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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

How do you feel about hard-working brilliant folks who are humble? This sounds more like resentment to me. "Its hard to keep up with brilliant folks" is not a reason to avoid them. They may make more work, but you get to a different place than plodding along with the herd.

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It's not a matter of "It's hard to keep up with the brilliant folks". It's that they are often actively destructive to the productivity of the team. Hence my co-founder's comment.

Brilliant people can often be easygoing and a great benefit to their teams. They do it by moving the whole team forward. They're never 10x individually in that case, but they may elevate a 3x team to 5x.

edit: Find me an engineer who is both brilliant and humble, and I'll bend over backwards to hire that person.

ive only met one in my life, and i wouldn't recommend him to anyone... if he was available and i could afford him i would in do it a heartbeat first. he was a 10x with more diplomacy and kindness then any co-worker ive ever had. rare breed indeed.

Hm. It could be both. And probably the 'cowboys' we've all experienced are not all brilliant. It doesn't take brilliance to torpedo a team.

And I suggest that 3X a small team may be less than 10X the one person. Maybe a better team is one that supports a brilliant developer, making a deliverable out of their prototype. That's another way to manage it.

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