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Don’t Hire a Smart Asshole

November 8, 2018

You may be tempted to hire a smart asshole into your team. Think long and hard before you do this. Don’t underestimate an asshole’s natural ability to ruin your team’s morale; to intimidate junior engineers; to become territorial about code and ideas; and to turn a productive hallway into a toxic environment.

Is an asshole’s genius really worth more than the loss of a good team dynamic? In twenty years I have never seen a single instance where a team wouldn’t be better off without them. Your odds are probably about the same.

Great reference: The No Asshole Rule