They Are Really Smart, But...

Oh, they are really smart, truly my best senior engineer, but…

• They can be so abrasive people don’t want to work with them
• They tend to overengineer their solutions and go over time and budget
• They write code that no one understands and refuse to document
• They don’t want to work on the top priority and prefer to focus on whatever they find more interesting today
• They refuse to follow or improve team guidelines and just do their own thing
• They take feedback as personal attacks and refuse to adjust their behaviour
• They are always negative about processes without offering any ideas for improvement
• They sometimes don’t even show up at work and don’t feel like providing a reason
• They ignore all comments in PRs, or argue agressively until people give up
• They just can’t work in a team
• They terrorise juniors who end up taking too much time submitting code in fear of being yelled at

I’ve heard this one quite a bit.

Thinking in terms of “smart” or “not smart” is not helping. People end up discarding the need for emotional intelligence and prefer “hard” skills… but in order to get anything done in a team, you need to work well with others.

Of course there might be a really specific domain where you can get away with a misunderstood genius coding alone in a dark cave… but for 99% of projects, you need someone able to collaborate with others, pleasant to work with, and acting as a force multiplier.

So what do you do when you actually have someone like this on your team?

As a manager, it’s important to both:

• Take in the valid criticism that such a team member brings. Maybe they’re the only one openly complaining about something, but everyone is feeling the pain.
• Help the person adjust their approach so that they can contribute more effectively to the project

Maybe “smart” isn’t the quality that matters most, especially when the real work is done together.