What if Silicon Valley’s ‘brilliant jerks’ are just jerks?

Levandowski (left) and his attorney Miles Ehrlich exiting federal court in San Jose, California on Aug 27, 2019. Levandowski thrived with actions that would have gotten most employees fired – until his boundary-pushing involved pilfering Alphabet documents on his way to start his own autonomous-vehicle company and quickly selling it to Uber Technologies Inc, according to the indictment. — Bloomberg

Silicon Valley has a split personality about “brilliant jerks”. These are the kind of abrasive, boundary-pushing executives whom the industry (and often the media) lionises – until they push boundaries too far and are kicked out of the tech Garden of Eden.

Consider Anthony Levandowski, a former executive in Alphabet Inc’s self-driving vehicle project whom the US government charged this week with stealing the company’s trade secrets.