I worked with a number of brilliant people at Bell Labs through the 1980s/1990s. The most comfortably competent among them, the most productive among them, were also the least abrasive. They were also the most self deprecating.
Not just one or two, but the majority of them. To the point that the aggressive geniuses stood out. And I worked for/with two abrasive ones as well, so I know the difference.
The same was true for the two startups I worked at after that, and Qualcomm, and now the third startup where I work.
The really productive geniuses in each situation were easy to work with, I think largely, because of their confidence in their own grasp of the subject at hand. They had nothing to prove, they knew that, and it showed. The difficult people were never stupid, far from it, but they felt like they needed to defend everything they did, every decision they made, and that made working with them less productive.
With the gentle geniuses, if you thought you came up with something that was an improvement on what was being done, they would look at it honestly, and if it was not better, they would calmly explain why, and if it was better, they would acknowledge it right out and discuss how to merge that into the current work.
The 'less gentle' ones would take pride in pointing out the flaws in your idea if you were wrong, and if you were right, would fight you over whether it had any real value at all, then would stiff arm you as far as getting it accepted as a change.
My favourite people to work with are the gentle geniuses. I love to be wrong around them because I get to learn, and I love opportunities to present something useful I've done and know it will become a valuable contribution.
I avoid the other kind of person like a plague now. They ruin otherwise excellent teams. They might be fine to have a drink with or something, but in day to day work, they are sand paper.
Another thing I find is that the gentle variety tend to understand and appreciate realistic timelines. Highly competitive "nerds" tend to fight on timelines, or suppress others using them. Why wasn't that done sooner? Wait, all you did in 3 days was this? It's a terrible tool used to knock team mates down a peg on a routine basis.
I know, right? It is one of the greatest things in the world to be the dumbest guy in a room full of really smart, secure people. It’s like you’re getting a mini postdoc education for free, compressed into a few minutes.
It's the best thing that's happened to my career by a wide margin. I'm 15 years in and definitely not the smartest person in the room on most topics, and I'm finally moving forward and really enjoying it after quite a stagnant period.
I try to remind myself to show some gratitude, not just for my team's knowledge and insights that they share, but for having selected me as a person to join them as well. It's a real privilege to have a good team. I think they consider me more of an equal than I give myself credit for but I really do get an education pretty much every day. Life is interesting.
I have had that same experience with many people, re criticising other people’s timelines. But I don’t think that’s the kind of “fierce nerd” Paul is talking about. I rather think he’s talking about the person who is so involved in doing their own work, that they don’t spend the time to evaluate other people’s productivity.
You’re right, I guess I’m pulling other qualities in here from people I’ve known who have overlap with the type Paul is describing. It’s not exactly in line.
If I had to guess, I would guess these would often be "fierce nerds" who mellowed with age.
I think this "fierceness" is an expected sign of intellectual dominance of your peers at 15-20. At 25+, it's a sign that you've either never entered a pond with genuinely big fish, or you've never managed to recognize that big fish are swimming around you.
Of course, you could just be dominating big fish at 25+. It's logically possible. But the incident of "fierceness" is muuuuch higher than the incidence of that level of genius.
it's frustrating to me that Paul conflated fierceness with competitiveness, because I see passion & vigor & energy as very decoupled from the forces of personization & ego that this part of the thread are wrapped around, that Paul linked together.
another comment mentioned that it's a matter of tamping down the inner asshole, having self awareness. this still allows for an enormous domineering ego but supposes it can be self regulated, held back.
I feel like even that is still a radical take. fierce nerds just see opportunity in the world. they want to strike, want to seize good, promote the paths everyone else disregards as too difficult too hard top unknown, to say, let's really find out. fiercely try. try to learn if we fail & try again next time too. thw competition is not with each other, not about who; it's a competition against mediocrity & safety & fragility. a competition to collaboratively find excellence & further truths.
you should remain fierce. there are not many other real big fish on the sea. most folk have narrow windows of experience, limited views, & your nerdly bigger picture takes of the fierce are direly needed. especially when we don't attach ourselves to the try, when we are all aligned to try greatly & learn & adjust as we go, with fierceness, but without ego.
Maybe factors in someone good at something being humble about it includes:
* Confidence of not needing to prove something to themselves.
* Comfort with their situation, aka not needing to prove something to others -- for practical reasons, separate from validation of own security/insecurity. (In your Bell Labs example, having gotten into there, getting to do the kind of work they want, presumably having sufficient respect of others for a pleasant environment, not feeling like they have to fight their way to opportunity and respect.)
* Intellectual humility that comes with experience, having realized how easy and frequent it is to be mistaken.
* Maybe differences of personality wiring. (I know nothing of the psychological research, but, anecdotally, there seems to be variation among people in how problem-solving interacts with emotions, for example, and maybe how that affects their interactions in that context.)
Also, taking a step back, I don't know how good our perceptions of humility. (Of course, different people express themselves differently, which I suppose affects perceptions of those people's humility. And maybe, when we're characterizing humility of others, we're usually basing that on perceptions, rather than some more objective criteria.)
* Perhaps, humility from knowing how much you don't know. The older I get, the bigger the circle of what I don't know grows. I now know that there is no way in my lifetime I will be able to learn even a tiny percentage of all that I would like to learn. It is humbling to learn how little you really know, no matter how quickly you acquire new knowledge.
Thank you for bringing up humility. Can't believe he got through this entire post without once mentioning it. Says as much about the author as it does about the world in which fierce nerds operate.
Humility is simply not seen as a virtue in a business environment anymore.
Career coaches teach you how you can get ahead and to be confident.
But having knowledge also means you know about your limits, so your only option is to pretend to know everything.
It can be useful to convince people with low tech literacy of your solution, but I don't think confidence is a good metric. It is basically a dysfunctional form of communication.
Yeah, it's remarkable to me that this article could be written to provide advice to "fierce nerds", and not include a single sentence about not being an asshole.
I work with "fierce nerds". Some of them are self-aware, and try very very hard not to be assholes to the people around them. They do this without sacrificing their passion. And they are tolerable to work with only because they consciously push back against their inner asshole.
It takes a lot of effort in some areas to stay calm and allow the other side to play out their argument, and I recognize how critical it is in maintaining a positive attitude towards work.
I find that minimizing unnecessary conference calls was a monumental step in the right direction. When a technical conversation is serialized through a Github issue, it tends to get a lot more thought and time applied. It is also easy to walk away from a frustrating issue, go for a run, come back, and write a much more reasonable reply than you otherwise would have if compelled to do so.
Microsoft vet from 1990s-2000: same. Got to work with many of my programming heroes, and many of the same people influencing programming language design, Azure, and .NET even now. The vast majority were a pure joy to work with, just as you describe.
> The difficult people were never stupid, far from it, but they felt like they needed to defend everything they did, every decision they made, and that made working with them less productive.
I assume the implication here is that the productive folks didn't necessarily defend everything they did, and thus went with other people's solutions sometimes even when their own was better? Is that what you're trying to convey? or should I be reading it differently? Curious how their behavior contrasted in your experience.
I interpreted this differently. My takeaway was that the abrasive ones constantly defend everything they do, even when it’s not necessary, and the gentle genius doesn’t feel the need to be defensive at every step.
It doesn’t have to mean that the gentle genius never defends their viewpoints, but highlights the key differences in how these personality types operate on a day-to-day basis, and the resulting impact on the team around them.
Not just one or two, but the majority of them. To the point that the aggressive geniuses stood out. And I worked for/with two abrasive ones as well, so I know the difference.
The same was true for the two startups I worked at after that, and Qualcomm, and now the third startup where I work.
The really productive geniuses in each situation were easy to work with, I think largely, because of their confidence in their own grasp of the subject at hand. They had nothing to prove, they knew that, and it showed. The difficult people were never stupid, far from it, but they felt like they needed to defend everything they did, every decision they made, and that made working with them less productive.
With the gentle geniuses, if you thought you came up with something that was an improvement on what was being done, they would look at it honestly, and if it was not better, they would calmly explain why, and if it was better, they would acknowledge it right out and discuss how to merge that into the current work.
The 'less gentle' ones would take pride in pointing out the flaws in your idea if you were wrong, and if you were right, would fight you over whether it had any real value at all, then would stiff arm you as far as getting it accepted as a change.