In my experience only (all disclaimers apply) I have never seen an employee whose productivity outweighed the damage they did to the rest of the team if their misbehavior was tolerated by management. I understand how scary it can be to have to let someone like that go, but the dozen or so cases that I had good visibility into over my career the ones where the employee was accommodated all had worse outcomes than those where the employee was let go.

Way late on this, but this thread has been referenced in things like Oren Ellenbogen's Software Lead Weekly, so maybe the reference will help someone...

Bob Sutton's "The No Asshole Rule" calls this TCA - total cost of assholes. TCA incorporates the cost to replace people who leave because of the asshole, time spent by manager calming people down and cleanup, customer relastionship issues, etc.

10x, 100x revenue is only one piece of the story.

Before leaping to firing that person, you'd want to talk to them and explain that the misbehaviour has to stop. There may be personal reasons, and the person may need support to change. But if the behaviour doesn't shift then yes, dismissal is absolutely appropriate. The demoralisation stemming from a misbehaver who is protected from on high can be huge.

Great performance does not require being an asshat. It's (nearly?) always possible to find an equivalent performer who's pleasant to be around and a constructive team member.

> What if said employee pulls in 10x, 100x more revenue/value than average worker for the company?

Unless you're pulling in that revenue directly, because you're in sales or negotiating deals with other companies, it's impossible to make the claim that someone is 10x more valuable to the company.

Of the most highly productive devs I've ever known, most of them are not 10x more valuable, they are just more productive. The very few real super-programmers I've ever seen (maybe 3 of them in 20 years) have skyrocketed into the stratosphere, make lots of money and lead large teams. So, I don't think anyone super valuable would get fired, but my experience is that they get moved (up).

Most highly productive devs I've known are productive people that are prolific and also do a proportional amount of damage. I've known several people in different companies that were smart, prolific and very opinionated, and they would inflict their ideas on everyone and get support from management and not enough pushback from other devs. They implemented processes that were needlessly complex and caused measurable drain on the productivity of everyone else. You can lose your 10x productivity benefit really fast if you suck 10% from everyone else.

One guy I knew was a 10x performer and lead a team, but had a nasty attitude and took down the morale of everyone he talked to regularly. Even though he performed, he was causing everyone around him to go slower and work less. To the parent comment's point, this guy's productivity kept him from getting fired despite his misbehavior.

Unless you're giving everyone that benefit of the doubt, then you're just reinforcing the idea that the rules don't apply to everyone. But even then, there's only so much that a personal/family problem can excuse.