The Outsiders was the first thing I read about how, contrary to popular belief, the gifted might have a curse instead of a blessing:

http://prometheussociety.org/wp/articles/the-outsiders/

https://web.archive.org/web/20190531123431/http://prometheus...

I will not say it's true for every novel. The Outsiders was a book that bored me in school, and I still find it boring. Cry, the Beloved Country on the other hand was completely over my head in high school, but it is one of my favorites now.

Not specific to just tech teams, but I loved The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike. So many great notes about leadership and successfully running a business in general.

https://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Unconventional-Radically-Ra...

"Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes (the short story, not the novel)

"The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton

Here's some: with why I like them

Thinking, problem solving related:

Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock: accurate forecasting

Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman: how to avoid bias

Misbehaving: like thinking fast and slow but more hilarious

The checklist manifesto by Atul Gawande: the power of simple process

From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin: lots of mental models to add to your latticework

Business management:

The Outsiders by William Thorndike: capital allocation

The hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz: some mental models for managers facing the real-life struggles of startups

Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake masters: for the chapter on what kinds of business are always going to be tough (i.e. ones in perfectly competitive industries)

Worldview:

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why violence has declined

The making of modern economics by Mark Skousen (audiobook): explains various economic ideas through telling the history of the fathers of those ideas.

Investing:

You can be a stock market genius by Joel Greenblatt: where to look for undervaluation

The Essays of Warren Buffett by Lawrence Cunningham: Buffett's thoughts in Buffett's words, neatly categorised by topic

Competition Demystified by Bruce Greenwald: how to identify a high quality business

I believe that the idea that someone who works a "menial" job "isn't getting much value out of being highly intelligent" is the fundamental misconception here.

If you are a genius, your time is not necessarily well spent on ANY job, whether it is considered menial or not by the intellectually unwashed masses, unless it is for exercise, relaxation, sustenance, or pleasure.

I refer you to the classic essay The Outsiders
http://www.cpsimoes.net/artigos/outsiders.html

'The second kind of social adaptation may be called the marginal strategy. These individuals were typically born into a lower socio-economic class, without gifted parents, gifted siblings, or gifted friends. Often they did not go to college at all, but instead went right to work immediately after high school, or even before. And although they may superficially appear to have made a good adjustment to their work and friends, neither work nor friends can completely engage their attention. They hunger for more intellectual challenge and more real companionship than their social environment can supply. So they resort to leading a double life. They compartmentalize their life into a public sphere and a private sphere. In public they go through the motions of fulfilling their social roles, whatever they are, but in private they pursue goals of their own. They are often omnivorous readers, and sometimes unusually expert amateurs in specialized subjects. The double life strategy might even be called the genius ploy, as many geniuses in history have worked at menial tasks in order to free themselves for more important work. Socrates, you will remember was a stone mason, Spinoza was a lens grinder, and even Jesus was a carpenter. The exceptionally gifted adult who works as a parking lot attendant while creating new mathematics has adopted an honored way of life and deserves respect for his courage, not criticism for failing to live up to his abilities. Those conformists who adopt the committed strategy may be pillars of their community and make the world go around, but historically, those with truly original minds have more often adopted the double life tactic. They are ones among the gifted who are most likely to make the world go forward.'

JR by William Gaddis. It's about an 11 year old boy who creates and operates multinational conglomerate from a phonebooth in the late 60s early 70s. This book is a satire of capitalism. It has a unique writing style with no chapters or even paragraphs. It moves fluidly between narration and dialogue even within the same sentence. And it has no breaks between scenes, it's like birdman: one long tracking shot with no jump cuts. The writing style is meant to convey the chaos of capitalism and makes it really difficult to read (for example you don't always know who's talking and people talk over each other a lot). But it's totally worth it and really funny.

Despite it being a satire and taking capital allocation and tax avoidance to absurd extremes it actually imparted on me a better appreciation of what it is to run a business from a finance perspective (I have a software background and find myself too focused on product at the expense of focusing on the entire business)

I also recently read The Outsiders, that new book about 8 CEOs that are great at capital allocation and created incredibly high returns for shareholders. The Outsiders is almost like a real life serious version of JR.

Business Adventures by John Brooks
The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike

"In no way do we think that Berkshire shares should be repurchased at simply any price. I emphasize that point because American CEOs have an embarrassing record of devoting more company funds to repurchases when prices have risen than when they have tanked. Our approach is exactly the reverse."

For many companies, the approach seems to be "we've paid our dividends, we have some cash left over, let's buy back our own stock" - with a complete disregard for the valuation. Buying your own shares at too high a price (see GE and US airlines) is equivalent to incinerating money, whereas buybacks at low prices (Teledyne, Apple) do wonders for returns. If you run a listed business you have to think long and hard about what your firm is worth without just looking at the market price. William Thorndike's book "The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success" [0] makes that point beautifully

Right now it is interesting to observe that many companies are doing the opposite of buybacks at a record clip, the share issuance of firms like Twillio is astounding.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13586932-the-outsiders