Asklemmy

If I kept my level and get a team with >200 IQ, then I'll be the idiot any day.

I'm a middle aged industry engineer and having a team of morons at this point is so fucking tiresom.

They're not really morons. Companies obsessing about efficiency are just beating people in to lumps of apathy that don't want to use more than 2% their brain power on anything. If they also have a culture of punishment, it kills all initiative and you end up with mouth breathers with a thousand yard stare all day.

Idiot on an intelligent team, I'll only get better

Intelligent in an idiot team, they will only make me dumber

Get a job as a software engineer and you'll spend most days feeling like both simultaneously

Do I get dumber to become the idiot or is everyone else just smarter than me?

So long as the intelligent people are also kind. A group of intelligent people that are backbiting and cruel is the absolute worst.

I've been both on different uni projects. Far better being the smart one in a group of idiots and just banging out the work without interference for a good grade. Being the idiot on the smart team was torture.

"idiot" and "intelligent" are not mutually exclusive. One can be both at the same time. There are intelligent people doing idiotic stuff.

If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.

Idiot in a team of smart people, so I can learn from them.

Idiot on a team of intelligent people. I get pissed off at people being stupid. My team might get pissed off at me but that's their problem. And generally I like being around people smarter than me because I learn a lot from them.

Idiot on a team of intelligent people. Hopefully, they'll put up with me long enough to point where I learn enough to stop being an idiot.

To be the inteligent person in a team of idiots is certainly one of the worst things that could happen to you.

Um, yes.

I'm going to have to choose to be the intelligent person. You might think the idiot has it easy...they may even not know they are an idiot. But they could be so stupid they also think all the intelligent people are idiots, so they might get all the frustration of thinking they are the intelligent person on a team of idiots while actually being the opposite.

Idiot on the team of intelligent people. I'd rather just be responsible for educating myself and not everybody else.

Ignorance is bliss. Besides, it's usually the idiots who get promoted.

There is nothing worse than working for an idiot.

If the smart people are nice, I'd be ok being the idiot. Still might feel a little bad over not being able to help. Maybe I'll be the cheerleader. "Go team! Hell yeah! Crunch those numbers!"

I'll bring snacks?

Depends what the team is doing. If it’s a marathon running team for charity, or a team of people picking up garbage on a beach, it probably doesn’t matter much.

In my early career I made a bit of a niche for myself being the idiot on a team of very smart people. My job was to ask the simple question that none of them considered before it was too late.

If I'm the smart one, I have to do all the work I can't trust to idiots, run the team or be on a team run by an idiot, be the most responsible according to any outside observer, and my success will still be mostly reliant on idiots.

If I'm the idiot, at worst I'd be mocked, but maybe I'd be too stupid to notice. At least the work would be more likely to be successful.

Do you continue being an idiot outside the context of the team?

I’d rather be surrounded by people more capable than me (at least if I care about the success of the task), but not at that cost.

I've gone being the smartest person in the room in my previous couple roles (mostly because I was the only person with any IT or platform knowledge, not because I'm some prodigy) to the bottom of the totem pole and well behind the intelligence of my current team since I changed careers.

It's wonderful having people around that are smarter than me that I can learn from and ask questions to. It's hard being the idiot on a team when you're trying to improve and care about your work. Working with idiots that don't care or seemingly never improve is the worst. I've learned more over the past 8 months than I have since I started my professional career.

I like the phrase, "Never be the smartest person in the room". Sometimes it happens, but in most situations, there is someone else that is more knowledgeable about something than you, and that's an opportunity to learn.

being an idiot is the wise choice here

Just kill me now.

It really depends on how interesting the people are and how good they are at storytelling. I've met super annoying smart people and really entertaining dumb people so it's not like intelligence is the determining factor.

I'd probably rather be hanging out with either the more interesting or more autistic group because I think we'd get along the best. If that makes me the idiot of the group, I don't think that's too bad of a deal.

When you say team of idiots, are these people that are just lazy, or don’t know how to do the work? I can work with people who want to do the right thing but lack experience and knowledge. But a team of people that are lazy and don’t care would be torture to work with so in that case ignorance is bliss.

I am not a team player

I'd rather be me