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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

#41

Post by lordnacho »

FakeComments wrote: post #34
goodpoint wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

How often do people get promoted on the basis that they will make the team better? Have you ever heard of that? How often do you hear "the IT guys kept things running well, enabling the sales people to bring the money in, so they get a piece of that?"

Most of the time people who get stuff are the ones who have been attributed the most output individually.

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

#42

Post by Asooka »

foolsgold wrote: post #22

It's good that we are finally figuring out what Prussian Field Marshal, Helmuth von Moltke (the elder) knew almost 200 years ago. He devised a system to evaluate soldiers, a very simplistic explanation and chart is included with the link below. Essentially what we define as toxic, he defined as dangerous, and felt those people should be eliminated from the Army at all costs because they cause far more harm than good.…

A friend told me some time ago that in the German army every person is trained to be able to do the duties of anyone up to 2 levels above him. This is done so any unit, or even just individual soldier, can carry out their mission as intended, rather than as ordered, and so they can keep agile even when communications are down, i.e. they can plan their own strategy based on what the overall objectives are.

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

#43

Post by [deleted] »

Nasrudith wrote: post #21
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…

Also "toxic" is a term abused to mean "heretical" at times. The guy pointing out HR works for the company not you and is encouraged to some negative dynamics to justify their salary by reducing liability and claimed productivity may be branded toxic. 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 c…

[deleted]

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

#44

Post by alexandercrohde »

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?

Absolutely, there's a sort of double-speak going on here. If we define toxic as they did "harmful to the org" then HR, or even the CEO can be toxic (i.e. not good for the company). Heck, by this definition, even unions might be "toxic."

But in practice, 9/10 times when somebody says "toxic" they really mean rebellious (i.e. disagreeing with management decisions, calling out dishonest messaging, asking for transparency over management mistakes, sharing frustrations).

The article uses a loaded term to create a false-equivalence between "harmful to company" and "rebellious."

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

#45

Post by kaikai »

FakeComments wrote: post #34
goodpoint wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

You’re confusing economic systems with governmental systems. It’s entirely possible to have capitalist monarchies, for example.

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

#46

Post by edoceo »

move-on-by wrote: post #39
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 g…

Seems like the manager was the toxic employee here.

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

#48

Post by [deleted] »

pasabagi wrote: post #32
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.

[deleted]

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

#49

Post by jmrobertson »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #44
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?

Absolutely, there's a sort of double-speak going on here. If we define toxic as they did "harmful to the org" then HR, or even the CEO can be toxic (i.e. not good for the company). Heck, by this definition, even unions might be "toxic." But in practice, 9/10 times when somebody says "toxic" they really mean rebellious (i.e. disagreeing with management decisions, calling out dishonest messaging, asking for transparenc…

Couldn't disagree more w/ the 9/10 part. That's the sort of thinking self-identified "rebellious workers" who are worried about others (mgmt) perceiving themselves as.

"toxic worker" is a pretty textbook definition now: -horrible team player -plays for the spotlight, claims credit in the spotlight, does little work privately -if in mgmt, verbally/mentally terrorizes subordinates -etc etc

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

#50

Post by jmrobertson »

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?

"toxic worker" is a pretty textbook definition now:

-horrible team player

-Unfortunately hugely effective at getting results

-plays for the spotlight, claims credit in the spotlight, does little work privately

-if in mgmt, verbally/mentally terrorizes subordinates -etc etc

It's just a truly poisonous person, who tends to be extremely performant so they can stick around in orgs, whose lack of interpersonal skills in the above realms more or less destroys teams in the long run.

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