Comment by jhanschoo
20 days ago
> Most of my peers would rather work with brilliant jerk than a friendly average person.
I think you need to be more specific than just "avert" the trope without elaborating. Others have commented how a brilliant jerk can slow a project down, but I get the impression that you are thinking of someone who is not sociable, not interested in business goals, very direct and perhaps even pessimistic about others' ability, but hand them a technical task and they can deliver exceptional results. This is opposed to, say, someone who is sociable but can't deliver anything without constant attention or handholding.
Yes, absolutely. I'm not talking about people who are not sociable _and_ can't produce, but people who don't care about your feelings, but are very strong in their work.
In other comments, it felt like they focused very much on the "low in soft skills" part without looking at the other skills being extended. Of course, someone who is unpleasant to work with and only writes buggy software will not help a project progress. But someone you don't want to spend time with but who carries your team through the project with his skill and productivity is a very different story.