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posted by janrinok on Friday July 19 2019, @03:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the meeting-expectations dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Atlassian ditches 'brilliant jerks' in performance review overhaul

Atlassian says it will no longer tolerate "brilliant jerks" who deliver results for the company but make life hell for their co-workers as part of a complete overhaul of how the tech firm conducts performance reviews.

The $47 billion Australian software company, which was founded in Sydney in 2002 and floated on the US stock market in 2015, says two-thirds of every performance review will now have nothing to do with job skills.

Instead, equal weighting will be given to how each of its 3000 employees impacts others on their team, and to how they live the company values. Atlassian says the change will “more fairly measure people on how they bring their whole self to work”.

“Basically over the last 18 to 24 months we have totally changed the way we do performance reviews at the company globally,” Atlassian global head of talent Bek Chee said.

“We recognise things are not the way they used to be, yet companies haven’t evolved (from) 30 years ago when they were primarily made up often of white men. Tech standards have evolved, we have new ways of working, new demographics and generational change.”

Ms Chee said most companies “haven’t looked at their performance systems in a new innovative way”. “We wanted to make sure we were rewarding the right behaviours,” she said.

“One of the things we wanted to make sure we accounted for was the ‘brilliant jerk’ — people who are extremely bright and talented with respect to the way they execute their role but aren’t necessarily concerned with the impact they have on others. We want to make sure our system prevented that.”

Ms Chee said it was “not about people being shuffled out” of the company, but “what it has allowed us to do is really de-bias the performance system” by taking into account an employee’s entire contribution.

[...] Ms Chee said appealing to the millennial and gen Y and Z crowd was “a huge part of this”. “We know the next generation are very socially conscious, they have a different set of expectations. They’re kind of no-bullshit. They don’t want to hear a company say, ‘You can bring your whole self to work, we’re diverse, we’re socially conscious’, and not have that backed up.”

But she stressed that it was not about coddling millennials with a participation-trophy mentality. “Fundamentally this does not change the way we think about high performers. Our top performers we know nail it in terms of living values and being part of the team and delivering in their role,” she said.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @03:40PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @03:40PM (#869013)

    But not in the same way that the people who put people on the moon were "no bullshit".

    Lets see how they do when the bubble bursts.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @03:48PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @03:48PM (#869017)

      Well put. I think there is a difference between being a toxic employee (which can come in any flavor, not just "white men"), and not being a social butterfly.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:28PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:28PM (#869066)

        Atlanta office crew. He was possibly going to jump ship to them, but he's a notorious asshole and got his last job on a combination of that fact and his skills. So there goes any chance of him joining them. Good thing he hated the humidity down there to begin with.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:13AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:13AM (#869246)

        >which can come in any flavor, not just "white men"

        You missed the point. This is about getting rid of white men. The "getting rid of jerks" is just the veneer. Every social massacre has a civer; no one is actually going to support a movement specifically for killing/ousting a bunch of people.

        Even Hitler's public stance wasn't "gas all the jews and gays", it was "fighting against Jewish Marxism which was undermining Germany." In war, soldiers aren't told "kill all those humans", they're told "kill all those monsters".

        Likewise, you can't just say "fire all the white men". But you can say "fire all the brilliant jerks".

  • (Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @03:57PM (21 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @03:57PM (#869021)

    My CEO just bragged on the annual report that we invited more female future graduates for practice than male ones. Yep, more than 50%.

    I guess the next time there will be specific goals. Let's say 55% females, 35% Jews, 25% rainbows. And the rest... hold on a sec...

    • (Score: 2, Troll) by epitaxial on Friday July 19 2019, @04:10PM (11 children)

      by epitaxial (3165) on Friday July 19 2019, @04:10PM (#869026)

      Why are you so uncomfortable around women?

      • (Score: 2, Troll) by Arik on Friday July 19 2019, @04:33PM (8 children)

        by Arik (4543) on Friday July 19 2019, @04:33PM (#869048) Journal
        That's a really odd response. I mean you didn't respond to the post at all. You responded to the person, who in this case is AC?

        How would you know that AC is uncomfortable around women? You have no idea who that particular AC is, unless... did you just respond to your own AC post?
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
        • (Score: 2, Flamebait) by epitaxial on Friday July 19 2019, @04:42PM (7 children)

          by epitaxial (3165) on Friday July 19 2019, @04:42PM (#869052)

          He seems uncomfortable his company inviting more women than men for some reason. There is nothing wrong with that given the tech industry is mostly men. Now had the company hired people only on the basis of them being female than I would have a problem. Like the gaming community being a boys club and being upset that women are invading their special club. See this most recent example https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/07/05/smash-bros-community-harasses-a-15-year-old-girl-for-beating-a-pro/ [bleedingcool.com]

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Friday July 19 2019, @05:03PM (5 children)

            by Arik (4543) on Friday July 19 2019, @05:03PM (#869059) Journal
            "He seems uncomfortable his company inviting more women than men for some reason."

            Again, you're not addressing the post, you're telling me about the person who made it.

            And I don't see how you could know anything at all about the person who made it, unless you are that person.

            Again, did you post that?
            --
            If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
            • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:13PM (4 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:13PM (#869062)

              Well, he does seem uncomfortable around women. We could be dealing with an incel, or a serial rapist/murderer. Can't be too careful with ACs, you see.

              • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @10:55PM (3 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @10:55PM (#869193)

                Or we could be dealing with someone who thinks we should be hitting based on skills as a qualification rather than vaginas and tits...

                • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @11:43PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @11:43PM (#869213)

                  You mean a racist?

                • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:04AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:04AM (#869227)

                  we should be hitting based on skills as a qualification

                  First, you should not be hitting on anyone in a professional work environment, even if it is a pron studio.

                  Second, why would you sexually prefer skills over other qualifications?

                  Third, you are not actually referring to literally "hitting", as in battery? This may explain why you are so nervous around women.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @03:26AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @03:26AM (#869270)

                  Then there would be very few men getting jobs.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday July 20 2019, @03:44AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 20 2019, @03:44AM (#869273) Journal

            He seems uncomfortable his company inviting more women than men for some reason.

            And?

            There is nothing wrong with that

            If so, then why segue into the nonsensical comparison to a boys-only social club for middle schoolers? Sounds like you think there's something wrong with that even if you claim otherwise.

            I think the obvious rebuttal here is to switch around the groups so that it confirms different stereotypes. Should he be comfortable with his company inviting more men than women, more whites than blacks, etc? It's one thing for a company to distinguish based on characteristics that are useful to the company's business, such as skilled programmers. When they start distinguishing on characteristics that are a) irrelevant to business need, and b) you can't do a thing about, whether you have it or not, then there's good reason to be uncomfortable.

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:57PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:57PM (#869077)

        Inviting more women than men on purpose is a pretty clear violation of federal law. You cannot discriminate on the basis of gender period. It doesn't matter whether it's men over women or the other way around, doing so is illegal. It would be unconstitutional to have a law that just makes it illegal to pass over women in favor of men.

        I still don't get why so many people think that discriminating against individuals considered to be in the majority is OK. In this case, men aren't even the majority in any meaningful sense of the word. There are still more men in positions of power than in the past, but women are doing better than men in most areas that matter in spite of that.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @11:54PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @11:54PM (#869478)

          It's a sad state of affairs that this post was rated as troll. That's literally what the law says. You cannot use discriminatory practices, even if it's to right a perceived underrepresentation in the workplace.

    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:16PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:16PM (#869031)

      That female-rainbow-big-nose will be a much covetted trophy for your CEO, So what if they can't do shit! They complete his Venn diagram!

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:26PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:26PM (#869044)

      A black, a woman, two jews and a cripple.

      • (Score: 2) by tizan on Friday July 19 2019, @04:37PM (2 children)

        by tizan (3245) on Friday July 19 2019, @04:37PM (#869049)

        Wow you have be anonymous to write your opinion.

        So you claim women, non-white or handicapped persons underperforms ...do you have stats to prove that statement or is that a gut feeling ?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:54PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:54PM (#869111)

          If he gives you stats will you stfu or claim the stats are "racist"?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @09:02PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @09:02PM (#869720)

            See everybody? Incel morons all around here.

      • (Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Friday July 19 2019, @07:27PM (1 child)

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday July 19 2019, @07:27PM (#869128) Journal

        walk into a bar?

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @08:13PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @08:13PM (#869152)

          A black, a woman, two jews and a cripple.

          walk into a bar?

          The cripple is a quadriplegic... you insensitive clod.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @09:17PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @09:17PM (#869166)

        Are you all that young to not remember our brilliant Secretary of the Interior, James Watt?

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:21PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:21PM (#869373)

      And the rest... hold on a sec...

      Will be the ones doing all the work?

  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by epitaxial on Friday July 19 2019, @04:08PM (4 children)

    by epitaxial (3165) on Friday July 19 2019, @04:08PM (#869025)

    Autists are going to start foaming.

    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:23PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:23PM (#869040)

      I've noticed the most evil and polluting people are farmers, not foamers. So most likely these people will join "their kind" and take up farming. It really is time to start ostracizing the farmers who are responsible for so much that is wrong with the world. Just go to the store and see how much the greedy fucks charge for food compared to 10 years ago. People are spending so much just to eat they have no home anymore.

      • (Score: 1) by ChrisMaple on Saturday July 20 2019, @04:14AM

        by ChrisMaple (6964) on Saturday July 20 2019, @04:14AM (#869279)

        Food prices measured in the typical hours of labor required to buy food have declined dramatically over the long term.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:31PM (#869067)

      Don't compare people with autism to the trolls lurking in the dark corners of the net.

    • (Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Friday July 19 2019, @07:56PM

      by Farkus888 (5159) on Friday July 19 2019, @07:56PM (#869146)

      Hey look, another piece of shit obsessed with othering people just to belittle them. Do you make fun of people with other mental disabilities? Is it only mental or do you mock the physically disabled too?

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:14PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:14PM (#869029)

    I've been using bitbucket and have noticed they keep revising the interface and other tell-tale signs that the company is going to shit.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:18PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:18PM (#869033)

      Aye that is always a fucking tell-tale sign. When you have to look under 10 different hidden menus for the option/button you used to have right up front you know it's fucked! "But too many options scare the novice users!" Novice users? WTF? It's a fucking version control software, not turbo-tax.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:01PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:01PM (#869080)

        Before switching to the shit that is the ribbon, MS Office had smart menus. They would hide things you weren't regularly using, but you could easily disable it in the settings if you didn't want it and IIRC, you could still see the remaining items on a time by time basis if you needed to.

        The problem here is that people saw what Apple was doing and completely failed to understand what they were doing. It wasn't just keeping a clean screen, it was that a lot of those things weren't necessary. They didn't just hide the menu items, they eliminated the function completely in one way or another. Well, that was before Jobs got his diagnosis and went insane. Towards the end, the decisions he was making pretty much destroyed the company's reputation for simple but powerful interfaces and being less evil to customers than the competition.

    • (Score: 2) by progo on Friday July 19 2019, @07:22PM (2 children)

      by progo (6356) on Friday July 19 2019, @07:22PM (#869127) Homepage

      They keep redesigning the UI of BitBucket, Jira, and Confluence, and each revision is slower than the last. It's intolerable to use in Chrome on an overloaded remote desktop server.

      • (Score: 1) by Coward, Anonymous on Saturday July 20 2019, @05:03AM (1 child)

        by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Saturday July 20 2019, @05:03AM (#869287) Journal

        So true. They keep adding more of those collapsing things on the left, and hiding saved searches that used to be easy to find. A brilliant jerk might have convinced them it was a bad idea.

        • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday July 20 2019, @05:55AM

          by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday July 20 2019, @05:55AM (#869295)

          ... A brilliant jerk might have convinced them it was a bad idea.

          Or, a brilliant jerk may have convinced them it was a good idea, just for the sake of being a jerk.

          --
          It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by aiwarrior on Friday July 19 2019, @04:19PM (21 children)

    by aiwarrior (1812) on Friday July 19 2019, @04:19PM (#869034) Journal

    I think these people do not know many millenials. Millenials are actually very competence driven and feel bad in a culture that is fake. I find it fake that a company does not worry about delivering their products. I think what these people think are millenials, are in fact Feminazis and other loud people on the fringes.

    In my multinational firm, it sounds the same. On the company intranet, Upper management masturbate themselves with inclusiveness LGBT etc, and only lower will you find the current challenges the company faces as well as it's plans and goals.
    My colleagues looked at that, rolled their eyes in exasperation, and thought of where the hell are they into. For the record most of my colleagues are 20 somethings some of them even students, so the millenials these people are trying to please. The company is in a special moment and people actually want to know how are we doing, and could not care less whether people like to have sex with another from the same gender.

    Please, take people seriously, shield the brilliant jerks from the general work force, so they can provide their value in the best possible way. Saying that technical performance does not matter in a company is so hypocritical, because when shit breaks you know the begging for overtime and task forces will start. In the end the customer comes mad, and you will not say that you cannot solve the problem because the person that could solve it was rude and you will not stand it.

    As a personal case I know such a genius guy, a linux kernel dude. He is intractable and his emails are always with sarcasm and sometimes outright insult. I adopted a very simple system: When I need to communicate with him I talk with his technical lead and he handles it internally. The company gets to benefit and i and my team do not get to be insulted. Firing him for being an ass would be very reckless for the company and would lead to serious harm when crazy problems come knocking.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:25PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:25PM (#869042)

      Millenials are actually very competence driven

      That was when I realized you were being sarcastic.

      • (Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Friday July 19 2019, @04:29PM (4 children)

        by aiwarrior (1812) on Friday July 19 2019, @04:29PM (#869047) Journal

        I was not! They are competitive and have the impostor syndrome more often then older generations. Believe me I work with very old engineers and very young, and most of the older engineers should just move out of the way and say they are not interested in doing their jobs. Actually they abuse the age position to be unfirable and outright disobey direct orders. I have not seen this behavior in Millennials.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by PiMuNu on Friday July 19 2019, @04:44PM (3 children)

          by PiMuNu (3823) on Friday July 19 2019, @04:44PM (#869053)

          > outright disobey direct orders

          Maybe wise enough to know what is the best course of action regardless of what senior people say.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:37PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:37PM (#869071)

            Ah yes, the myth of the wise neverwrong old engineer. Bleh

            • (Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Friday July 19 2019, @05:42PM (1 child)

              by aiwarrior (1812) on Friday July 19 2019, @05:42PM (#869073) Journal

              Ye ye, disobeying a direct order to provide a review of a given piece of code sounds like a fully reasonable professional choice...right. Furthermore the fact the he did not provide the review led to a situation where there was an outage and the owner of the code was not available, meaning when requested the older engineer could not fix it. Somebody else from another department came and helped and unblocked the situation.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:19PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:19PM (#869092)

                Don't mind my comment my brain farted apparently.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday July 19 2019, @05:26PM (12 children)

      by Thexalon (636) on Friday July 19 2019, @05:26PM (#869065)

      Please, take people seriously, shield the brilliant jerks from the general work force, so they can provide their value in the best possible way.

      As somebody who has managed teams before: I've met a lot of people that think they're brilliant jerks. The vast majority of the time, when I examine their code (something many of their previous managers couldn't do because they weren't coders themselves), I find that they weren't in fact brilliant and often not even competent. They had played up the image of the socially awful but technically brilliant nerd-boy and fooled non-technical people in the organization for a long time, when the real truth of the matter was that their social failings helped to cover up the fact that their work was garbage, in part because nobody wanted to deal with them long enough to look at it. And nothing upped productivity of the team faster than firing them.

      And of course there are some behaviors that are completely unacceptable in the workplace, regardless of how brilliant you are. If you're stealing from customers or the company, gone, and I'm also going to be chatting with the police. If you're sexually harassing someone, you're gone. If you're banging a subordinate in exchange for professional favors, gone. Because you may be smart, but you are not irreplaceable, and I know for a fact that I can find extremely smart people who are great to work with and in some cases check off demographic boxes, rather than finding myself in court defending my firm from thoroughly justified lawsuits.

      Saying that technical performance does not matter in a company is so hypocritical, because when shit breaks you know the begging for overtime and task forces will start.

      If you're having those, and the short-term solution isn't along the lines of "engage backup systems that your admins had in place for just this kind of emergency", you're doing it wrong. And please tell me your stuff went through effective QA prior to being shipped. It did, right?

      Oh, and as an added bonus, because everyone on my team isn't a jerk, they understand each other's work, which means they can all help fix it (either working together at the same time, or in shifts). Meanwhile, your firm is stuck waiting for that brilliant jerk to receive (or stop ignoring) your frantic phone and text messages while they're asleep or on vacation or immersed in a game or something, because that person has successfully kept anybody else from knowing what to do.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by aiwarrior on Friday July 19 2019, @05:50PM (7 children)

        by aiwarrior (1812) on Friday July 19 2019, @05:50PM (#869075) Journal

        I think some of the examples you gave go way beyond being a jerk and straight into criminal behavior. I think for that cases the law will apply and the firm will follow the law first and foremost.

        Regarding the other aspects of your reasoning, I think you do not quite grasp the difficulty of finding very niche and specialized developer persons. The leaving of such persons can destroy whole businesses, because it will take years to get somebody knowledgeable about a custom SOC developed for you. You may want to get a backup very hard and you search you search, yet you do not find, or it's not worth compared to the jerk's babysitter. In the end you get what you have and pray to hell he-she does not leave. It actually becomes the role of the manager to make sure that this jerk can be productive. It's not pretty but as I said the bottom line trumps idealism.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:05PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:05PM (#869082)

          Sure there are some positions where the person's knowledge is almost irreplaceable, but those are few and far between. I think the general no-asshole rule is a solid plan that will hopefully help some of them get over themselves. I would imagine that a semi-competent manager would not fire an employee who is pivotal to the business.

          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:13PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:13PM (#869087)

            Cases like that, you've allowed the bus factor to drop too low anyways. What happens if this individual is hit by a bus? Jerk or not, if they're truly irreplaceable, then you've got a massive problem. People who aren't jerks prematurely keel over from a heart attack every day. If they're the true engine of the company's growth, you're screwed.

            The usual problem with brilliant jerks is that the business environment tolerates or encourages bad behavior. Align the rewards in a way that encourages better behavior and you'll likely see the worst behavior become less common. Most bad behavior at the office is the result of either not knowing what proper behavior looks like or having bad behavior be encouraged. Individuals that are genuinely brilliant jerks usually have the knowledge and work ethic to be amazing, however, they might need to be handled differently from other employees and they may require more space to keep the disruptions to a minimum. Most of the time, the behavior isn't the real problem, the real problem is how and when they're allowed to interact with other employees.

            Simply not hiring them may not be a viable strategy, particularly if you're in a competitive field.

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday July 19 2019, @07:50PM (2 children)

          by Thexalon (636) on Friday July 19 2019, @07:50PM (#869144)

          Regarding the other aspects of your reasoning, I think you do not quite grasp the difficulty of finding very niche and specialized developer persons.

          That's because I consider such specialists made, not born.

          Consider two managers trying to get something built for the Whizbang Embedded 3750.
          A. Smith says to their company's HR department, who in turn says to their favorite headhunters, "We need a Whizbang Embedded 3750 developer. Ideally about 5 years of experience." Months go by. The headhunters aren't having much luck finding anyone locally, so now they're trying to fly people in and relocate them, but nobody really wants to move to Peoria just to work on this project. More months go by. You finally find one, but they're asking for $350K a year and seem like a real jerk, but you're out of options and they know it. You give them their task, and they produce a solution which only they understand because they're the only Whizbang Embedded 3750 developer on your staff and they're too mean to teach any of your other employees how it works. Things go swimmingly in testing, and you find you need to keep this jerk around to fix the problems that keep coming up. You're now stuck with a jerk in your company, a solution that only 1 person can fix or work on, and Smith is effectively held hostage by this 1 developer for the rest of their career.

          B. Jones pokes around his company, finds 3 of the smartest and non-jerk developers they can, bumps them up to $100K each if they aren't pulling that already, people who are sick and tired of just shovelling data in and out of SAP and such, and says "This is a Whizbang Embedded 3750. I need it to do X. Now, I realize you haven't worked on this before, but here's a copy of the manual for Whizbang Embedded Assembler, and some resources on how to make C work with it, now see what you can make happen." Or, if there's a concern about redirecting said developers, they tell their HR department "We need to hire some good developers. I don't care about the keywords or specific languages, I just need about 5 years experience and a track-record of success." And then you give the new folks the same task. If need be, send them off to training to get them certified so you can check off the right bureaucratic checkbox. Things go swimmingly in testing, but collectively the Whizbang Embedded team muddles through, and by the time they're done there's now 3 people in your company who understand your solution, and are much more invested in the Whizbang Embedded project than what they were doing because business applications are boring, and Jones now has a team of very happy and loyal employees who are excited to work on the next project, whatever it is.

          I'd much rather be Jones than Smith in that situation. Sure, it doesn't always work. There are no guarantees. But I'm firmly of the school of thought that says that nothing at all is gained by bowing before a jerk in a company, regardless of the position they're in.

          --
          The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
          • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @09:24PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @09:24PM (#869167)

            "Jones, you can't have them. Their current manager won't let them off the SAP shoveling project, and he resents you trying to poach his employees. Train them, are you nuts? That skill is so in demand right now, they'll just take off as soon as they get the chance. Maybe you should see if you can find some guy on the open market in Peoria, someone who has a reason for being here already?"

            • (Score: 5, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday July 19 2019, @11:05PM

              by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday July 19 2019, @11:05PM (#869197)

              Jones, you can't have them...

              In other words "the SAP shovelling project is SO IMPORTANT that we need to put the future of the company on a single and unstable point of failure instead."

              And

              ... Train them, are you nuts?...

              means "we're such a crap company to work for they'll leave first chance they get."

              --
              It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday July 19 2019, @10:57PM

          by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday July 19 2019, @10:57PM (#869194)

          ... The leaving of such persons can destroy whole grossly mismanaged businesses, because it will take years to get somebody knowledgeable about a custom SOC developed for you...

          Ftfy.

          Any business without a succession plan for EVERY* position is mismanaged enough that it will fail anyway.

           

          *For many positions "advertise for a replacement" is sufficient; for a few positions "arrange for understudies BEFORE production" is needed.

          --
          It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 19 2019, @11:48PM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 19 2019, @11:48PM (#869216) Journal

          the firm will follow the law first and foremost.

          I think that is kinda naive. Just one extremely high profile, very public example of a company NOT following the law? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/charter-gets-final-approval-to-stay-in-ny-despite-breaking-merger-promise/ [arstechnica.com]

          Somewhat less recent, but even higher profile, was the banking meltdown with the housing bubble.

          What we can assume, is that the firm will follow what they believe to be the most profitable course of action. Nothing more, and nothing less.

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @10:23PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @10:23PM (#869186)

        Then on top of that. Why would you want a 'brilliant jerk'. A 'brilliant jerk' will build a moat and suddenly bemoan to anyone near them how they are indispensable. Then berate anyone around them for not following their made up rules that no one else gets a say in.

        You do not want jerks around. What you want is a 'brilliant nice guy'. Someone who is decent maybe even fun to be around. Helps others and makes sure everything is going better and faster. THAT is the kind of person you want. I have known maybe 2-3 total guys like that ever in my 25+ years. The 'brilliant jerks' a pox on them. They destroyed any teams that were near them.

        I am currently in the 'indispensable' position. I am making sure *everyone* on my team knows how this shit works. ASAP. I do not like getting calls in the middle of the night. No one does. Misunderstandings cause most outages. Fix that, and pager duty is a big yawn. After last sundays outage (which caused no real damage). Monday morning was a whole heaping helping of making sure everyone is onboard with the 'you ignored this long enough', including you tech support. I did not mean to do it. It happened by accident though attrition. Which was a wiff on my part and my managers. I am fixing that. My goal at my job is to make sure everyone else can do my job. I *want* to be dispensable. I can then leave this job and not think about it again at some point. I made the point very clear at the start of the meeting 'what if I quit right now what would you do?'. The looks on the managers faces was enough for them to back me up very quickly on my quest for dispensablity.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 19 2019, @11:58PM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 19 2019, @11:58PM (#869222) Journal

          I do not like getting calls in the middle of the night.

          That, exactly. Those people who seem to like being indispensable probably don't have a life, and their existence revolves around the faux position they have created within the company. For my own part, whatever I might be doing on my personal time is at least as important, and almost always more important, than running in to work to fix some screw up. That became even more true when the company moved, doubling my travel distance to work. To be called in takes a minimum four hour bite out of my personal time. Don't call me, call anyone who lives closer, who can perform the same tasks, and only lose an hour or two out of their personal time!

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Friday July 19 2019, @11:28PM

        by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Friday July 19 2019, @11:28PM (#869207)

        Thank you. To add two points:

        1. If your genius engineer makes something only they can understand, maintain, and fix, then they're actually not a genius. It takes more intelligence and more skill to build something that less intelligent people can understand and safely modify.

        2. People skills are not less important than raw technical skills. The most productive engineer I've ever worked with is only very good at writing code, his superpower is negotiating clear specs with management and external customers. So 90% of the time he builds something, it's exactly what everyone expected. We have other people in the organization that can write code blisteringly fast - and then they have to tear it apart blisteringly fast, and start over blisteringly fast, because they misunderstood key aspects of what was needed and their whole target feature set was something nobody wanted. And then they deliver something that is different, but still wrong. We had our 'best' engineer spend two years building something nobody in our industry would buy.

      • (Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:56PM

        by toddestan (4982) on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:56PM (#869384)

        The other thing I've run into with brilliant jerks is that some of them are entirely ego driven. So yes, they may be very smart and have considerable technical knowledge, but their ego is always getting in the way. Someone may propose a solution, and it's the right thing to do and they know it, but they have to propose and push for something else because their inflated ego demands that the solution must their solution, and not just agree with what someone else proposes. In a decision making capacity, they'll can be quite contrarian - team proposes X, they'll say we're doing Y. Team proposes Y, they'll say we're doing X. Because their ego is more important that doing the right thing.

        Ask them a question they doing know the answer to, and their ego demands that they must have an answer so they'll just blurt something out. They won't say "I don't know, let me find out for you" or "Let me think about it and get back to you" or "Person X would be a good person to ask". Of course, once they've done that, their ego won't let them go back and change their what they said, so they'll just dig their heels in and argue with anyone who tries to correct them.

        This all really makes these kind of people really hard to work with, especially since they tend to take a view that anyone who doesn't agree with them as a personal attack. It's a bit of a shame because they can be brilliant, and quite often they can be completely correct, but it's the times where they are dead wrong but their ego can't and won't admit it and move on is where they do all the damage.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @07:56AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @07:56AM (#869330)

      Saying that technical performance does not matter in a company is so hypocritical

      They're not saying that technical performance doesn't matter, they're saying that it is not the only thing that matters. They're talking about people "who deliver results for the company but make life hell for their co-workers". Those are people who add value but also destroy value by damaging the performance of their co-workers. The net result can easily be negative.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:19PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:19PM (#869372) Journal

      Millenials aren't any different from boomers, or any other generation that I've met. A fair amount are as worthless as teats on a boar hog, some are psychos, some are hard workers, some are smart, some are dumber than rocks, etc ad nauseum. That was true of "The Greatest Generation" and the generation before them.

      The difficulty with millenials is, many, or maybe even most, have had such an easy life, that when they enter the workforce, they are totally unprepared for whatever form of hardship that work entails.

      They can grow out of being whining children, but the success rate looks pretty low, sometimes. Of course, that high ratio of whining children makes you appreciate the ones who can put it behind them, and make something of themselves.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by hwertz on Friday July 19 2019, @04:50PM (7 children)

    by hwertz (8141) on Friday July 19 2019, @04:50PM (#869055)

    Sorry, but man this sounds like a load of crap. A performance review where 2/3rds of it is not performance? Living company values? "de-bias the performance system by taking into account the employees entire contribution?" That sounds horrible. I know the "brilliant jerk" can be a problem, but a system that rewards the mediocre who are nice to their neighbors over those who give it all but aren't as polite? Fuuuuck that.

    Oh, and to address one comment this guy made. The "brilliant jerk" type were assholes 30 years ago too, and it has nothing to do with them or the coworkers being white males or not. That comment is racist and sexist as hell, and perhaps if they are going for politeness instead of job performance, this employee should get dinged on their next performance review for this.

    • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:35PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:35PM (#869069)

      You didn't read it very well. The "this guy" you reference is Ms Bek Chee. Female and asian, and obviously cannot be either racist or sexist. Please report for re-education.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:59AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:59AM (#869240)

        Sorry, but asians==whites in grievance culture.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:07PM (#869084)

      Taking into account an employees total contribution is something that makes a lot of sense. There's often times things that don't show up directly in an employees list of achievements that make or break a company. Things like ability to smooth over conflicts are important. The best companies rely upon work traits that aren't easily quantifiable. The rest of those things are more or less bullshit.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:24AM (2 children)

      by darkfeline (1030) on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:24AM (#869252) Homepage

      The clue to the puzzle is: "white men".

      Now, why is that brought up at all? This is talking about jerks right? And jerks come in all sexes and colors. The fact that something entirely unrelated was mentioned suggests that the real motive is not getting rid of jerks. What the real motive may be is left as an exercise for the reader.

      --
      Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
      • (Score: 1) by ChrisMaple on Saturday July 20 2019, @04:32AM

        by ChrisMaple (6964) on Saturday July 20 2019, @04:32AM (#869282)

        It's brought up because this is an obvious attempt to arbitrarily discriminate by someone who is neither white nor male, and who uses faddish touchy-feely language. What makes it even more obvious is that this crap constitutes two thirds of the performance review. The criteria are non-objective and impossible to quantify. The result will be that brown-nosers, the politically savvy, and drinking buddies of those in power will get all the raises.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:36PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:36PM (#869376)

        Asian women who've gotten dumped by a white boyfriend are on average the most racist people I've ever met.

        Often they have no self awareness they're oversharing. Nobody cares why my junior prom date and I broke up decades ago; on the other hand, she thinks every "woke" loser on the planet needs to stand up and clap in response to her ex- boyfriend who made her hate white men. Often its not even a boyfriend issue, its more like "how dare a world exist where both hot guys with yellow fever exist YET they ignored me anyway".

        Cucking is very white privilege. Remember that girl in ohio who got kidnapped and anally raped with a corn cob by an illegal until she slowly bled to death and afterward her father was all over the news claiming he loves illegals because they have better food? What an anti-evolutionary anti-social anti-civilization POS. Other races don't have that problem; an Asian girl gets dumped by a white boy one time, and for the rest of her life she won't shut up about how therefore it makes perfect sense to genocide all white males. Some dude a thousand miles away cheated on her decades ago, she wants me dead today; what could make more sense?

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @08:17AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @08:17AM (#869333)

      There is more to performance than technical skills. I've worked with people who were pretty mediocre on a technical level who had such a positive influence on the mood of the team that the other team members (including me) were considerably more productive as a result. People like that are the exact opposites of "brilliant jerks" and they are valuable. Having one or a few less than stellar members on the team in my experience usually isn't a problem, as there is a lot of routine stuff to be done that mediocre team members can handle just fine, keeping the more capable people free for the more interesting stuff.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:12PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:12PM (#869061)

    There is a book called The No Asshole Rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule) which, among other things, argues that asshole employees end up costing the company money even if they are very productive: they individualy can make the company earn money directly, but this is usually not enough if you take into account the costs of coworkers' decrease in productivity, good workers leaving the company, potential lawsuits, etc.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:04PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:04PM (#869081)

      The problem though is that in the case of these types of geniuses that you might not ever be able to get the results that they're bringing. Which is why they were tolerated for so long, hist personality might be toxic, but you can't argue that Steve Jobs didn't get astonishing results even after Woz left the company. Same goes for Musk, he's one of the most toxic managers at any company, randomly firing employees more or less just because he sees them at the wrong time. OK, perhaps that's a bad example, most of his businesses are on the verge of collapse due to his incredibly poor judgment.

      • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday July 19 2019, @11:11PM

        by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday July 19 2019, @11:11PM (#869201)

        ... hist personality might be toxic, but you can't argue that Steve Jobs didn't get astonishing results even after Woz left the company...

        Having looked seriously at apple products, I can argue that the results are indeed astonishing - but not in a good way.

        But I'll admit that I'm not in the target audience.

        --
        It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:58PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:58PM (#869115)

      Isnt isolating well performing assholes to maximize their performance and minimize their damage what "management" is all about? Or have they gotten to a point where they hire underperforming managers who can't cut doing actual management? I know lot of shitheads who think management is easy streak and comfy, but they have no clue.

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:06AM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:06AM (#869229) Journal

        THAT!!!!!

        And, I think you can go a step further, and use it to define the difference between "personnel manager" and "human relations". A personnel manager knows that Bob is a genuine dickhead, but valuable, and that Tina is a real bitch, but just as valuable. The personnel manager keeps Bob and Tina both around, gets maximum performance from both, while keeping them out of trouble. The HR drone just fires both Bob and Tina, replacing them with un-notable nobodies who can't get the job done.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:18PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:18PM (#869091)

    I'm glad I don't have to participate. The challenge is on deciding what constitutes being a "jerk", and whether or not it's costing the company money. Guy who insists you follow procedure? People think he's a jerk, but then when your support staff wastes 50 hours because somebody didn't follow the procedure... he was a good jerk all along.

    Guy who doesn't want to socialize after hours and doesn't like your music? Jerk? He may or may not be worth keeping. If all else is equal, he's just not a fit...but if he's 2X more productive than the typical worker, maybe you just let him go home at the end of the day and tell people to wear headphones.

    Then of course there's the potential for mid-level managers to abuse this by defining people as jerks, and lawsuits when people of the wrong race, gender, or orientation are "jerks", etc.

    Of course some people really are toxic and need to go. I've seen it first-hand. We had a guy who threatened somebody. Easy decision to let *that* go, but that's so very obvious that there was no need for any kind of review process modficiation... we were too small to have much review process anyway.

    Yep. Glad I'm not involved. There's never been a better time to be in popcorn sales. I hope they don't think I'm a jerk for saying that.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @07:32PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @07:32PM (#869131)

      I'm glad I don't have to participate, as well. I'm retired now. I went to work in order to get a paycheck. I didn't "live the company values". I worked. I didn't "bring my whole self to work", I worked. I didn't "work hard and play hard", I worked hard and then went the fuck home.

      This sounds like a way to reward all the people who gossip in the hallways all day for "having an impact on others". But then I guess actually judging people on the actual work they actually perform is way too white and male for today's world. At least I'll be dead soon enough; in the meantime the popcorn really is tasty.

      • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday July 19 2019, @11:14PM

        by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday July 19 2019, @11:14PM (#869202)

        I'm glad I don't have to participate, as well. I'm retired now. I went to work in order to get a paycheck. I didn't "live the company values". I worked. I didn't "bring my whole self to work", I worked. I didn't "work hard and play hard", I worked hard and then went the fuck home...

        So... you weren't a jerk.

        --
        It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:13AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:13AM (#869232) Journal

      I've seen it first-hand. We had a guy who threatened somebody.

      Heh. I watched "that guy" threaten one co-worker within a month of being hired. Over the course of 4 years or so, he threatened a half dozen other workers. Don't know why he never threatened me, but for whatever reason, he avoided me. It appeared that management thought he was indispensable, so they let him get away with shit. They actually gave him undeserved raises, which pissed everyone off. He finally got in trouble with the law one more time, relocated to a state run vacation home, and was terminated.

      But, management never makes mistakes, right?

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:20PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:20PM (#869094)

    In either Confluence or Jira, Atlassian has code that forcibly replaces "Jira" into "JIRA". That's a sign that the marketeers have taken over.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:57AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:57AM (#869265)

      ROTFL! They do?!

      Hah. That's a person's name, too. I'd try to find and hire a Jira just to yell at them.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:24PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:24PM (#869096)

    They are toxic.

    I understand why they are valued, but I consider that to be the job of managers. You know, manage the employees?

    We are creating a machine society by relying on spreadsheets and metrics, and this constant push for productivity and efficiency is truly orthogonal to the human experience. The sheer mental burden of existing in modern society is a tragedy.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:50PM (#869108)

      They aren't always toxic. But when your cycle is 6 months but your company takes 3 or 4 months to deliver them, you suck. Looking at you, non-Amazon furniture site.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:55PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:55PM (#869112)

    Atlassian quietly hires brilliant jerks back, with more pay

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @10:01PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @10:01PM (#869183)

      I have been in the position where the 'brilliant jerk' was removed.

      He was competent enough. Would not listen to anyone's opinion other than his or the ones he primed from his boss. Would regularly re-write other peoples code because it 'made him feel icky' or 'gave him a headache'. Every other engineer on the project could read and understand the code easily enough. Would regularly spend 2+ hours in meetings talking about naming styles. Which he would change every other week. After spending 2 years re-re-re-re-writing the code the project was canned for not having any customers (well over 2k installs before he was involved, 0 after).

      He is a decent engineer but an insufferable prick to be around. I and the other engineers took some special glee in getting him assigned to the shittiest task we could find in the company. A task where if he did his stupidity no one would care. His references are lean and no one wants to work with him anymore. Would he get a good referral? No. If his resume poped up it would be 'oh him.' and not with a joy of 'shut up we are done hire him' but a 'get rid of that plague upon humanity'.

      Another guy I worked with tried to come back. Same sort of behavior as the one I described. His resume came up in a meeting. We all chuckled for a few mins and round binned it.

      Being brilliant at your work is not enough. You fuck moral up for 15+ people and they *will* remember you no matter how good you are. I can take my PICK of a list of people. I can get 10-20 resumes in front of me within a week from a few recruiters. Why would I pick the jerk again? Even if it takes a month or two to fill that position.

      I tell all of my bosses and co-workers the same thing. "At any moment you can be let go. Just make sure everyone around you can do your job." Not that they could. But this makes sure everyone works together and shares what they have. Brilliant jerks want an empire and dig a moat around it. The 'jerk' personality is part of how they do it. Smart engineers realize at any moment they could have to find another job. Get the most you can out of the company you currently work with. Leave it better than when you came in. Make sure everyone around you is smarter than the start of the day. Those people are your future shot at a job or a good review. Well over 80% of new hires are from people you worked with at previous jobs. It is about network. Be an ass and that network becomes very thin.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:00AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:00AM (#869224)

        Why would anybody do that? That's extra work in order to make yourself expendable. It's one thing to not keep relevant details secret and quite another to spend work time making sure you're expendable.

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @04:18AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @04:18AM (#869280)

          He thought he was putting himself in the center of a multimillion dollar project that was going to be installed in millions of places.

          I and the other senior guys would tell him all the time how he is screwing up the project and exactly how to fix the project. He would not listen at all. I and the other senior people practically begged him not to do it. His manager enabled it. I even showed him the exact path to make the project a real winner. He would have none of it. He kept re-writting because he did not really understand the customers and what they wanted. I kept telling him listen to your customers. They are telling you exactly what they want and they are throwing money at us to do it. But the naming convention was more important and sitting in hours long meetings telling everyone how he was right and they were hurting his feelings was more important. The cool blinking light demo was more important. The sales guys stopped working with him. The customers only would deal with me and another guy and would avoid him.

          It's one thing to not keep relevant details secret
          I have come to realize this is a major PITA for anyone involved including the hoarder. Share it, wiki it, doc it, involve the others. Or someone *will* bug you on your holiday. Unless you get off on the 'i am needed' rush...

          quite another to spend work time making sure you're expendable
          I strive for that. That way everyone can help each other. The 'hey I am going on vacation 'sure no problem I got you covered' and everyone can have a happy life. Or hoard data and end up on call all the time in the middle of the night. This 'info' is the companies. They paid for it. It needs to be available to everyone involved. Hell a few weeks ago I was on a team of 4 people. 3 were on vacation. I took care of it all. It was a bit rushed and the amount of other work was lower. But it was taken care of. They came back and then did the same for me. No one called in during vacation. Bringing in new people is a breeze and they come up to speed quickly.

          Most of all keep it nice and fun and professional. Do not be a jerk. The sad bit is he probably does no think he is the problem. As he is a narcissist. That took me a bit to come to terms with as I had never dealt with one that bad before. Once I realized he was using narcissistic tricks on me and those around him it was easy to deal with him. Isolate and contain and make sure everything is properly documented around him. Most of all do not let him gaslight you or badmouth you in weird ways. A narcissist is 100% unable to internally take on the idea they are making things worse. His favorite trick was to bitch people out then BCC others to 'prove' how he was right and make you to look like you are irrational. All to create a zombie army of followers. That took some time to undo that damage. I even showed him how I was going to do it. He did not understand it. He could not understand why we ripped up his whole 'empire'. Well dude you took something that was netting 250k a month and ran it down to costing us money every month. Thats why.

          My instinct when we hiring him was something is not right. The rest of the group were iffy on him but he had the right qualifications. I should have leaned in on that and figured it out. I know what to ask in interviews now though!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @07:14AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @07:14AM (#869566)

        If the jerks aren't essential to the company and don't cause the company to crater when removed, I guess they weren't really "brilliant jerks".

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @08:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @08:07PM (#869148)

    of course this story is coming out of australia. being a "jerk" means any brain that won't join the hive mind. no join? no job!

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by ElizabethGreene on Friday July 19 2019, @10:45PM (2 children)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 19 2019, @10:45PM (#869191) Journal

    I don't (and can't) know if I was hired for my position because of my gender or my competence and it drives me nucking futs.

    I have enough issues with imposter syndrome already, I really don't need the extra help.

    :/

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Coward, Anonymous on Saturday July 20 2019, @05:07AM

      by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Saturday July 20 2019, @05:07AM (#869288) Journal

      Ah well, once you're hired its water under the bridge. The present and future are the only things that matter.

    • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday July 20 2019, @07:01AM

      by bradley13 (3053) on Saturday July 20 2019, @07:01AM (#869314) Homepage Journal

      My wife has made similar comments. She's one of the smartest people I know, and damned good both in IT and in other fields. The very idea that she might have been selected for something because of her gender - she finds that offensive. So I get where you're coming from.

      This is where well-meaning people have really damaged equal rights: By creating "diversity hires", competent women have to prove - over and over again - that they are in fact competent.

      That said, the other reply to your comment is right: You were selected, and it no longer matters why. Look forward to the future. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead :-)

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday July 20 2019, @01:29PM (2 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Saturday July 20 2019, @01:29PM (#869364) Journal

    Look at their software products. Boring network dependent collaboration tools. They can fire all competent devs and keep churning out releases, as long as they do decent QA. They can afford aligning to the directives of their think tank masters to bring forth the brave new world society at no cost.

    Had a videogame engine maker done the same, now that would be news.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:51PM (1 child)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:51PM (#869379)

      Look at their software products. Boring

      Which makes the whole claim of being stuffed with arrogant rockstars sound a little ridiculous. No brilliant jerk arrogant rock star ninja ever desired to work at a place that makes stamping license plates sound exciting. Are new TPS report headers too exciting for you? Then work over there, LOL. So either there are no brilliant jerks there, just jerks, or the few high performers stuck there accidentally are literally going insane doing boring work, which really isn't their fault anyway.

      They do have a business model of buying startups to eliminate competitive innovation. So the real message is they're planning on gutting the purchased startups as a general policy they buy even more than currently. A general trend of the entire company away from R+D and innovation. I'm sure that will end well (LOL)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @09:04PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @09:04PM (#869721)

        Be racist go fascist!

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:45PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:45PM (#869378)

    Watching a company destroy itself; crazy. Pull up their stock price and market cap info and the reaction to their "woke" performance review system is their company is now believed by the market to be worth almost two billion dollars less than before the announcement.

    Get woke, go broke!

    Interesting theory I've been working on: Insiders want to make money off internal information (which is illegal as hell BTW). Maybe someone knows there's going to be a merger / buyout on the way and wants to lock in higher profits so they need a way to crater the stock price temporarily. All shitty companies pander to leftism now... so say something idiotic, the price drops, buy some stock, wait for the announcement in a month of the merger, price spikes to whatever predetermined value already set by the deal, enjoy the higher profit. A little SEC scrutiny might be in order in a month or two when the merger announcement goes public.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:53PM (#869381)

    The Perado principle tends to scale to any type of distribution. Really all they are doing is changing the kinds of jerks there are in the company, not actually reducing the number of them.

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