When Smart People are Bad Employees

Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by daimyoyo on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @08:44PM (#2278108)

There is another important example that the author didn't mention. The inquisitor. Anyone who's been in the workforce long enough knows the guy who can't ever accept the directions he gets without questioning every aspect of the decision. Also, this person tends to have a problem with authority and will always test his or her boundaries. That said they tend to be among the most creative thinkers in the entire company and for that reason they can be an important member of the staff.

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Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by Lost_BiomedE on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @09:22PM (#2278212)

I would consider that a valuable trait, especially if the employee could communicate potential snags he sees. He is likely to be able to handle larger or longer projects that require planning, and he is also more likely to have trouble with frequent small mundane projects. There are many people to fill the later.

Many managers want employees to fit an exact role, even if they have a square peg and a round hole. One of the best managers I had the pleasure of working with was a former private investigator. He would see the trait of the employee that is causing friction, see how it could be used as an asset, and adapt the position or funnel the right work to that employee. I now manage in this way, myself.

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Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by sskates on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @09:42PM (#2278240)

I'd say many more people have the opposite problem, where they won't take the initiative to clarify stuff they don't understand, either because they don't anticipate miscommunications, don't care, or are too intimidated.

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Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by keeptrying on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @11:25PM (#2278441)

This kind of guy usually needs to lead or he is probably smarter than everyone else in the room.

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Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by dpritchett on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @03:45PM (#2281222)

Quite so. The project manager comes to you with an underoptimized set of step-by-step instructions; you help him to give you a minimal set of defensible business goals instead.

Next step: meet those goals in the most effective way you know how.

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Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by phlux on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @08:50PM (#2278120)

Heh. I know that type well. A guy that I had hired as an intern many years ago was that type - to such a degree that once when asked to erect a shelf that we got for the IT lab was asking why it was using the type of screws that it came with and stopping and pondering this for several minutes.

He is now a senior sys ad in the valley - and very very smart - but his challenges to authority and propensity to ask questions just to be obtuse grew tiresome.

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Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by HelloBeautiful on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @09:05PM (#2278171)

Haha, I used to be an employee like that. You know those methodologies like DDD, that say: 'understand the business problem before coding'. Well when I was doing it managers would go crazy and say I should not create confusion, but start working. Once to find 6 months later that a 15 men team hasn't done anything useful ... In all cases I can remember thinking and asking at the beginning was/would have been worth the time.

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Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by phlux on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @11:06PM (#2278403)

The difference here was that the guy liked to try to be specifically obtuse and difficult.

It wasn't a matter of thinking through a problem before hand - it was an exercise in proving/looking smart.

Spending 5+ minutes consternating over the type of screws that came with the shelf is not "thinking ahead" :)

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Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by bugsy on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @04:32AM (#2278983)

Sounds like he was a conscientious designer with an intuition for usability. I can relate to him, I also analyze screws and designs of trivial things. Is this really the optimal screw for this sort of task?

If you didn't want this level of analysis, why the hell would you take a $150/hr engineer and have him screwing in shelves rather than call in the $12/hr maintenance man?

I know the answer already. Your company thinks it is saving money by not having janitorial or secretarial staff and just have the engineers do all the menial cleaning and shelving tasks.

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Re:When Smart People are Bad Employees by Muzza on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @05:55AM (#2279142)

> If you didn't want this level of analysis, why the hell would you take a $150/hr engineer and have him screwing in shelves rather than call in the $12/hr maintenance man?

At the time of the incident with the screws, the guy was an intern...

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