5 ms·

These are so common. The problem engineer will tend to be seen as a genius with inadequate help, the only one who can save us (from the pit he dug for us).

passwordoops 4y ago
And it's funny how wherever things finally come to a head and you part ways to much hand-wringing and doom and gloom scenarios... Lo and behold, turns out the new guy can make it work just fine. In fact he's refactoring out the unnecessary complexity as we speak
mgkimsal 4y ago
Holy tamole. Had worked someplace for a short stint. There was a guy who'd started a couple months before I did. His work was 'revolutionary' and 'groundbreaking' - he'd been trying to build some sort of AOP-style PHP system - PHP4, mind you - without any extensions or internals work. It was just 'program this way' - undocumented patterns that encouraged copy/paste to half-way almost get you something usable (except, not really). "Build a form to take a few fields input and store in a database" example took days to develop, because... he was just winging it. Session management? nope - we'll need to roll our own, and that'll take a few weeks. About half the team (20ish folks) were enraptured by this guy. Someone rambled about great this guy was, said something along the lines of "you know those sorts of geniuses that are so far ahead of everyone else that they can't even explain things, and no one else can quite understand it? that's where we're at, and it's just so awesome - I can't wait to learn more!" This guy saying that was, at the time, like... the #2 guy on the team, had been there for years, and was the defacto 'team lead' for that work, and he was taken in by a huckster. The aop guy was there for about 10 months, then left abruptly - left on a friday, sent an email on monday with "i resign, i got another job". somehow, some folks were "shocked" at his "unprofessionalism". The entire tenure had been unprofessional, but few cared to label it that. You're so good and smart that you built something we all need to use, but you can't explain it (let alone why it's good/better), everyone else plainly admits they don't understand much about it, and use the lack of understanding as evidence that they're so bad this must be genius-level work. Insane...
- cratermoon 4y ago
  > "you know those sorts of geniuses that are so far ahead of everyone else that they can't even explain things, and no one else can quite understand it?" Richard Feynman was certainly a genius and he was well-known for his ability to explain complex topics in ways laypeople could grasp.
  - arcanemachiner 4y ago
    "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself." - Albert Einstein* *I'm skeptical of any quote attributed to Einstein, but Goodreads said it's by him.
    - elcritch 4y ago
      Pretty sure that one is from Feynman.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    I don't believe a fellow is clever, unless he can explain his clever thoughts clearly. Feynman was seriously clever.
    - mynameisvlad 4y ago
      Yep, someone smart enough to come up with something should also be smart enough to be able to break down and explain what he came up with.
  - digging 4y ago
    Totally agreed. I don't trust smart people who can't explain their ideas. It's not that I don't think they're right, it's that I don't think it's a good business idea to operate on faith. But also, being able to break a concept down increases the smart person's level of comprehension of their ideas - it's not only proof, it has tangible benefit.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
shagie 4y ago
From a bit ago: We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made. - https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/we-fired-our-top-talent-best-decision-we-ever-made-4c0a99728fde/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/we-fired-our-top-talent-be... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15474893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15474893 125 comments; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32211953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32211953 30 comments) > “You will never be able to understand any of what I’ve created. I am Albert F**ing Einstein and you are all monkeys scrabbling in the dirt.” > And so our resident genius, our Dr. Jekyll, explosively completed his transformation into Mr. Hyde. > He declared this in front of the product design team, developers, management, and pre-launch customers. One of our project sponsors had the temerity to ask when the problem crippling our product would be fixed. And then follow up: A team reborn after the fiery departure of its misanthropic guru - https://blog.solha.co/life-after-rick-our-team-reborn-after-the-fiery-departure-of-our-misanthropic-guru-b1fbaf3b8621 https://blog.solha.co/life-after-rick-our-team-reborn-after-...
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  Great read, thanks for (re)sharing. Amazing how much of this resonates with behaviors I've seen over the past few years.
- JohnMakin 4y ago
  Thanks for reposting this. Sounds so eerily similar to my last principal that I wonder if it's the same guy, although I'm sure this is a common phenomenon.
- oblio 4y ago
  https://workchronicles.com/prevention-and-cure/ https://workchronicles.com/prevention-and-cure/
- mike_hock 4y ago
  Awesome. They fired him after he'd become burned out and snapped, but were perfectly happy to let him grind away day and night for years while the rest of the team was twiddling thumbs.
Viliam1234 4y ago
The "genius" who saves the company from the problems he created, is not the apex negative engineer. The time he spends fixing his own mistakes is the time he does not spend creating new ones. Sometimes his creativity will be limited to a single project. There is also the type of "genius" who creates an overcomplicated framework as a foundation for a new project, and then leaves the implementation details to lesser minds trying to understand his work, while he moves to start another new project. He is always too busy working on a new project, doesn't have time to answer questions about the old ones. (The problem is sometimes solved by gradually removing his code. In extreme case, the library remains included, to avoid a political conflict, but the code is actually never called.)
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  > In extreme case, the library remains included, to avoid a political conflict, but the code is actually never called Ah yes, if the wrong people become aware that the code is never called, better to claim that it happened as too many people had their hand in the pot, and hey, the code is still working, and the tests are passing, so you didn't realize anything was wrong, rather than ruffle feathers and say you didn't want to touch the "genius" code because it was stuck up its own ass.

passwordoops 4y ago

And it's funny how wherever things finally come to a head and you part ways to much hand-wringing and doom and gloom scenarios... Lo and behold, turns out the new guy can make it work just fine. In fact he's refactoring out the unnecessary complexity as we speak

mgkimsal 4y ago

Holy tamole. Had worked someplace for a short stint. There was a guy who'd started a couple months before I did. His work was 'revolutionary' and 'groundbreaking' - he'd been trying to build some sort of AOP-style PHP system - PHP4, mind you - without any extensions or internals work. It was just 'program this way' - undocumented patterns that encouraged copy/paste to half-way almost get you something usable (except, not really). "Build a form to take a few fields input and store in a database" example took days to develop, because... he was just winging it. Session management? nope - we'll need to roll our own, and that'll take a few weeks. About half the team (20ish folks) were enraptured by this guy. Someone rambled about great this guy was, said something along the lines of "you know those sorts of geniuses that are so far ahead of everyone else that they can't even explain things, and no one else can quite understand it? that's where we're at, and it's just so awesome - I can't wait to learn more!" This guy saying that was, at the time, like... the #2 guy on the team, had been there for years, and was the defacto 'team lead' for that work, and he was taken in by a huckster. The aop guy was there for about 10 months, then left abruptly - left on a friday, sent an email on monday with "i resign, i got another job". somehow, some folks were "shocked" at his "unprofessionalism". The entire tenure had been unprofessional, but few cared to label it that. You're so good and smart that you built something we all need to use, but you can't explain it (let alone why it's good/better), everyone else plainly admits they don't understand much about it, and use the lack of understanding as evidence that they're so bad this must be genius-level work. Insane...

cratermoon 4y ago
> "you know those sorts of geniuses that are so far ahead of everyone else that they can't even explain things, and no one else can quite understand it?" Richard Feynman was certainly a genius and he was well-known for his ability to explain complex topics in ways laypeople could grasp.
- arcanemachiner 4y ago
  "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself." - Albert Einstein* *I'm skeptical of any quote attributed to Einstein, but Goodreads said it's by him.
  - elcritch 4y ago
    Pretty sure that one is from Feynman.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  I don't believe a fellow is clever, unless he can explain his clever thoughts clearly. Feynman was seriously clever.
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    Yep, someone smart enough to come up with something should also be smart enough to be able to break down and explain what he came up with.
- digging 4y ago
  Totally agreed. I don't trust smart people who can't explain their ideas. It's not that I don't think they're right, it's that I don't think it's a good business idea to operate on faith. But also, being able to break a concept down increases the smart person's level of comprehension of their ideas - it's not only proof, it has tangible benefit.
yamtaddle 4y ago

shagie 4y ago

From a bit ago: We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made. - https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/we-fired-our-top-talent-best-decision-we-ever-made-4c0a99728fde/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/we-fired-our-top-talent-be... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15474893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15474893 125 comments; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32211953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32211953 30 comments) > “You will never be able to understand any of what I’ve created. I am Albert F**ing Einstein and you are all monkeys scrabbling in the dirt.” > And so our resident genius, our Dr. Jekyll, explosively completed his transformation into Mr. Hyde. > He declared this in front of the product design team, developers, management, and pre-launch customers. One of our project sponsors had the temerity to ask when the problem crippling our product would be fixed. And then follow up: A team reborn after the fiery departure of its misanthropic guru - https://blog.solha.co/life-after-rick-our-team-reborn-after-the-fiery-departure-of-our-misanthropic-guru-b1fbaf3b8621 https://blog.solha.co/life-after-rick-our-team-reborn-after-...

ARandomerDude 4y ago
Great read, thanks for (re)sharing. Amazing how much of this resonates with behaviors I've seen over the past few years.
JohnMakin 4y ago
Thanks for reposting this. Sounds so eerily similar to my last principal that I wonder if it's the same guy, although I'm sure this is a common phenomenon.
oblio 4y ago
https://workchronicles.com/prevention-and-cure/ https://workchronicles.com/prevention-and-cure/
mike_hock 4y ago
Awesome. They fired him after he'd become burned out and snapped, but were perfectly happy to let him grind away day and night for years while the rest of the team was twiddling thumbs.

Viliam1234 4y ago

The "genius" who saves the company from the problems he created, is not the apex negative engineer. The time he spends fixing his own mistakes is the time he does not spend creating new ones. Sometimes his creativity will be limited to a single project. There is also the type of "genius" who creates an overcomplicated framework as a foundation for a new project, and then leaves the implementation details to lesser minds trying to understand his work, while he moves to start another new project. He is always too busy working on a new project, doesn't have time to answer questions about the old ones. (The problem is sometimes solved by gradually removing his code. In extreme case, the library remains included, to avoid a political conflict, but the code is actually never called.)

pcthrowaway 4y ago
> In extreme case, the library remains included, to avoid a political conflict, but the code is actually never called Ah yes, if the wrong people become aware that the code is never called, better to claim that it happened as too many people had their hand in the pot, and hey, the code is still working, and the tests are passing, so you didn't realize anything was wrong, rather than ruffle feathers and say you didn't want to touch the "genius" code because it was stuck up its own ass.