The brilliant jerk is back

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Is it worth the cost of your team culture and morale? 

Much like the trope of the “genius founder,” the “brilliant jerk” software engineer is an archetype that the tech industry clings to like a liferaft in times of uncertainty and change. 

Infamous for their arrogance, emotional volatility, and a penchant for steamrolling colleagues, the brilliant jerk is both a mythic figure and a symbol of compromise in the name of innovation. Although the brilliant jerk may be difficult to work with, their ability to “think outside the box” can deliver big results.

This logic goes beyond the oft-cited notion that the top 5% of a company’s employees are 800% more productive than the remainder. It reinforces an outlook that individual high performers are more important than teams, and that a company’s culture is worth sacrificing for the right talent. 

It’s rarely true. But that doesn’t stop companies from trying their luck – sometimes at their peril. 

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Wartime and peacetime

The tech industry operates under a war-and-peace paradigm. According to this understanding, the steady growth of “peacetime” is best supported by leaders and personnel who will act predictably and maintain the status quo. Conversely, high market instability (and higher company stakes) is thought to require “wartime” leadership and staff who will play by their own rules to produce greatness.

“Right now everyone wants wartime employees, the kinds of people that can thrive with high pressure, high autonomy, and high stakes,” who are “innovative and can bring you something you didn’t expect,” says Paddy Lambros, the founder and CEO of the AI startup Dex. In short, he says, predictability is not what companies want right now. 

“In a time like now, where no-one knows what’s going to be hot in six months and no-one knows where the innovation’s coming from, I think you want a bit of this X-factor and the ability to create something out of nothing.”

Lambros continues, “I literally have got two founders in my WhatsApp right now with businesses worth $100 million-plus who are both saying to me, ‘Find me the spiciest, most non-conformist, challenging-but-brilliant engineers.’” 

There are problems with this approach. For one, the traits associated with “spiciness” reinforce gendered double standards: Ample research shows that women in the workplace are far more likely to be penalized for breaking the rules or bragging about their wins, and less likely to be forgiven for losing their tempers – no matter how capable they may or may not be. The professional ramifications are even worse for Black women, who are already underrepresented in both tech and leadership. Lionizing “challenging-but-brilliant” talent effectively exacerbates biases already rampant in tech hiring.

It also often backfires. Brilliant jerks usually “don’t end up producing what you expect them to do in the long term,” says Catherine Hicks, a product-design consultant who works closely with the engineer-hiring process at early-stage startups. “More often than righting their ways, they get fed up because people are calling them out, or their work starts to suffer because no one wants to work with them.” In her 25 years in tech, Hicks says she has seen very few of these engineers receive the intensive management needed to sustain results. 

The decision to hire a known culture liability also sends a message to the rest of the company.  

“If you knowingly hired jerks, it demonstrates a lack of respect for your current team and their fulfillment,” says Brian Pulliam, a former engineering manager for Zillow and Coinbase who now owns an executive-coaching consultancy for tech leaders. “Top performers on your team could leave, taking valuable internal knowledge with them. Your reputation as a leader is at risk.”

The case for hiring jerks?

The drawbacks of hiring jerks are obvious. The trouble is that, from a business perspective, their performance does sometimes outweigh them. 

Steve Jobs once famously proclaimed that “a small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players,” advising companies to hire for “the cream of the cream.” Of course, “A+ players” are not inherently jerks. But employees who are given preferential treatment as a result of their success are perhaps more likely than others to be made into jerks. 

“In my experience, they’re usually people who delivered company-saving impact early in their tenure, have been at the company for over a decade, and then the jerk is born from superhero treatment,” says Pulliam. 

Regardless of their origins, sources tell LeadDev that brilliant jerks need to be carefully and closely managed. Some will be poised to flourish under the right leadership, revealing potent impact. Others will be more apt to leave a trail of destruction in their wake. 

Lambros distinguishes between two kinds of “brilliant jerks.” The first type is difficult but ultimately valuable: highly capable people who may be abrasive or “spiky” yet can be managed productively with the right structure. Then there is the second type, whose brilliance comes at the expense of others and who damages teams and relationships wherever they go. 

The key difference, Lambros says, is empathy. “If they’ve got empathy and they can understand the difficulties of others, I think they can be worth it. And if they don’t have that empathy and they don’t care, then they’re never worth it.” In hiring, he suggests probing for empathy and self-awareness by asking candidates to reflect on how they handled past projects and interpersonal consequences.

Hicks similarly concedes that a brilliant jerk can occasionally be useful “if you have someone to rein them in in leadership.” She recalls a former boss who managed a difficult colleague by working with them in isolation. This kept the bad behavior in check and – crucially – spared team members from dealing with them. 

However, Hicks cautions that this level of management skill and containment is rare, particularly in startups. “Most founders can’t do that,” she says. 

The big picture

Overall, short-term gains in productivity rarely offset the long-term damage that hiring brilliant jerks can inflict on team morale and workforce retention.

In the end, the sheer volume of available tech talent may offer the most compelling case against hiring so-called brilliant jerks, regardless of their potential. Pulliam puts it plainly: “There are thousands of qualified candidates that aren’t jerks.”