Brilliance and Arrogance

I was asked today about a Design document, produced during my last project by a developer I will call J. Then this evening, this made me think about another Developer who works in our building (not my team) who is almost the complete opposite.

J, who wrote possibly the best Technical Design document I have ever seen, is quiet-spoken, almost shy. He is not a typical geek, but a normal, well-adjusted family man who happens to know an awful lot about what he does for a living, and does it very well indeed. He's a team player with little or no ego, and a good sense of humour. There's just one problem with him.... he's a contractor. I would love to have him on our team permanently, but there's no way he would take the measly salary on offer.

A is an obnoxious, opinionated jerk, who once walked up to three of my team members and shouted - loud enough for the entire floor to hear - "who f***ed-up my batch?" Of course, the fact that he referred to HIS batch - it was the User Acceptance Test environment batch that failed - is testament to his extreme arrogance. One of those people he was addressing e-mailed me about the incident shortly afterwards as I was in another building. I escalated the matter through my chain of command, and the following day got a call on my mobile from my boss's boss that A had received a stern warning, and any similar incident in the future would see him ushered off the premises.

I make the point because this bully was relatively easy to deal with, because our company has a clear policy in this regard, and a management community that believes in it. I, for one, will not tolerate any abuse of my staff.

It's amazing how we find such different people in the same organisation. I have to wonder how A got through an interview...