4 ms·
I don't agree that "there's no hope of working with people like this"; I've had a few "twitchy smart" people in my organizations in the past. This is valuable e
by jxf 4y ago
I don't agree that "there's no hope of working with people like this"; I've had a few "twitchy smart" people in my organizations in the past. This is valuable energy that can be usefully directed with competent management and technical leadership. But it requires a good understanding of the nuances at play, as you've noted, and a clear statement of the importance of the team's overall success, not their personal triumphs.
- CraigJPerry 4y ago>> a clear statement of the importance of the team's overall success, not their personal triumphs This doesn’t jive with my experience of devs i can see fitting with the OP’s description. Talk of team success just isn’t on their wavelength, you may as well talk about the weather. It’s a different value system, it values heroism, it values cleverness, it does not value useful business outcomes like maintainability or cost of ownership. For keeping them on track, they can sometimes respond to automated controls better than to people telling them what to do. A linter in the CI pipeline will usually cause them to follow a style where another person could simply never convince them to make the same change. But everyone’s different and so even this is not guaranteed.
- anoncow 4y agoI agree with this. Otherwise you end up in a dead company.
- bmitc 4y agoI really should have qualified that with “often”. Of course these are people and can be worked with, but without evolving, they’re worse than under-performers because they create so much stuff that everyone has to deal with.
- jxf 4y agoI think my contention is that they can definitely evolve (at least based on personal anecdotes), but that they require a different management style. Sometimes that's okay with an organization, and sometimes it isn't.