So what is a jerk? I know this article is probably a fictitious rather than about a specific individual, but seems like if he really was a "10x"er he'd be an asset to the team and reasonably intelligent people could see that.

This guy was communicating the best he could... "Where a normal review would often contain a handful of comments and suggestions, he would regularly end up in the hundreds." Sounds like he's trying. I assume it takes a lot of his time to generate comments like that... if he was right, I'd want the team to be following his advice and that should help reduce the number of comments review over review.

To me... a jerk is someone in legal who says with a smile, "Sorry we were holding that information about us acquiring that other property until now... and we need the new system up and running by Monday." Or someone on the design team who just refuses to switch his designs from points to pixels or pixels to points or whatever it is the current site is using and then bitches about how it's 1/2 a pixel off in production. Or that guy in sales who tells me that the product is shit because we haven't built the one feature his important prospect really wanted... Someone who doesn't care that they are making more work for me, someone who doesn't care about the job I have to do.

Someone who is doing a huge code review... with copious amounts of feedback... man, I'd love that! Sounds like he really cared and is being quite thoughtful. I think with the right manager and process the team could improve.

Management layers exist to help setup processes that act as lubrication -- so if someone is just good at his job and rubbing people the wrong way... that's 100% a management problem.

Having dealt with this exact problem in just about every position I've had as an adult... I think the solution is to pull aside the offended people and make sure they know how I see them -- I'd explicitly point out what I agreed with and offer praise about their production where warranted. I'd encourage them to parrot back some of the behavior towards the offending person... if they didn't feel comfortable, they could let me do it for them.

I'd pull aside the "jerk" and bluntly as I could explain why it's important to be more political in dealing with others on the team. I'd make sure some personal issues weren't going on and that he knew it wasn't appropriate to be mad at people at work because his wife left him, etc. I'd make sure we did reviews every sprint (or at least every cycle) where others got to review him, and I'd read those back to him. I have literally never found a "jerk" who couldn't be reasoned with, or explained away. I had one amazing dev who was pretty far down the Asperger spectrum who loved calling people a "fucking dumbass" and eventually it just became part of the culture on that team to lovingly call everyone a "fucking dumbass" -- we even had t-shirts made. Looking past what is said to the intent... most "jerks" aren't trying to hurt feelings, they just take pride in their work. Give me people who care any day, we can find a way to work them into the team.

Be careful that "morale increased steadily and we actually began to meet our goals even faster with one less person on the team" isn't just diminished expectations in disguise.