are being disingenuous btw -- this is not like the gender question at all.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    I do have depressive cycles where I'm not sure I'm doing any good by showing up; I come in anyway. After a while the cycle swings the other way and I get heroic coding done I think all creative people are like this, bipolar or not. The problem with the programming world is that a lot of non-creative types want to be programmers, and so they set soem "standard that assumes programmers are people that show up at 9am, click shit in Eclipse for 8 hours, and then go home. Unfortunately, in the history of the human race, clicking shit in Eclipse for 8 hours has never produced a working computer program. Programming is creative work; treat it like a 9-5 job and the result is shitty software. The sad part is that there is a huge market for shitty software. I bet the car makers and bridge builders wish they had it this good.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
wheaties 16y ago
I've tried very hard not to be one of those people on that list. For a while I was the first, feeling completely helpless to change anything. Then someone within the company helped change some of that for me. Now I've matured to the point where I can objectively look at this company and realize it's a mismatch between my professional goals and the role that they would have me play. Quite simply it's not a software company and that's where I need to work. Thanks for putting this up. Every time I read something like this is helps keep me in check.
- trustfundbaby 16y ago
  I feel your pain, that was me a couple of years ago ... moving on was one of the best things I've ever done.
- damncabbage 16y ago
  I'm in a similar sort of position, but I'm a developer working at a software company: My goal is to automate deployments, boost efficiency and introduce "force multipliers" to get the highest bang-for-buck ratio: basically getting rid of the roadblocks between the guys and them churning out awesome stuff at a terrific speed. On the other hand, the company loses money (in the short term) when I automate things; if two-hour deployments are reduced to 15 minutes each, they can no longer charge the client that extra hour or two for every batch of work. Projects are generally quoted and charged by the hour; if the client's reasonably content with the cost and the resulting work then there's not much incentive to get things done more quickly, regardless of how wasteful we're being. Sometimes I can clear roadblocks. Most of the time I can't. It's taken a year, but I've come to realise the company's and my own goals are orthogonal, that I'm becoming an Example #1, and that it's time to move on. (Thanks for posting the article; it's nice to see these negative qualities clearly laid out.)
  - autarch 16y ago
    <pedant>Your goals and the company's are not orthogonal, they are in opposition. Orthogonal means unrelated, but in this case they are related, just not in the right way.</pedant>
naner 16y ago
I'm supposed to take this guy seriously with a lead-in like that? I can't wait for his article on common misconceptions of social propriety among the technically proficient.
- naner 16y ago
  So I worded this poorly but I was disapproving of his Kanye quote, not the lead-in from the blog owner.
  - rdl 16y ago
    Ben Horowitz's "ben's blog" always leads off with a thematic rap lyric; it works pretty well in some cases, but fails in others. I don't think this was the strongest one. Overall, I think it's a decent attempt at having a hook for otherwise somewhat dry (maybe, but not really) blog posts. He is obviously going for contrast. For instance, the KRS-One quote worked well on http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/14/why-startups-should-train-their-people/ http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/14/why-startups-should-train-th... The Who for this was obvious (and the theme too): http://bhorowitz.com/2010/11/15/meet-the-new-enterprise-customer-he%E2%80%99s-a-lot-like-the-old-enterprise-customer/ http://bhorowitz.com/2010/11/15/meet-the-new-enterprise-cust... I'd respect him more if he used the obvious Biggie quotes, though.
    - naner 16y ago
      Ben Horowitz's "ben's blog" always leads off with a thematic rap lyric; it works pretty well in some cases, but fails in others. Ok. This is something I touched on in another comment: if you're known for breaking a certain type of social convention than you can often times get away with it, without much criticism. So this was probably normal to his blog readers but confusing to those of us who were exposed to it for the first time. Thanks for the explanation. It made me reexamine my initial knee-jerk reaction.
tom_ilsinszki 16y ago
"[...] if you’re an entrepreneur, generally you don’t like working with a lot of people. That’s what an entrepreneur is." - Robert Greene on Mixergy
- dools 16y ago
  An entrepreneur is someone who starts a business and assumes the risk associated with it. That is all.
keeptrying 16y ago
All said and done you need your "bad" employee more than they need you. Brilliance usually comes at a cost. If you were really a good leader you would have been able to get Rodger some help with his drug problem. And if it had worked he would have repayed you with some amazing work. Stop fucking complaining about "bad" employees who make you more money than everyone else on the team. Your job IS to deal with them - so deal with it. Else be happy with the 9-to-5 lifers on you team and shut the fuck up. You'll find that you aren't going to be able todo jack shit with them. I hate people who post shit like this.
- j_baker 16y ago
  You know, I'm inclined to agree that one needs to be able to deal with a bit more to get talent. But no amount of leadership can deal with a drug problem. That requires action on Roger's part. Besides that, this doesn't sound like the typical "Employees aren't good unless they follow my every order to the letter and get along great with every single person in the company" meme that I'm used to hearing. At least there's an acknowledgement that companies might have to deal with these issues in certain cases.
- flashgordon 16y ago
  Is it really black and white as that? Would you still hire a genius if his actions were unethical on purpose just on the off streak that he might (or even has) produced 10x the wealth/value/code/output as an average engineer?
  - rdl 16y ago
    It really depends on the person, his flaws, and the role. Roger the Coke Fiend actually seems like he'd be manageable as a part-timer: keep him on the bench, and if you have a cool 72h burst for him to do, especially if the consequences of his failure are not bad in any case. A dull but productive and reliable guy makes a great accountant. It's all about the specifics. For someone unethical, I'd be reluctant to do most business, but might be willing to do arms length product purchases. For instance, there are musicians who produce music I sometimes enjoy but wouldn't trust at all.
michaels0620 16y ago
I've been in the company of really smart (and likable!) Heretics and they tend to go out not with a bang but with a whimper. It's sad to watch. They may be even be right but their persistent negativity and challenging of the status quo (even in minor matters) ends up wearing people down. Then eyes start rolling when they talk and their rants are met with sighs rather than attention or acknowledgment. Then they start getting left out of meetings and email conversations as it is easier to get things done without them no matter how smart they are. All of this feeds the Heretic's perception of being the only sane person in the asylum turning them even more cynical and negative.
- praptak 16y ago
  "Then they start getting left out of meetings and email conversations as it is easier to get things done without them no matter how smart they are." At this point it's the management fault for not doing (having done) something about it. Firing the person, fixing the status quo or maybe empowering them to fix it. And yeah, I'm aware I might now sound like the Heretic themselves :)
- _delirium 16y ago
  Maybe I hang out with too many cynical people, but the Heretics I've run into have usually been pretty popular with coworkers, at least if the Heretic is also a reasonably intelligent and sociable person (rather than the muttering-darkly-in-the-corner variety). Even a decent number of people who don't themselves have much interest attacking their boss / stupid corporate policies / etc., sometimes like to watch on the sidelines while someone else does, at least if they can avoid entanglement in the drama. But I guess most people I know are sort of default-cynical about organizations, policies, and management, so there's a default-positivity about someone who's spending their time railing against it, even if you think their energies are misguided/futile. Though I guess it does get more problematic if they start attacking their coworkers as sheep/sellouts/etc. The popularity is easier to maintain if they stick to attacking management/bosses/policies and treat their coworkers as being on the same side.
  - JabavuAdams 16y ago
waratuman 16y ago
This may be a little picky, but this statement just doesn't make sense: :He is fundamentally a rebel—She will not be happy unless" Where did the she come from?
- BigZaphod 16y ago
  "She" probably came from some attempt at political correctness. There's been a rise in recent decades to use "she" when speaking about an unspecified person. Historically, it was common to use "he" for that task. Unfortunately english doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun and until/if one becomes accepted this will probably continue to be a confusing issue... edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Unfortunately english doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun Yes it does: "they". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
    - mmt 16y ago
      I believe the grandparent commenter meant: English does not have a unique[1], singular, gender-neutral pronoun. [1] unambiguous
      - philwelch 16y ago
        I've never heard a sentence in actual usage[1] where the usage of the singular "they" was ambiguous. In terms of being understandable and elegant, the singular "they" is probably the best English can do. Unfortunately, it's not widely accepted because it "sounds" uneducated, despite being the current best solution to the problem. Gender-neutral neologisms, like Spivak pronouns [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun], are not commonly understood, while constructs like "he/she" or randomly alternating between generic "he" and generic "she" as in the OP is inelegant and confusing (hence this whole thread). [1] I'm sure you could construct a contrived example.
smokinn 16y ago
Absolutely useless hyperbolic link-bait. No one acts that way unless they have severe mental illnesses (such as the cocaine-addicted bipolar genius) or the company already has serious systemic problems. If you see things near the exaggerations in the OP regularly, the company is already diseased and needs major overhaul.
- al05 16y ago
  It's never management's fault.
angdis 16y ago
"Holding the bus". I like the phrase, everybody has their bad days and should get some slack when they need it in exchange for giving their best when it really counts. However, I have to take issue with manic coders. I've seen the results of "heroic" coding. It sucks. Sure, it does the job, meets the deadline or whatever but the problem is that quick work is typically nothing more than a "rush job" that becomes a maintenance nightmare in the future. The thing is no one wants to work with someone who is unstable or difficult. If the success of your enterprise depends on sporadic bursts of mania from individual workers, I'm sorry, that just isn't going to be sustainable.
BigZaphod 16y ago
This is probably OT and maybe even rude... but that lead-in with the Kanye lyrics is just strange. My reading of the lyrics snippet (and I'm certainly no expert in these things) suggests that the character is telling a girl to run away from him because he knows he's a dick. Specifically, he's a dick that's especially good at criticism and spreading negativity and of the list of targets, one group happens to be people who work a lot which implies to me that the character's less-than-hardworking nature looks bad by comparison. So not only is the character a dick, he's a self-professed underachieving one and perhaps even proud of it. He might even be worried that the girl is one of those kinds of people he hates, or maybe he kinda cares for her and knows his personality is toxic on some level, or he just can't have nice things, or there happens to be a hotter girl one table over so this one has to go... Anyway, it's just odd because it seems like the character that is "speaking" in the song is exactly the sort of guy who might bitch about how troublesome smart people are because he's always got to be the smartest guy in the room but refuses to put in the work required to remain the smartest guy in the room when there's other actual smart guys in the room. So the best solution in that case is to get rid of the others by telling them to "run away as fast as you can." In summary, it seems to me like the lyrics are actually speaking more as a person who hates over-achievers and/or smart people than as a person who is one of those troublesome smart persons who hates average folk and therefore would appear to, well, not really support the author's actual argument. Or something? I don't know. I'm probably not one of the smart ones. so... :P
- kenjackson 16y ago
  In the lyrics, the hard-worker is the person singing the lyrics. He's saying he's a jerk for not taking time off to spend time with the girl. So really he is the smart jerk who is trying to tell someone to stay away because he is a jerk and will just criticize her, although he really doesn't like who he becomes, but that's his gift. He ends it with toasts to himself (and people like him). While he's toasting them, he clearly doesn't like himself.
  - BigZaphod 16y ago
    "In the lyrics, the hard-worker is the person singing the lyrics." I just don't get that at all from the snippet quoted, but I can imagine how the larger context of the song might flip the meaning of things around - but I don't know the rest of the song and was going only based on the words in the article with no way of knowing how those words were performed. :) I suppose the use of "toast" could be a clue that he actually means some kind of respect, but then why respect "douchebags" and "assholes" etc? So my reading put large quotes around "toast" in the way you might "toast" someone sarcastically who just made a giant mistake or something. If the greater context of the song established that the voice was being sort of facetious here, then I can see how my interpretation could be almost exactly backward - but again, without some grander context, I really feel I had no way to know that if that is indeed the case. Side note: Over the years I've noticed that either, A) I just suck at interpreting song lyrics, or B) song lyrics are often purposely designed to be ambiguous. I suspect some of both is at work here. :)
aliud 16y ago
Sans the cocaine habit, and the staggering productivity levels, the second example is an otherwise uncanny match for how I eventually left my last job. Started off strong, got ahead of schedule, had a mental breakdown, accomplished exactly nothing for about a month, and then quit (to avoid being fired).
- al05 16y ago
  Let me guess, you do all overall design work, train staff, stay late. Then someone else gets the credit, because his best friends with the manager? That was my last mental breakdown.
Evgeny 16y ago
As a side note: why is the he/she used this way? He is disempowered - She feels etc. Wouldn't it be correct to use "she" everywhere?
- jonburs 16y ago
  I imagine it's a poor attempt to be gender-neutral. Alternating genders between successive examples might have worked better. (The Silence of the Lambs alternative formulation, probably not.)
- wccrawford 16y ago
  Technically, it would be correct to use 'he' everywhere, since in English that is what is considered the neutral gender. Second best is using He/She to satisfy the PC folks.
  - igravious 16y ago
    "Is considered". Considered by who exactly? How subtle of you to use the passive voice to plaster over the cracks in your argument :) There is no best, just norms surely. That being said, there are ways to be gender neutral without dropping the clangers that this author does. Be gender neutral by all means but for the love of the children don't switch back and forth like an eager yo-yo. edit: remove snark :)
minddog 16y ago
Aside from a strange lead-in, there is a larger picture about identifying the dynamic of a team and how to build it. We should prevent these situations by identifying red flags in the hiring process early on. Sometimes that isn't good enough, but to his point, we shouldn't make that same mistake twice. Never heard of this, but it could be a good practice to do a post-mortem in the hiring process after an acidic resource is gone. I'm sure this problem runs rampant in all industries, where they have a much less tolerance.
motters 16y ago
There is also the vaultingly ambitious employee. Someone who is both clever and also prepared to do anything to get a promotion or pay rise - even if that means causing chaos, using other employees as collateral damage, etc.
- hellweaver666 16y ago
  Eugh - I hate people like that. In my last job, the whole marketing team (8 people) were like a group of wrecking balls smashing through the company trying to meet their own individual goals. It was chaos but the MD was a marketing guy himself and couldn't see that the marketing team were doing a whole heap of damage to the company. I played the heretic role for a while, but eventually I quit because it was a loosing battle and my moral had gone through the floor.
cmanfu 16y ago
I recognize that this author's proactive use of sex-neutral (or more like sex-diverse?) pronouns comes from a good place. But intermixing he's with she's, him's and her's the way he is is sometimes just confusing.
dools 16y ago
This is about as original and interesting as a Cosmo sex quiz.
Mz 16y ago
As for the remarks about the he/she pronoun thing in the article, I think the last sentence would have been much, much stronger if they had used "one" instead of "her" and it simultaneously would have side-stepped some of this issue: That’s fine, but remember: you can only hold the bus for one.
edw519 16y ago
Reading the section entitled, "The Jerk," got me to wondering if OP will be ever write the obvious follow-up post, "Why We Promote So Many Jerks". I have done work for over 100 companies ranging from SMB to large enterprises. Independently (I'll tell you why in a moment) I just made a list of the 10 biggest assholes I ever met the other day. Eight of them were the #1 person in one of those companies. Seven of them are, not surprisingly, out of business. (The reason I made the list was because I watched "Undercover Boss" for the fourth time the other night. The first three times were great. This episode, about the CEO of Norwegian Cruise Lines, was horrible. All I kept asking myself was, "Where the hell did they get this jerk?" He had no idea how anything happened in his company and had people and functional problems in all 4 departments he worked in undercover. One employee even remarked that he had a problem dealing with women. That's when I made my list.) What is it about our processes in business that seems to favor assholes? I realize that my experience may not be the norm, but some of the things I've seen done by the President or CEO: - getting drunk and firing the security guard - throwing a phone book at his secretary - belittling vendors until none wanted the business - routinely yelling f words at employees - firing other executives on a whim - begging these executives to return to work - committing crimes with the books to earn a bonus - ignoring company saving advice (that would make them look bad) - sexually harassing subordinates - committing adultery (& other crimes) in full view of subordinates I even witnessed a CEO of a Fortune 50 company break down and cry at a Tony Robbins event because he couldn't complete a routine task. If I sound like I think that our leaders should be held to a higher standard, it's because they should be. Hell, I'd settle for any standard. I'd love to hear OP's take on the other side of the story, when smart people decide to stop making sacrifices for the assholes they got stuck working for.
- alnayyir 16y ago
  Sociopathy and narcissism are overrepresented amongst executives. Smart people (as meant in the post) usually like to discover (scientists) or create (engineers, writers, etc.) things. They don't have to achieve power for power's sake in order to be happy. Thus, they aren't as well represented amongst executives in established companies because that form of achievement isn't something they valued.
ph0rque 16y ago
On his third day, we gave him a project that was scheduled to take one month. Roger completed the project in 3 days with nearly flawless quality. More specifically, he completed the project in 72 hours. 72 non-stop hours: No stops, no sleep, no nothing but coding. I know this is against the Silicon Valley philosophy, but that guy just put in almost two 40-hour weeks of work, not three days. It might have done him well to take the next 11 days off. Edit: I realize he was on drugs, but I think that's a different discussion altogether.
- grammaton 16y ago
  "Roger completed the project in 3 days with nearly flawless quality. More specifically, he completed the project in 72 hours. 72 non-stop hours: No stops, no sleep, no nothing but coding." Then later on: "He was addicted to cocaine." So...no comment from anyone on how these two things are almost certainly related?
  - imgabe 16y ago
    Also he was bipolar, so probably in a manic state when he worked for 72 hours straight. There's a pretty big difference between "flaky" and "has a serious mental disorder that is going untreated".
jimfl 16y ago
"The two just raised $650 million and what they have to say is worth your attention." Then, there's that kind of jerk.
known 16y ago
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
- JabavuAdams 16y ago
  Meh. A lot of evil fuckups also depend on unreasonable men.
binaryfinery 16y ago
I'm just staggered that this article doesn't even mention the most destructive personality at a company: the status-quo politician. This person absolutely has an agenda other than improving the company: personal comfort and status. So I find Horowitz's description of the Heretic somewhat ironic: However, sometimes really smart employees develop agendas other than improving the company... The young heretic might be guilty of this: Specifically, he builds his case that the company is hopeless and run by a bunch of morons. The young heretic has yet to learn that a company has three types: 1. The Status-Quo Politician. 1% 2. The Enablers 98% 3. The Heretics 1% The Enablers can be further divided: a) Those who are naive or don't understand psychological abuse b) Those who do and don't care. My advice to young heretics: identify the status-quo politicians and discuss with CEO. If the CEO doesn't see it, perhaps be cause he's non-technical, leave. Your company is going down the toilet. Also note that there are plenty of politicians who are also interested in making a ton of money by making the company great.
jrockway 16y ago
Next week on HN: "When Dumb People are Bad Writers".

141 points by J3L2404 16y ago

Kinda scary that I see myself in that list - mostly example 1, reason 1 and 2. OTOH, it's a bit heartening to read "sometimes these people actually make better CEOs than employees" - just hard to get most people to take you seriously when you start off at the bottom (not impossible, just typically harder to do than simply getting hired in at the top).

phaedrus 16y ago
I have bipolar disorder and I definitely identify with his "the flake" story. I wouldn't just not show up like the guy in the story but I do have depressive cycles where I'm not sure I'm doing any good by showing up; I come in anyway. After a while the cycle swings the other way and I get heroic coding done at a (excuse the pun) manic pace. I like to think it comes out more productive on balance. For instance most recently I spent two months studying legacy code but didn't have the right frame of mind to make changes to it. Close to the deadline I had an upswing in mood and completed a total rewrite of the software in three days during which everything I touched turned to gold. Two key points: one, this was (embedded system) code a senior engineer struggled on for 2 years. So even averaging the month during which I did nothing with the week I did everything, I was still more productive by a huge margin. The second key point is I used both halves of my cycle to advantage. I knew I couldn't handle the rewrite while depressed, but what I COULD do was use that fugue state to plod through his old code like a zombie. Even though I didn't feel like I was making progress (and my boss was beginning to worry!) what I was doing was priming my brain with knowledge of what the legacy code did. That way, when the upswing did come, I didn't waste a single second of it.
- alex_c 16y ago
  Obliquely appropriate username? :) Just curious, is your boss aware of your cycles, and does he/she plan for them? If not, what effect do you think trying to explain would have?
  - j_baker 16y ago
    I don't know about bipolar disorder or the grandparent's boss specifically, but I've learned never to discuss mental disorders with bosses or coworkers. There simply is no upside and every imaginable downside. Best case: you get labeled as someone who uses a mental disorder as an excuse for not doing your job. Worst case: you become "that crazy person" that nobody wants to associate with.
    - DuncanIdaho 16y ago
      I'm currently supervising an 37year old rookie. He had some absence issues, so I confronted him. Tuns out he is an ex-addict (that's why he's rookie at 37). I don't have a problem with people trying to straighten themselves out. He doesn't get any preferential treatment from me - because it won't do him any good. As long as he does the expected work of expected quality he is fine with me. Knowing that he is an ex addict is valuable to me so I can put our relationship in right context.
      - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
        >He doesn't get any preferential treatment from me [...] [knowing about his past] is valuable to me so I can put our relationship in right context. I don't understand how knowing about his past should matter if you're not going to behave differently towards him? That's like asking someone’s sex on an application form - if you're not going to discriminate why do you need to know.
        sophacles 16y ago
        He is differentiating that the past was a problem rather than the present. See, if the guy was a 37yo rookie because of current, actively on-going problems, then the past would still not matter, but there would be good reason to be wary. So finding out that the thing is in the past is an exercise in finding out enough to dismiss qualms. You are being disingenuous btw -- this is not like the gender question at all.
- jrockway 16y ago
  I do have depressive cycles where I'm not sure I'm doing any good by showing up; I come in anyway. After a while the cycle swings the other way and I get heroic coding done I think all creative people are like this, bipolar or not. The problem with the programming world is that a lot of non-creative types want to be programmers, and so they set soem "standard that assumes programmers are people that show up at 9am, click shit in Eclipse for 8 hours, and then go home. Unfortunately, in the history of the human race, clicking shit in Eclipse for 8 hours has never produced a working computer program. Programming is creative work; treat it like a 9-5 job and the result is shitty software. The sad part is that there is a huge market for shitty software. I bet the car makers and bridge builders wish they had it this good.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

wheaties 16y ago

I've tried very hard not to be one of those people on that list. For a while I was the first, feeling completely helpless to change anything. Then someone within the company helped change some of that for me. Now I've matured to the point where I can objectively look at this company and realize it's a mismatch between my professional goals and the role that they would have me play. Quite simply it's not a software company and that's where I need to work. Thanks for putting this up. Every time I read something like this is helps keep me in check.

trustfundbaby 16y ago
I feel your pain, that was me a couple of years ago ... moving on was one of the best things I've ever done.
damncabbage 16y ago
I'm in a similar sort of position, but I'm a developer working at a software company: My goal is to automate deployments, boost efficiency and introduce "force multipliers" to get the highest bang-for-buck ratio: basically getting rid of the roadblocks between the guys and them churning out awesome stuff at a terrific speed. On the other hand, the company loses money (in the short term) when I automate things; if two-hour deployments are reduced to 15 minutes each, they can no longer charge the client that extra hour or two for every batch of work. Projects are generally quoted and charged by the hour; if the client's reasonably content with the cost and the resulting work then there's not much incentive to get things done more quickly, regardless of how wasteful we're being. Sometimes I can clear roadblocks. Most of the time I can't. It's taken a year, but I've come to realise the company's and my own goals are orthogonal, that I'm becoming an Example #1, and that it's time to move on. (Thanks for posting the article; it's nice to see these negative qualities clearly laid out.)
- autarch 16y ago
  <pedant>Your goals and the company's are not orthogonal, they are in opposition. Orthogonal means unrelated, but in this case they are related, just not in the right way.</pedant>

naner 16y ago

I'm supposed to take this guy seriously with a lead-in like that? I can't wait for his article on common misconceptions of social propriety among the technically proficient.

naner 16y ago
So I worded this poorly but I was disapproving of his Kanye quote, not the lead-in from the blog owner.
- rdl 16y ago
  Ben Horowitz's "ben's blog" always leads off with a thematic rap lyric; it works pretty well in some cases, but fails in others. I don't think this was the strongest one. Overall, I think it's a decent attempt at having a hook for otherwise somewhat dry (maybe, but not really) blog posts. He is obviously going for contrast. For instance, the KRS-One quote worked well on http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/14/why-startups-should-train-their-people/ http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/14/why-startups-should-train-th... The Who for this was obvious (and the theme too): http://bhorowitz.com/2010/11/15/meet-the-new-enterprise-customer-he%E2%80%99s-a-lot-like-the-old-enterprise-customer/ http://bhorowitz.com/2010/11/15/meet-the-new-enterprise-cust... I'd respect him more if he used the obvious Biggie quotes, though.
  - naner 16y ago
    Ben Horowitz's "ben's blog" always leads off with a thematic rap lyric; it works pretty well in some cases, but fails in others. Ok. This is something I touched on in another comment: if you're known for breaking a certain type of social convention than you can often times get away with it, without much criticism. So this was probably normal to his blog readers but confusing to those of us who were exposed to it for the first time. Thanks for the explanation. It made me reexamine my initial knee-jerk reaction.

tom_ilsinszki 16y ago

"[...] if you’re an entrepreneur, generally you don’t like working with a lot of people. That’s what an entrepreneur is." - Robert Greene on Mixergy

dools 16y ago
An entrepreneur is someone who starts a business and assumes the risk associated with it. That is all.

keeptrying 16y ago

All said and done you need your "bad" employee more than they need you. Brilliance usually comes at a cost. If you were really a good leader you would have been able to get Rodger some help with his drug problem. And if it had worked he would have repayed you with some amazing work. Stop fucking complaining about "bad" employees who make you more money than everyone else on the team. Your job IS to deal with them - so deal with it. Else be happy with the 9-to-5 lifers on you team and shut the fuck up. You'll find that you aren't going to be able todo jack shit with them. I hate people who post shit like this.

j_baker 16y ago
You know, I'm inclined to agree that one needs to be able to deal with a bit more to get talent. But no amount of leadership can deal with a drug problem. That requires action on Roger's part. Besides that, this doesn't sound like the typical "Employees aren't good unless they follow my every order to the letter and get along great with every single person in the company" meme that I'm used to hearing. At least there's an acknowledgement that companies might have to deal with these issues in certain cases.
flashgordon 16y ago
Is it really black and white as that? Would you still hire a genius if his actions were unethical on purpose just on the off streak that he might (or even has) produced 10x the wealth/value/code/output as an average engineer?
- rdl 16y ago
  It really depends on the person, his flaws, and the role. Roger the Coke Fiend actually seems like he'd be manageable as a part-timer: keep him on the bench, and if you have a cool 72h burst for him to do, especially if the consequences of his failure are not bad in any case. A dull but productive and reliable guy makes a great accountant. It's all about the specifics. For someone unethical, I'd be reluctant to do most business, but might be willing to do arms length product purchases. For instance, there are musicians who produce music I sometimes enjoy but wouldn't trust at all.

michaels0620 16y ago

I've been in the company of really smart (and likable!) Heretics and they tend to go out not with a bang but with a whimper. It's sad to watch. They may be even be right but their persistent negativity and challenging of the status quo (even in minor matters) ends up wearing people down. Then eyes start rolling when they talk and their rants are met with sighs rather than attention or acknowledgment. Then they start getting left out of meetings and email conversations as it is easier to get things done without them no matter how smart they are. All of this feeds the Heretic's perception of being the only sane person in the asylum turning them even more cynical and negative.

praptak 16y ago
"Then they start getting left out of meetings and email conversations as it is easier to get things done without them no matter how smart they are." At this point it's the management fault for not doing (having done) something about it. Firing the person, fixing the status quo or maybe empowering them to fix it. And yeah, I'm aware I might now sound like the Heretic themselves :)
_delirium 16y ago
Maybe I hang out with too many cynical people, but the Heretics I've run into have usually been pretty popular with coworkers, at least if the Heretic is also a reasonably intelligent and sociable person (rather than the muttering-darkly-in-the-corner variety). Even a decent number of people who don't themselves have much interest attacking their boss / stupid corporate policies / etc., sometimes like to watch on the sidelines while someone else does, at least if they can avoid entanglement in the drama. But I guess most people I know are sort of default-cynical about organizations, policies, and management, so there's a default-positivity about someone who's spending their time railing against it, even if you think their energies are misguided/futile. Though I guess it does get more problematic if they start attacking their coworkers as sheep/sellouts/etc. The popularity is easier to maintain if they stick to attacking management/bosses/policies and treat their coworkers as being on the same side.
- JabavuAdams 16y ago

waratuman 16y ago

This may be a little picky, but this statement just doesn't make sense: :He is fundamentally a rebel—She will not be happy unless" Where did the she come from?

BigZaphod 16y ago
"She" probably came from some attempt at political correctness. There's been a rise in recent decades to use "she" when speaking about an unspecified person. Historically, it was common to use "he" for that task. Unfortunately english doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun and until/if one becomes accepted this will probably continue to be a confusing issue... edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun
- philwelch 16y ago
  Unfortunately english doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun Yes it does: "they". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
  - mmt 16y ago
    I believe the grandparent commenter meant: English does not have a unique[1], singular, gender-neutral pronoun. [1] unambiguous
    - philwelch 16y ago
      I've never heard a sentence in actual usage[1] where the usage of the singular "they" was ambiguous. In terms of being understandable and elegant, the singular "they" is probably the best English can do. Unfortunately, it's not widely accepted because it "sounds" uneducated, despite being the current best solution to the problem. Gender-neutral neologisms, like Spivak pronouns [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun], are not commonly understood, while constructs like "he/she" or randomly alternating between generic "he" and generic "she" as in the OP is inelegant and confusing (hence this whole thread). [1] I'm sure you could construct a contrived example.

smokinn 16y ago

Absolutely useless hyperbolic link-bait. No one acts that way unless they have severe mental illnesses (such as the cocaine-addicted bipolar genius) or the company already has serious systemic problems. If you see things near the exaggerations in the OP regularly, the company is already diseased and needs major overhaul.

al05 16y ago
It's never management's fault.

angdis 16y ago

"Holding the bus". I like the phrase, everybody has their bad days and should get some slack when they need it in exchange for giving their best when it really counts. However, I have to take issue with manic coders. I've seen the results of "heroic" coding. It sucks. Sure, it does the job, meets the deadline or whatever but the problem is that quick work is typically nothing more than a "rush job" that becomes a maintenance nightmare in the future. The thing is no one wants to work with someone who is unstable or difficult. If the success of your enterprise depends on sporadic bursts of mania from individual workers, I'm sorry, that just isn't going to be sustainable.

BigZaphod 16y ago

This is probably OT and maybe even rude... but that lead-in with the Kanye lyrics is just strange. My reading of the lyrics snippet (and I'm certainly no expert in these things) suggests that the character is telling a girl to run away from him because he knows he's a dick. Specifically, he's a dick that's especially good at criticism and spreading negativity and of the list of targets, one group happens to be people who work a lot which implies to me that the character's less-than-hardworking nature looks bad by comparison. So not only is the character a dick, he's a self-professed underachieving one and perhaps even proud of it. He might even be worried that the girl is one of those kinds of people he hates, or maybe he kinda cares for her and knows his personality is toxic on some level, or he just can't have nice things, or there happens to be a hotter girl one table over so this one has to go... Anyway, it's just odd because it seems like the character that is "speaking" in the song is exactly the sort of guy who might bitch about how troublesome smart people are because he's always got to be the smartest guy in the room but refuses to put in the work required to remain the smartest guy in the room when there's other actual smart guys in the room. So the best solution in that case is to get rid of the others by telling them to "run away as fast as you can." In summary, it seems to me like the lyrics are actually speaking more as a person who hates over-achievers and/or smart people than as a person who is one of those troublesome smart persons who hates average folk and therefore would appear to, well, not really support the author's actual argument. Or something? I don't know. I'm probably not one of the smart ones. so... :P

kenjackson 16y ago
In the lyrics, the hard-worker is the person singing the lyrics. He's saying he's a jerk for not taking time off to spend time with the girl. So really he is the smart jerk who is trying to tell someone to stay away because he is a jerk and will just criticize her, although he really doesn't like who he becomes, but that's his gift. He ends it with toasts to himself (and people like him). While he's toasting them, he clearly doesn't like himself.
- BigZaphod 16y ago
  "In the lyrics, the hard-worker is the person singing the lyrics." I just don't get that at all from the snippet quoted, but I can imagine how the larger context of the song might flip the meaning of things around - but I don't know the rest of the song and was going only based on the words in the article with no way of knowing how those words were performed. :) I suppose the use of "toast" could be a clue that he actually means some kind of respect, but then why respect "douchebags" and "assholes" etc? So my reading put large quotes around "toast" in the way you might "toast" someone sarcastically who just made a giant mistake or something. If the greater context of the song established that the voice was being sort of facetious here, then I can see how my interpretation could be almost exactly backward - but again, without some grander context, I really feel I had no way to know that if that is indeed the case. Side note: Over the years I've noticed that either, A) I just suck at interpreting song lyrics, or B) song lyrics are often purposely designed to be ambiguous. I suspect some of both is at work here. :)

aliud 16y ago

Sans the cocaine habit, and the staggering productivity levels, the second example is an otherwise uncanny match for how I eventually left my last job. Started off strong, got ahead of schedule, had a mental breakdown, accomplished exactly nothing for about a month, and then quit (to avoid being fired).

al05 16y ago
Let me guess, you do all overall design work, train staff, stay late. Then someone else gets the credit, because his best friends with the manager? That was my last mental breakdown.

Evgeny 16y ago

As a side note: why is the he/she used this way? He is disempowered - She feels etc. Wouldn't it be correct to use "she" everywhere?

jonburs 16y ago
I imagine it's a poor attempt to be gender-neutral. Alternating genders between successive examples might have worked better. (The Silence of the Lambs alternative formulation, probably not.)
wccrawford 16y ago
Technically, it would be correct to use 'he' everywhere, since in English that is what is considered the neutral gender. Second best is using He/She to satisfy the PC folks.
- igravious 16y ago
  "Is considered". Considered by who exactly? How subtle of you to use the passive voice to plaster over the cracks in your argument :) There is no best, just norms surely. That being said, there are ways to be gender neutral without dropping the clangers that this author does. Be gender neutral by all means but for the love of the children don't switch back and forth like an eager yo-yo. edit: remove snark :)

minddog 16y ago

Aside from a strange lead-in, there is a larger picture about identifying the dynamic of a team and how to build it. We should prevent these situations by identifying red flags in the hiring process early on. Sometimes that isn't good enough, but to his point, we shouldn't make that same mistake twice. Never heard of this, but it could be a good practice to do a post-mortem in the hiring process after an acidic resource is gone. I'm sure this problem runs rampant in all industries, where they have a much less tolerance.

motters 16y ago

There is also the vaultingly ambitious employee. Someone who is both clever and also prepared to do anything to get a promotion or pay rise - even if that means causing chaos, using other employees as collateral damage, etc.

hellweaver666 16y ago
Eugh - I hate people like that. In my last job, the whole marketing team (8 people) were like a group of wrecking balls smashing through the company trying to meet their own individual goals. It was chaos but the MD was a marketing guy himself and couldn't see that the marketing team were doing a whole heap of damage to the company. I played the heretic role for a while, but eventually I quit because it was a loosing battle and my moral had gone through the floor.

cmanfu 16y ago

I recognize that this author's proactive use of sex-neutral (or more like sex-diverse?) pronouns comes from a good place. But intermixing he's with she's, him's and her's the way he is is sometimes just confusing.

dools 16y ago

This is about as original and interesting as a Cosmo sex quiz.

Mz 16y ago

As for the remarks about the he/she pronoun thing in the article, I think the last sentence would have been much, much stronger if they had used "one" instead of "her" and it simultaneously would have side-stepped some of this issue: That’s fine, but remember: you can only hold the bus for one.

edw519 16y ago

Reading the section entitled, "The Jerk," got me to wondering if OP will be ever write the obvious follow-up post, "Why We Promote So Many Jerks". I have done work for over 100 companies ranging from SMB to large enterprises. Independently (I'll tell you why in a moment) I just made a list of the 10 biggest assholes I ever met the other day. Eight of them were the #1 person in one of those companies. Seven of them are, not surprisingly, out of business. (The reason I made the list was because I watched "Undercover Boss" for the fourth time the other night. The first three times were great. This episode, about the CEO of Norwegian Cruise Lines, was horrible. All I kept asking myself was, "Where the hell did they get this jerk?" He had no idea how anything happened in his company and had people and functional problems in all 4 departments he worked in undercover. One employee even remarked that he had a problem dealing with women. That's when I made my list.) What is it about our processes in business that seems to favor assholes? I realize that my experience may not be the norm, but some of the things I've seen done by the President or CEO: - getting drunk and firing the security guard - throwing a phone book at his secretary - belittling vendors until none wanted the business - routinely yelling f words at employees - firing other executives on a whim - begging these executives to return to work - committing crimes with the books to earn a bonus - ignoring company saving advice (that would make them look bad) - sexually harassing subordinates - committing adultery (& other crimes) in full view of subordinates I even witnessed a CEO of a Fortune 50 company break down and cry at a Tony Robbins event because he couldn't complete a routine task. If I sound like I think that our leaders should be held to a higher standard, it's because they should be. Hell, I'd settle for any standard. I'd love to hear OP's take on the other side of the story, when smart people decide to stop making sacrifices for the assholes they got stuck working for.

alnayyir 16y ago
Sociopathy and narcissism are overrepresented amongst executives. Smart people (as meant in the post) usually like to discover (scientists) or create (engineers, writers, etc.) things. They don't have to achieve power for power's sake in order to be happy. Thus, they aren't as well represented amongst executives in established companies because that form of achievement isn't something they valued.

ph0rque 16y ago

On his third day, we gave him a project that was scheduled to take one month. Roger completed the project in 3 days with nearly flawless quality. More specifically, he completed the project in 72 hours. 72 non-stop hours: No stops, no sleep, no nothing but coding. I know this is against the Silicon Valley philosophy, but that guy just put in almost two 40-hour weeks of work, not three days. It might have done him well to take the next 11 days off. Edit: I realize he was on drugs, but I think that's a different discussion altogether.

grammaton 16y ago
"Roger completed the project in 3 days with nearly flawless quality. More specifically, he completed the project in 72 hours. 72 non-stop hours: No stops, no sleep, no nothing but coding." Then later on: "He was addicted to cocaine." So...no comment from anyone on how these two things are almost certainly related?
- imgabe 16y ago
  Also he was bipolar, so probably in a manic state when he worked for 72 hours straight. There's a pretty big difference between "flaky" and "has a serious mental disorder that is going untreated".

jimfl 16y ago

"The two just raised $650 million and what they have to say is worth your attention." Then, there's that kind of jerk.

known 16y ago

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

JabavuAdams 16y ago
Meh. A lot of evil fuckups also depend on unreasonable men.

binaryfinery 16y ago

I'm just staggered that this article doesn't even mention the most destructive personality at a company: the status-quo politician. This person absolutely has an agenda other than improving the company: personal comfort and status. So I find Horowitz's description of the Heretic somewhat ironic: However, sometimes really smart employees develop agendas other than improving the company... The young heretic might be guilty of this: Specifically, he builds his case that the company is hopeless and run by a bunch of morons. The young heretic has yet to learn that a company has three types: 1. The Status-Quo Politician. 1% 2. The Enablers 98% 3. The Heretics 1% The Enablers can be further divided: a) Those who are naive or don't understand psychological abuse b) Those who do and don't care. My advice to young heretics: identify the status-quo politicians and discuss with CEO. If the CEO doesn't see it, perhaps be cause he's non-technical, leave. Your company is going down the toilet. Also note that there are plenty of politicians who are also interested in making a ton of money by making the company great.

jrockway 16y ago

Next week on HN: "When Dumb People are Bad Writers".