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Comment by johansch | Hacker News Reader

I've never actually come across an actually brilliant engineering person who was also a jerk. Maybe they sometimes superficially seemed like a jerk at first (particularly if you had a very thin skin), but not after you actually made an effort to get to know them.

Most of the time though, the jerks just aren't even close to being brilliant. I feel this jerk attitude is quite often something that is used to mask ineptitude.

This is after 20 years, 7+ companies and quite close work with hundreds of individuals (often in a managing position, so maybe they think I was the jerk ;P).

(In fact I feel like most of the "brilliant" people I have worked with have actually been nicer than the average person.)

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I've met the brilliant jerk (and depending on who you ask, I've been the brilliant jerk). It's a real thing.

One surprising thing is that it is possible for people to change, at least in how they treat people. Once I was told I would have to interact with the "brilliant jerk" and I complained and my manager said, "no, really, he has CHANGED" and, miracle of miracles, he had.

I wish I knew exactly how and why he changed, my best guess is treatment for clinical depression, which often surfaces as extreme irritability.

Amen and kudos for mentioning clinical depression as a thing that causes extreme irritability.

I know a few Bobs. They are hard to deal with. They get promoted. And eventually you might want to trade them out for a different Bob - which can mean just flat out leaving an organization. They aren't likely to go, so that means it's you.

Same here, usually the ones being called "brillant jerks" hold 3-letter positions and take engineering success as their own because they had an idea (kinda like Steve Jobs used to do).

I experienced two nearly-brilliant thorough-going jerks at once in one role, who induced me and most of my peers to leave also.

There have been a couple of others in another role, in banking, and they know exactly what I think of them! B^>

These people do exist, and can be successful, and the description given in TFA pretty closely matches many aspects of psychopathy, such as the charming-when-necessary and no empathy.

Psychopaths are 5x more common in the C-suite than the general population. I don't know about the engineering ratio.

You mention banking. To me that's like a culturally totally separate universe, with totally separate profiles of people.

I don't think my experience applies to that universe.

There are a lot of well-paid engineers/STEM in banking.

I can imagine. :)

Same. Roughly the same XP and I have never seen these jerks everybody talks about. Similarly to the 10x engineer, or the awful engineer who could destroy your product if your interview doesn't weed them out, I haven't met the brilliant jerk so far.

Same here, but I'm afraid that might just put me in to the jerk category myself.

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