My first question would be "Where do I sign?". I'd love to be the stupid one in the room. It ensures that the group is doing better than what I could achieve personally. That's the role of a leader!

Obama wasn't the smartest cat in Congress but he's a great leader who knows to surround himself with smart folks. That's exactly what makes him a great leader. As a CTO, this would leave me to indulge in hiring, dreaming about the vision of the product and technology over the coming months, plan for our tech requirements (based on business needs), ensure the tech team is operating under budget etc. While pure coding is liberating, it's also very liberating to not be thinking of code while you focus on other things that make your team successful.

Oh, did I mention, I'd finally have time to finish the ML course on Coursera? That'll be awesome. :D

"Smarter" is a subjective term. I think every developer on my team has a different and unique skillset, as do I. We complement each other very well, and thus form a very well rounded team.

Just knowing a little math helps you putting things in perspective .... even if you're a genius I take the IQ above 145 - we could debate that - , belonging to the 0.1 % of the world that's (if i take googles numbers) 70 million .... so probably there are more than enough smarter people out there ... I don't know the average distribution in fields or positions but 70 million is a big number .... and the number goes up every day ....

The others are more constructive with their answers, I just wanted to point out that even if you're very smart there are a lot of other very smart people out there :) ... I will quote what my girlfriend often tells me : "deal with it."

Part of the job. Everyone has their strengths most of the time these smarter people are better at building stuff but aren't as good with project planning and people and all the other stuff that's involved with the higher position roles :).

Also, you should always try and surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. quora

"Smarter than you" is a little provocative :D However, not false. Especially in the tech industry it's common to work with people, who excel in certain fields. I think it's empowering. Your goal as some sort of supervisor is to bundle these capabilities of your team and form it into something even better.

Also I think it's necessary to have really smart developers on your side, when your business operates in a highly competative or innovative environment.

When you find yourself managing a group of really smart and great people, be prepared to be challenged on a daily basis. And I think that's the beauty of it ;)

Jessica Rance I guess first of all you have to accept the fact that they are smart, form a friendly (Information sharing) environment, and try to make use of of their smartness by giving them the space to think, collaborate and giving ideas which will serve at the end the project/app that you guys are developing.

try to get knowledge from what they have, what concepts they like, and focus on the things that are shared between what you have, what they have, and what the project needs, and after all always read more than what they have.

There has to be some limits to that not being so friendly that will push you or limit your inputs in the team.