So as long as someone is a 'rockstar' coder, it doesn't matter if he/she destroys the morale for the rest of your employees?

<sarcasm> I guess it's just their loss. They should feel privileged to be working with <rockstar coder>! </sarcasm>

If a slide with bikini-clad women with laptops can destroy your teem's morale you have a bigger problems to worry about.

My take-away is that the 'rockstar coder' feels the need to be offensive to impress others with his/her edgy-ness. The idea that people who do these things at conferences, would never do them anywhere else, is a little naive. The 'slide with a bikini-clad woman' is more likely a symptom, than a self-contained aberration.

Any organization that maintains an institutional fear of saying the "wrong thing" destroys its ability to effectively communicate such that the morale will have already hit rock bottom by the time someone actually does get offended.

So the only way to combat being afraid of offending people is to purposely be offensive?

I wish you much fun with hiring such a guy and exploding your team.

Appropriate behavior doesn't factor into your definition of merit? Do you hire purely on code quality?