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Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

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Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

#31

Post by pvaldes »

Symmetry wrote: post #10

This reminds me of a story about hen breeding: Selecting the hen who lays the most eggs doesn't necessarily get you the most efficient egg-laying metabolism. It may get you the most dominant hen, that pecked its way to the top of the pecking order at the expense of other hens. Individual selection doesn't necessarily work to the benefit of the group, but a farm's productivity is determined by group outputs. Indeed, f…

This is not because hens are getting more vicious, is because they live crowded.

We had positively selected chicken for agressivity since 1000 years, we have sumatrans, aseels, old english game, cubalayas, the most vicious animals possible for generations and generations of people. All of these are really terrible layers.

There is a lot of variability in character also between different individuals from the same chicken race.

Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

#32

Post by pasabagi »

Symmetry wrote: post #10

This reminds me of a story about hen breeding: Selecting the hen who lays the most eggs doesn't necessarily get you the most efficient egg-laying metabolism. It may get you the most dominant hen, that pecked its way to the top of the pecking order at the expense of other hens. Individual selection doesn't necessarily work to the benefit of the group, but a farm's productivity is determined by group outputs. Indeed, f…

I guess the rub is, hens aren't adversely affected by being members of underperforming groups, whereas humans tend to feel demoralized.

Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

#33

Post by crimsonalucard »

goodpoint wrote: post #23
Symmetry wrote: post #10

This reminds me of a story about hen breeding: Selecting the hen who lays the most eggs doesn't necessarily get you the most efficient egg-laying metabolism. It may get you the most dominant hen, that pecked its way to the top of the pecking order at the expense of other hens. Individual selection doesn't necessarily work to the benefit of the group, but a farm's productivity is determined by group outputs. Indeed, f…

> the most dominant hen, that pecked its way to the top of the pecking order at the expense of other hens. Individual selection doesn't necessarily work to the benefit of the group but wait... our entire economical system is based on this.

It's not just our economy. It's the duality of human nature. We function better as a group yet we are competitive at the same time.

As a result in practice a hybrid system of capitalism and communism tends to work the best aka socialism. See Scandinavia.

Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

#34

Post by FakeComments »

goodpoint wrote: post #23
Symmetry wrote: post #10

This reminds me of a story about hen breeding: Selecting the hen who lays the most eggs doesn't necessarily get you the most efficient egg-laying metabolism. It may get you the most dominant hen, that pecked its way to the top of the pecking order at the expense of other hens. Individual selection doesn't necessarily work to the benefit of the group, but a farm's productivity is determined by group outputs. Indeed, f…

> the most dominant hen, that pecked its way to the top of the pecking order at the expense of other hens. Individual selection doesn't necessarily work to the benefit of the group but wait... our entire economical system is based on this.

How so?

Naively, it seems like capitalism is a means of “top group” selection, so long as there is relatively high chance for social mobility and opportunity.

The method which worked better for chickens still involved selecting the best cohort (capitalism), and this improved over open breeding (socialism) or winner-take-all (monarchy).

Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

#35

Post by [deleted] »

EpicEng wrote: post #20
blue1379 wrote: post #8

https://news.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/16-057_d... 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 l…

Did you swipe this from reddit? https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a...

[deleted]

Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

#36

Post by [deleted] »

gwbas1c wrote: post #16

I liked the article, but I find the definition of a toxic worker difficult. It's more like the article defines a toxic worker by the result, not the symptom. In reality, what are the symptoms of a toxic worker? What are the causes? What are the situations where someone might be labeled "toxic" but the real problem is something else?

[deleted]

Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

#37

Post by [deleted] »

commandlinefan wrote: post #27
blue1379 wrote: post #8

https://news.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/16-057_d... 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 l…

> tautological definition 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…

[deleted]

Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

#38

Post by [deleted] »

EpicEng wrote: post #20
blue1379 wrote: post #8

https://news.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/16-057_d... 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 l…

Did you swipe this from reddit? https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a...

[deleted]

Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

#39

Post by move-on-by »

gwbas1c wrote: post #16

I liked the article, but I find the definition of a toxic worker difficult. It's more like the article defines a toxic worker by the result, not the symptom. In reality, what are the symptoms of a toxic worker? What are the causes? What are the situations where someone might be labeled "toxic" but the real problem is something else?

This is a good question. I think I was labeled the toxic worker in my previous job. I was a team lead and kept bring up concerns to my manager:

* 'this deadline is unrealistic'

* 'we can't continue at this pace, we have to have time to address some serious technical debt'

* 'I heard marketing saying that we can do X, but it isn't true and to add feature X would destroy our timeline'

* 'Adding more contractors isn't going to speed this up or improve the quality, we need time not warm bodies'

Of course none of those things were what my manger wanted to hear. When things inevitably went south it all came down on me and I was managed out of the company. I'm much happier now, as I see that the job was what was toxic. My manager wouldn't listen to me and I wouldn't drink the kool-aid that all was well. In fact, I saw it as my responsibility to share these concerns and to not just go with the flow. Now that I've had time to look back on it, I just think that is his management style: grind people to the bone for all that they are worth, then throw them out and repeat to the next poor sap.

Anyways, the article is about toxic workers - but if the managers are the ones deciding what is considered 'productive' and who is 'toxic' then that isn't a very complete view of the actual environment.

Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

#40

Post by leroy_masochist »

Just read the study itself and am kind of scratching my head. I think the authors really just fail to consider the concept that the real problem with toxic employees is that they usually figure out to have their productivity measured very positively.

The authors build their thesis around a dichotomy between "toxic employees" and "superstars" (not "rock stars" as claimed in the article summarizing the study). The authors rather woodenly make their way through various analyses that make productivity the dependent variable, while also delving into the question of whether toxicity is contagious within workplaces.

Overall I get the impression that the study authors have never actually spent time in toxic workplaces.

The most toxic employees are not those who "[engage] in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people" -- as another commenter mentioned, this is a comically tautological definition. Rather, toxic employees are those who convince their boss that they are a superstar while making the company a worse place to work. A toxic employee isn't, as the study seems to imply, somebody who writes mean graffiti in the employee bathroom -- it's someone who berates junior staffers under the auspices of demanding excellent execution, and who finishes the year with sales growth in his division up 23%.

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