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I've been what some might consider a "difficult employee" all my life. I speak up. I don't shut up. I have almost no filter (almost as in I did learn to reformu

I've been what some might consider a "difficult employee" all my life. I speak up. I don't shut up. I have almost no filter (almost as in I did learn to reformulate things but I still don't shut up). If something stinks I'm not gonna pretend that it smells like roses. I can live with some stink but I'll tell you that it stinks and that I want you to start shoveling it away. I have had some co-workers or higher ups that probably found it inconvenient and didn't like me (in fact strike the probably - I know for a fact). Yet it has so far not resulted in me being fired, demoted etc. and in fact the opposite has happened. I've been told to never shut up and that they keep me around precisely because I don't. My luck might obviously run out at some point but so far, from my first internship where I just didn't do the stupid task they gave me and instead replaced their awful sendmail+pop3d setup with a full featured postfix and imap/pop and spam filter combo (well I showed the boss on my last day that I had built it on my computer and what it could do. He offered me a part time job as their network/sysadmin to do it for real on the server and to migrate all their users over) it has worked out. I'm not on 'brilliant jerk level'. Way not brilliant enough and just below jerk ;)

bradleyjg 6y ago
I have a colleague that’s difficult. Upfront I’ll say that I like him a lot personally. He almost got fired recently. He didn’t, in part because a bunch of us stood up for him, but it was dicey. The reason he almost got fired is because he’s very expensive to manage. That dogged unwillingness to never shut up, along with more than his fair share of brilliance, is great when he’s digging into a thorny, ugly problem that most would prefer to pretend doesn’t exist. But when there’s a meeting with $3k/hour in fully loaded cost worth of people in it and he’s going on and on about his pet issue that’s a problem. When every decision you make has to first be delivered to the team and argued in detail to this guy, that’s exhausting. To his credit he’s convincible, but still. Since projects have to be carefully evaluated for fit before being assigned to him that makes him harder to use well. Having to unruffle other employees’ feathers all the time certainly isn’t fun. And so on and so forth. All this means he needs a very strong manager, both in a technical sense (because without that credibility no one will be able to manage him) and in a people skills sense (both for him and for the people he comes into contact with). Such managers are themselves are difficult to find and expensive to employ. To keep him around and aimed in the right direction means a disproportionate amount of one of those people’s time is going to a single employee. I’m not trying to convince you of anything. It sounds like whatever you are doing is working for you. But maybe this provides some food for thought.
- tharkun__ 6y ago
  Totally understandable if you ask me. There's difficult and there's difficult. I've had someone like you mentioned before as well. Especially the pet issue part of it. Really bright guys that know what they're doing and they're awesome if you can focus them. But left unchecked ROI just isn't there. No we can't spend 80% of our time refactoring everything to match _their_ ideals. To make another example of where I personally can't shut up: if I see someone propose a stupid rollout plan that's got a real good chance to eff things up royally, then I will say that it stinks and why. That doesn't always mean doing it in the big 3k/hour meeting like in your example. And I'm not talking about a 'pet issue'. I can obviously be overruled and that's fine. I've brought it up and have it black on white that they were warned and they made the decision anyway. Fine by me. Don't blame me afterwards. I won't do unpaid overtime later to fix your shit. But I sure have seen way more than 3k/hour spent in meeting upon meeting after the warnings weren't heeded and it did explode in their faces.
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    > Really bright guys that know what they're doing and they're awesome if you can focus them ... [They sometimes want to] spend 80% of our time refactoring everything Actually being unable to focus oneself reasonably well without the help of a manager sounds almost a bit dumb to me I'm surprised you're writing "really bright" > if I see someone propose a stupid rollout plan that's got a real good chance to eff things up royally, To me, you seem to be the opposite to those "really bright" people, in that you're helping others, sometimes the whole company?, focus on the right things, and avoid doing dangerous things. Those others, need help with focusing. Whilst you help people focus correctly?
    - tharkun__ 6y ago
      > I'm surprised you're writing "really bright" Most people are not equally bright in all departments :) Yes, they're bright guys, I stand by that and they do awesome work of what they do. When left unchecked, they just focus exclusively on what they love and think makes the most sense. This may not always fully align with the overall company goals customer wise. And obviously you're getting only _my_ viewpoint of this, not theirs. They do remind me of myself more than 15 years ago, telling my dad about Linux From Scratch and Gentoo and how that's the only way to be. He was obviously right when he said that no, they don't have the time for that at their place of work and I declared him insane (in my head) because obviously, that was _the only_ way :) It definitely made me learn a lot of stuff, so for myself at the time it was the right thing. > in that you're helping others, sometimes the whole company? I try I guess. Sometimes it's really hard, because they don't want to be helped and/or actively seek to introduce policies that are detrimental to the company overall (not talking about the "bright guys" above in this case, e.g. the rollout plan I mentioned was the business people, not us tech guys). And again, my viewpoint only that you are getting here.

bradleyjg 6y ago

I have a colleague that’s difficult. Upfront I’ll say that I like him a lot personally. He almost got fired recently. He didn’t, in part because a bunch of us stood up for him, but it was dicey. The reason he almost got fired is because he’s very expensive to manage. That dogged unwillingness to never shut up, along with more than his fair share of brilliance, is great when he’s digging into a thorny, ugly problem that most would prefer to pretend doesn’t exist. But when there’s a meeting with $3k/hour in fully loaded cost worth of people in it and he’s going on and on about his pet issue that’s a problem. When every decision you make has to first be delivered to the team and argued in detail to this guy, that’s exhausting. To his credit he’s convincible, but still. Since projects have to be carefully evaluated for fit before being assigned to him that makes him harder to use well. Having to unruffle other employees’ feathers all the time certainly isn’t fun. And so on and so forth. All this means he needs a very strong manager, both in a technical sense (because without that credibility no one will be able to manage him) and in a people skills sense (both for him and for the people he comes into contact with). Such managers are themselves are difficult to find and expensive to employ. To keep him around and aimed in the right direction means a disproportionate amount of one of those people’s time is going to a single employee. I’m not trying to convince you of anything. It sounds like whatever you are doing is working for you. But maybe this provides some food for thought.

tharkun__ 6y ago
Totally understandable if you ask me. There's difficult and there's difficult. I've had someone like you mentioned before as well. Especially the pet issue part of it. Really bright guys that know what they're doing and they're awesome if you can focus them. But left unchecked ROI just isn't there. No we can't spend 80% of our time refactoring everything to match _their_ ideals. To make another example of where I personally can't shut up: if I see someone propose a stupid rollout plan that's got a real good chance to eff things up royally, then I will say that it stinks and why. That doesn't always mean doing it in the big 3k/hour meeting like in your example. And I'm not talking about a 'pet issue'. I can obviously be overruled and that's fine. I've brought it up and have it black on white that they were warned and they made the decision anyway. Fine by me. Don't blame me afterwards. I won't do unpaid overtime later to fix your shit. But I sure have seen way more than 3k/hour spent in meeting upon meeting after the warnings weren't heeded and it did explode in their faces.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  > Really bright guys that know what they're doing and they're awesome if you can focus them ... [They sometimes want to] spend 80% of our time refactoring everything Actually being unable to focus oneself reasonably well without the help of a manager sounds almost a bit dumb to me I'm surprised you're writing "really bright" > if I see someone propose a stupid rollout plan that's got a real good chance to eff things up royally, To me, you seem to be the opposite to those "really bright" people, in that you're helping others, sometimes the whole company?, focus on the right things, and avoid doing dangerous things. Those others, need help with focusing. Whilst you help people focus correctly?
  - tharkun__ 6y ago
    > I'm surprised you're writing "really bright" Most people are not equally bright in all departments :) Yes, they're bright guys, I stand by that and they do awesome work of what they do. When left unchecked, they just focus exclusively on what they love and think makes the most sense. This may not always fully align with the overall company goals customer wise. And obviously you're getting only _my_ viewpoint of this, not theirs. They do remind me of myself more than 15 years ago, telling my dad about Linux From Scratch and Gentoo and how that's the only way to be. He was obviously right when he said that no, they don't have the time for that at their place of work and I declared him insane (in my head) because obviously, that was _the only_ way :) It definitely made me learn a lot of stuff, so for myself at the time it was the right thing. > in that you're helping others, sometimes the whole company? I try I guess. Sometimes it's really hard, because they don't want to be helped and/or actively seek to introduce policies that are detrimental to the company overall (not talking about the "bright guys" above in this case, e.g. the rollout plan I mentioned was the business people, not us tech guys). And again, my viewpoint only that you are getting here.