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There is no reason to be a jerk

2011-01-06 05:04:55

There is no reason to be a jerk, ever. But a lot of really smart people get put into positions that are downright miserable simply because they are the smartest person in the room, get frustrated, and then turn into jerks.

A lot of smart people don't understand how the world works, how much humans are dictated by a herd mentality and it comes back to bite them in the ass. For example, an extremely bright recent graduate gets a job at a company staffed mainly engineers who are 5 to 10 years older than them. The young, smart fellow may think "if I work hard and showcase my talents I will soon get ahead". Sadly, the world does not work that way. People who have been working for 5 - 10 years in a job don't like to see people younger than them master it in 1 or 2. What they hate even more is having to work for a somebody younger than themselves. If you think we live in a meritocracy you've never worked in an organization with more than 2 levels of management.

I've seen many young, brilliant engineers apply themselves, get chewed up by the political machine, and become abrasive assholes simply because they don't understand "its not what you know, its who you know". My advice to them is to quit the job and start their own company. Never work for someone dumber than yourself. If you think you know everything, prove it.

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Posted: 2011013@385.93

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stranger

I think there was a time when that was true, but not really any longer. IT isn't quite the basement-dwelling, bitter social outcast draw it once was. Not to sound immodest, but I like to think I'm really good at interacting with users. And for the most part, I feel like my co-workers are pretty good at it too. We have a lot of friends in other departments.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just fooling myself.

Of course you are fooling yourself. Everyone in our IT shop is near-ASD; one more symptom each and we'd all be eligible for disability.

Now don't be moddin' me flamebait, bucko: this works out just fine and we're all pretty chuffed with it.

OCD and high IQ are perfect for the IT work place and we all get along quite well, thank you, when left alone to play with our systems and networks. No one's bothered by the given examples; most think that the heretic would be a fool to think any different, the flake is just ADD/ADHD and just needs a PM to keep on track, and the jerk is really just NLD (possibly Tourette's if he has a tick) and doesn't mean anything nasty by what he says. Besides, it's all quite entertaining as long as there is lots of work to do and the pay checks keep coming in.

As for me, I'm just a freakin' ASD rainbow.

The great thing is, everyone is bright and all dive deep into the knowledge well. The answer to any problem is close at hand. Also, everyone has coping strategies and has learned how to communicate depending on who is being dealt with.

This is just business as usual. ;->

Fuck you and your crass generalisations. People with ADHD are not fucking flakes and can be very reliable.

Yes, I have personal experience.

ADHD doesn't stop someone being a completer-finisher, it just means you need to keep them interested and tolerate a degree of divergence and distraction. Since it's possible to channel that distraction towards other productive areas you can get a lot of productivity from them. Reliability is entirely fucking orthogonal.

I have found that smart people are really bad at simple, repetitive, boring tasks.

They get bored, start daydreaming, and make mistakes.

I find that they automate away the problem, and then spend their time doing whatever they want while pretending to work.