Nobody wants to work with our best engineer

Kindness is underrated.

There was a wizard engineer (we’ll call him “Jon”) who worked for me a few years ago. His code was good. His PRs were quick. By all technical accounts, he was a great engineer.

We got some common feedback about him from other engineers:

“Jon is one of the best engineers at [the company]. I would have a hard time working with him.”

“Jon is committed to doing ‘the right thing.’ But some quieter engineers avoid discussions with him.”