For each employee type, pick at most one of a) or b), if you had to choose between them.
I picked lazy genius direct report only because I’ll feel less bad about firing them.
On the other hand, it's possible to get blocked by the lazy and apathetic who don't respond to code revirw requests, while leaving all the work and politics to their teammates.
Nothing destroys team faster than hardworking passionate genius. All is "good" and management is happy until the rest of the team just quits.
Weren't many successful companies led by these "hardworking passionate geniuses" in the early startup stage? e.g. Bill Gates @ Microsoft, Steve Jobs @ Apple
There is a big difference between 5 person startup and "small" 50 engineers team in an enterprise of 10k+ employees. I.e. Jobs got kicked out of apple. Gates did not seem to be an arrogant assholes, and all I've heard from people who worked with him is that he was rather nice but very detailed and deep technically.
Passionate people are annoying af and suck the energy out of me when I have to interact with them, give me a chill ("apathetic") manager / peer / dr anyday.
Why are they annoying?
You're either one of them, or you've never worked with one.