Comments on: How Do You Handle a Brilliant Jerk?

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 20:34:34 +0000

This does not seem to contemplate that the boss is the jerk. Blindly supporting a supervisor that is “confidently wrong” does not help the company. The negative comments can “support me as your supervisor” because they point out the boss’s jerk attributes. Expanding this to 360 feedback and adding things like “criticize their employees” would make it more symmetrical.

By: david

david — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 13:06:31 +0000

I teach math and engineering students and have had the misfortune of running into this type of student. I basically am going back to teach developmental education as a result. These students are quick and smart, but I don’t want to be around them at all. I lack the power to flunk people because of their attitude. If you have to hire one of these people I recommend hiring them only on a consultant/contractor basis. Keep them on a part time contract that way they are at arms length. Let em get to close and they will just poop all over your organization. Use em and lose em. And I can’t over emphasize the “lose them” part. Keeping them on as part time will cause them to resent you. I suspect this is why snowden and whats her name were contractors and not employees. But just having them as contractors can be a blow to your workers’ self esteem. It is like saying to your employees, hey you aren’t good enough to do the job, so we have to bring in the ringers. I’d say this attitude is much more prevalent in the engineering fields and much more tolerated. But, I’d say a good employee over twenty years is better than a great employee over 15 minutes. I’d just stay away from them.

By: JollyBee

JollyBee — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 07:24:55 +0000

You need these kind of people in roles requiring heaving analysis and thinking. I had them as my engineers before. But I put them in a group where their individual contribution matters more, sometimes zero teamwork needed. Most often, they are in R&D or BCP roles. In times of technical crisis, they are one of the best problem solvers. They can think of out this world solution to problems.

So I do not agree with the NetFlix CEO. Every person in this world is placed here for a reason. And you are correct, it’s a matter of finding their strength and aligning it where you most need it as the key to these types of people.