How many incredibly smart people are pushed out of the industry by awful people? By letting jerks run the show, you don't get a chance to see the intelligence of people who these folks suppress.

But that works in all directions. There are many kinds of people who cannot work together. I for one, despise the "lets all be friends and never say a bad word" crowd. They drive me mad and drive me to leave. I'd rather have a frank exchange of views with someone.

In the toxic positivity sense, "please don't be vulgar", or something else?

There are many variants. "Don't be vulgar", but also "don't criticize" or "invent something positive to say, only then can you criticize". "Be lavish in your (insencere) praise".

All this leads to a (despicable to me) culture of always-smiling emotional liars. If something I did is shit, say "it is shit". Make an unhappy face. Don't smile, praise my performance when cooking coffee and on the side mention that my last project "made some people somewhat happy".

But I'm not sure if that answered your question, I didn't fully understand it.

Really smart people are rarely pushed out of the industry. They just suffer. Usually people who say they were pushed are not that brilliant to start and are just making excuses

What are you basing that on? This is the worst in my experience in the games industry. So many people who strongly prefer to work indie instead of risk working with an endless cesspool of assholes.

His bullying probably caused the most intelligent, who could most easily find jobs elsewhere, to leave so that even he wasn’t the most talented, he could rise to the top.

So far ive dealt with bullies all my career at every company and i observe then challenge, then challenge again, im 2/3 getting them to quit...no need for hr or threats just be smart and trap em they never know who ;)

>His disagreeability is probably correlated with his track record of innovation

No, it's probably correlated with a lack of accountability for his behavior. What is his track record of innovation? He has no technical background, dropped out of college and apparently does not know how to manage people.

He worked as a political aide, a consultant, is somehow very close to Demis Hassabis (who is an actual innovator), which I assume got him his position. Looking at his bio his only innovation is how to network yourself up the ladder

A correlation in the "cancelling" (aka termination for violation of company policy) of outliers does not mean we won't "reach new plateaus". You can fire 100 people, and there may be correlations ("they only fired people who like ice cream") but no causation ("only people who like ice cream reach new plateaus"). There is no evidence to suggest a causative link between douchebaggery and innovation in AI research.

On the other hand, if our ability to "reach new plateaus" relied solely on promoting people with personality issues, we have much bigger problems.

For your theory to work you'd have to exhibit an actual track record of innovation in the case of this dude, other than being Demis's henchman / fusebox.

Can’t see how being an asshole and being innovative are intrinsically linked.

On the other hand, being an asshole and [taking credit for other’s work, stepping on others to climb the corporate ladder, throwing others under the bus, other sociopathic behavior…] seem pretty correlated.

Being innovative means ignoring the way things are supposed to be done, and maybe a bit of hubris to think you can do better.

I'd imagine that being an asshole likely also involves ignoring the way things are supposed to be done, and/or a bit of (differently applied) hubris.

As nice as that sounds in writing, it’s entirely not true. Many innovations were stumbled on by pure chance, or were logical conclusions from observation-based studies.

Not to mention, this man has innovated nothing. His career is entirely management.

How machiavellian of you... I think the world has moved on from the days of letting visionaries like Job's rant and rave and yell and scream to "bring out more in people than they knew they had in them". There are likely more effective ways to bring out the best in people that also build environments that are healthy and where people want to work.

> I think the world has moved on from the days of letting visionaries like Job's rant and rave and yell and scream

What evidence do you see of that?

The fact that we are having this conversation. And if engineering wants to grow past its problems it has got to change.

(edit: the previous part of this disparaged those on the spectrum and I am sorry)

Can we not imply that "on the spectrum" means being an asshole? Autism causes a lot of social difficulties, but it has nothing to do with publicly humiliating people on purpose to make yourself feel powerful.

> Can we not imply that "on the spectrum" means being an asshole?

Conversely, can we also not imply that being an asshole is excusable by being "on the spectrum"?

Of course it isn't. I really hope you didn't get that from what I said.

I was building on what you said. I didn't get that from you but from the same post you responded to.

Well said.

I did imply that. And it's an unfortunate consequence that sometimes those on the spectrum can exhibit "asshole" like behavior but one does not need to be autistic to be an asshole so I've made a false equivalency and I am sorry.

What I was trying to get at is that all this hero worship of sociopathic myopic founders and 100x engineers who "get results" that somehow gives them license to be assholes, we've transcended that.

I can agree with that.

I'll make up an inane and unproven theory too: Orgs that have leaders that shit all over its employees have large turnover, thus diffusing insider knowledge far and wide. It's a good thing for the world to have leaders be this way.

> I'll make up an inane and unproven theory too: Orgs that have leaders that shit all over its employees have large turnover, thus diffusing insider knowledge far and wide.

I see a hint of underlying logic in this part, though the theory needs more thought put into it. Two comments:

1. Try to quantify the harm to people that get "shit all over". Some portion suffer personally and professionally, which leads to the organization who is 'next in line' having to carry some of that burden.

2. Try to quantify the value in the "insider" knowledge being shared here according to such a theory. Some might be technical, fair enough. But a lot of it is likely related to how much of a jerk that boss was... Remember, not all information has a net positive value for a given time scale. For example, information about a previous toxic workplace may increase anxiety and hurt trust -- and in many cases, such information is often not net positive.

> It's a good thing for the world to have leaders be this way.

No. Not broadly (since there is no mention of harm) and not even in a narrow sense.

Consider the kinds of leaders who help their employees grow so that:

(a) knowledge is shared far and wide internally

(b) employees grow into new roles, some outside of the company

No my theory is garbage, totally unproven and not supported by any data. The point I'm trying to make is that the OP's is the same. I guess I could have just said citation needed.