There's a picture that gets re-posted on LinkedIn periodically of Netflix's CTO Reed Hastings captioned with a quote attributed to him: "Do not tolerate brilliant jerks. The cost to teamwork is too high." Although this is the sort of feel-good positive fluff that is perfect LinkedIn-bait, I can't help but notice that the people who re-post it and re-share it tend to be people who I remember personally as being mostly just regular jerks. Look, I know better than to characterize myself as "brilliant" on the internet (and I honestly don't think I am, although I do think I'm competent), two things I indisputably am are educated and experienced. Since the subjective words "talented" and "brilliant" and "rockstar" are usually used as a stand-in for the more objective but contentious terms educated and experienced, I can't help but think that somewhere in the back of their minds, they're including me in their list. The people in my network who re-post this platitude usually didn't like me very much because they found themselves in a sticky situation that they expected me to be able to get them out of. When you're educated and experienced, but you still can't solve somebody's crisis on the spot, they don't think, "oh, well, I was asking a lot", they think, "he could have helped me, but he didn't because he's a jerk who thinks he's too good for me".
As far as toxic workers go (jerks included), there are a lot of reasons they are toxic:
* They are negative all the time. They sap the enjoyment out of the room. * They are highly critical of other's work. No one else has a problem with the work others are doing, they just nit-pick every little thing. * They avoid hard work and only go after prestige projects. They'll try to push stuff like maintenance work onto others, and half-ass it when they have to do it. * Anything they do wrong is met with a strong defense mechanism and a need to deflect into someone else.
I'm sure there's more, these are just off the top of my head. Contrary to belief, being 'brilliant' has absolutely nothing to do with whether someone can be toxic. I've met a few toxic people in software and out, and some were downright mediocre.
Yep. If the 80/20 rule is true(and I keep finding anecdotal evidence it is), then wouldn't the natural frustrations of the 20% doing the 80% simply be perceived as toxicity by the other 80% doing the remaining 20%?
Take a team of 10 people. If 8 people get together and decide to say the 2 top performers are "toxic"(by whatever metric that is defined), what chance do those 2 people have, even if they are doing 80% of the work?
I'm smart, I'm competent, I know what I'm doing, and, most importantly, I know how to get you to come along with me willingly.
If that fails, well, I know how to say something that only becomes devistating once I leave the room and I'm better friends with all your co-workers anyway. Come at me.
The people you saw fired lacked that final quality. They bought into the narrative that our field is a meritocracy and that's a downright lie. They poured all their effort into their skills and ego and left zero room for learning to navigate office politics. They deserved to be fired.
In both cases what the person is suggesting is in fact the right way to go most of the time. The difference is whether or not you feel you're better than everyone else.
...but if they've been with the service, let's say Netflix - as you eluded to, since it's inception, then I would think that they would know the answer far better than an engineer that's only been around a month or so.
What you're taking for arrogance might be the engineer simply stating that they've been around the block or two and, having had people try to discredit them before, they want to establish that their experience trumps someone else's own arrogance.
It's not the best way to put it, to be sure, but people have different ways of expressing themselves and/or different expectations of others.
The problem is two-fold: Understanding everyone's personalities and their expectations; and then using that knowledge to build channels of communications with those principles in mind.
If you haven't heard of Insights trainings[0], I highly suggest checking it out.
Anyways, so while one engineer might care about other things, which I might find arbitrary because I only care about the datasets (e.g.: something tangible), it doesn't mean that either of us are "wrong". Just because all I care about is the data surrounding a bug defect doesn't mean I'm an asshole, compared to someone who cares about the end-uer's experience. We're simply driven by different aspirations.
The same goes for your jerk engineer. Maybe they're tired of people trying to disprove their statements and tack on the, "I'm that good" at the end precisely because they're tired of the bullshit, A-type personality shit that comes with everyone trying to one-up them to look cool. Or maybe they're actually a jerk. I don't even pretend to claim to know.
...but immediately attributing malice, where other answers can just as easily suffice, does everyone a disservice because you don't rely on communication to understand the why behind whatever was said. You take this assumption you've made, let it create a bias, and then that bias affects your interactions with them.
All of that could've easily been avoided by a simple, "Hey, man (or chica or your flavour of vernacular), I wanted to ask what's up and see if you knew/understood/comprehend/what-have-you how what you said came across when...." A lot of the times, you'll probably find that they had no intention of it sounding like that but 'x' was on their mind or some other factor was in play. You could also find out that they are, indeed, a jerk; but that would, at the very least, be a confirmation and not just an assumption, yeah?
Anyways, this was a long, fuck-all, pointless diatribe to say that someone might come across to you as a feckwad but it doesn't - implicitly - mean that that's who they are, in their day-to-day.
I've experienced people I thought were arrogant as feckall, until I had 1:1's with them and got to know their personalities and perspective a lot better. Once I understood where they were coming from and how they think and/or react to things, I could tailor my behaviour better towards their personalities and they could do the same in kind.
(Sorry for the feck-all novel.)
Charismatic people building their own fiefdoms that view networking as king and actual productivity gains a threat are building not just houses of cards but full scale card mansions are more actual organizational harm toxic than any ill-mannered productives.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a...
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a...
If I try as hard as I possibly can and output 20% of an amazing individual. do I have no place in this world?
Listen, this is the basic level of human interaction. manners are oil for bodies at friction, and respect is a gateway to team participation.
If you cant see the value in that, then you are the problem. You can output a million times the output of your team, but if you dont have a team then you have nothing except yourself. and if you are the only reason for success.. why arent you Jeff Bezos?
"charismatic unproductive people who, despite all making each other feel good, don't actually bring any value to an organisation." -- This phrase stinks of devaluation. if you have a team that you view every member of as providing nothing of quality, then again.. you are the problem. Everyone has something to provide, on many different levels.you are failing to see that, and that is your problem.
but carry on my friend. if you are as amazing as you say, then ill read about you in the news soon.
blue1379 brings up some very valid questions. If a snobbish, but highly talented employee builds toolkits/engines that double or triple the production of the average employee, does the same equation used in the study apply?
On the other hand, what constitutes a "non-toxic" employee? Does everybody's buddy who convinces half the team that 2-5pm is ping pong and beer time not disproportionately decrease productivity?
He's asking for more nuance, which is never a bad thing. You seem to be demanding that things stay binary.
That person is not 'toxic' because the qualifier is that they have trained their coworkers on the frameworks they created, thus they actually get along.
I think the toxic version would be making statements like, "I spend all my time building frameworks that if my coworkers used them, would double their productivity, but they're obviously too stupid to understand. The more I hear their silly questions on how to use it, the more I realize how f'd hiring is around here that these people are 'coworkers'. So please, I give up, I'll use my frameworks and I'll be 8x more productive than them, just make them leave me alone so I can work."
What if we fire Mr Snobby Pants and hire someone who's both socially and technically competent?
My unbelievable straw man is looking great in your yard. Along with the many things I "seem" to say versus the things I actually say.
You have a place in this world, no question.
But it may not be at the company of your choice, in the job of your choice, at the pay of your choice.
With the genes I rolled, there is no amount of work I could have done to become an NFL quarterback. C'est la vie. The NFL owes me nothing.
Totally false. Some prople are really bad at their jobs and gang up with other unproductive people to rag on those who are carrying the team. If you cant see that, you are probably insecure and rationalizing your hostility to people who are better and make you look bad in comparison.
Man.. so glad Im insecure enough to rely on these gangs to fight my battles for me. Millions of bad employees but only 5 rockstar developers like yourself.
I dont stand a chance.
I know you're saying this sarcastically, but in the context of the rest of your comments, it sounds a lot more like self-pity. Take a second to read the comments you're responding and realize how much you're projecting your own complexes onto comments that are saying nothing close to what you seem to think they are.
Not to drag politics into this, but, seriously, I think Trump has this category covered quite nicely. The costs are staggering.
It comes to a figure of 12k loss as the cost of replacing the toxic employee. Yes, replacing an employee is always a net loss in isolation.
It seems to be using a tautological definition:
defines a “toxic” employee as: “A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” Yes, that causes a net loss. By definition.
They also state they don't consider "productivity spillover" because they found spillover can sometimes be negative so they just assume it all cancels out. If Bob rebuilds something and saves every other employee lots of time going forward.... this analysis just ignores it.
The news coverage makes it seem like a tickbox study tailored to HR interests in large orgs, so they can pat themselves on the back for 'proving' that teamwork trumps uncharismatic productivity, despite the study saying nothing about that.
If one wanted to truly study these costs, they'd also be looking at charismatic unproductive people who, despite all making each other feel good, don't actually bring any value to an organisation.