The hardest part of working with really smart people is that they can rationalize pretty much anything. Worse still, if they have been on the project for years and you’re the new guy, you’re working from a deficit of knowledge and they’ve had plenty of time to cook up a “coherent but wrong” model of the universe. The only thing that saves a group like that is humility. Trying to see the system through the eyes of the new person helps loads. I call people out for complaining about “having to” train a new guy. It’s “getting to”, man. Take advantage of the opportunity.

The first time I worked with a stable group where everyone was a smart as me, even the old new guy with a massive inferiority complex who managed to sneak one really profound comment into every meeting, there was a lack of humility on everybody’s part and things did not go well. Planning meetings were exhausting because you could get them to bash their own old work but couldn’t get them to admit to needing to change process at all. I should have quit, but I had a string of experiences with persistence paying off and I had not been beaten yet. That was the first time, and my current employer the second (I should probably quit here, too).

Cognitive dissonance is at its absolute worst in the head of a scary-smart person.