"Manager time" and a set workday are there for reasons. There is no one so brilliant that they don't need to collaborate and in order to collaborate everybody needs to be following the same book of rules.
> I often think about how I could have better allowed his brilliance while not alienating the rest of his team, but in the end I failed.
Expect your brilliant engineer to be in the office during core business hours, and if he can't brook that schedule, fire him.
I've just started a new position in the last couple of months, and my junior status and need to learn a large codebase and set of tooling has me studying almost all day every day.
I'm pretty sure I'm absorbing this massive application and all the external transactions it does pretty fast, all things considered.
If I was constantly interrupting my train of thought and research to 'sync up' or 'collaborate' or whatever other personal fear of missing out that you're strapping your team into massaging, I'd dare say I won't be a solid contributor anywhere near as fast.
Assume everyone thinks the way you do and you throw away the chance for them to excel under even a slightly different structure.
"Manager time" and a set workday are there for reasons. There is no one so brilliant that they don't need to collaborate and in order to collaborate everybody needs to be following the same book of rules.
> I often think about how I could have better allowed his brilliance while not alienating the rest of his team, but in the end I failed.
Expect your brilliant engineer to be in the office during core business hours, and if he can't brook that schedule, fire him.