I believe it was Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix who coined the phrase “brilliant jerk.”

Common in tech orgs – smart, technically gifted, and highly productive. They’re seen as the people to go to for solving big problems, and they often save the day in a crisis.

But boy do they ruffle some feathers getting there.

As a leader you can spend a lot of time cleaning up after the mess they create. But you put up with them coz they get stuff done.

“Jerk” is a big bucket of behaviours of course. They can often dominate conversations, dismiss others’ opinions, and aren’t shy about pointing out what’s wrong with the org, proudly “telling it like they see it,” but they’re typically the last to offer any suggestions.

At one organisation I worked, we had a toxic “them and us” culture between Sales and Dev. Interestingly, when one particular person left, it pretty much evaporated.

And don’t forget, “Your culture is defined by the worst behaviour you tolerate”