Once upon a time I had this guy who worked for me - astoundingly fast high quality coder. You know all those studies about guys on the right hand side of the productivity curve? This guy was out there. But he had a rotten temper. And he was always the smartest guy in the room. (He usually was, but that is not the point.)

I was reminded of him while watching Bewitched last night:

Isabel Bigelow: [after quitting/being fired] I can’t just walk back in there now.
Jack Wyatt: Once you show up in a golf cart, believe me, all is forgiven. I’ve done it a lot of times.

But it’s not, and after a year of constantly fixing everyone’s feelings I left him outside looking for his golf cart one day. I’m not sure our average production didn’t actually go up since everyone wasn’t playing Nina’s part:

Nina: We could electrocute him. There’s ton of wires around here.

I miss his output, but I miss him not at all as a fellow team-member. As Don said recently: it’s not like you can see an annoying habit in an interview and it’ll get better when they’re an employee!