"Toxic" is a meaningless word used by people to identify themselves with particular social movements. I mean, of course it does have it's original meaning. But that's not in use here.
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
#62I 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…
Depending on circumstances this sounds like the description of someone who moves up the ladder. It seems there is a very fine line between this description of “toxic” and “achiever”.
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That depends on the management and is part of what makes a good manager. I have heard of many accounts of successful and well liked technical managers admitting their job is to be a shield to their team/abstraction layer to allow them ability to focus and explore appropriately while not being buffeted by contradictory direct commands and meetings - all while not ignoring them unduly either. Upper management was perfe…
But how often do people who do the work that brings in money (in this example, the people coding the project) get a fair share of that profit?
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#64I 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…
Ironically, not drinking the kool-aid makes you toxic.
And managers are technically workers too. There's no reason to put them in an ivory tower and assume they can't hate their job, hate people they work with or want to exact revenge for some wrong done against them.
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#65https://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...
Alternatively, you found GP's Reddit account.
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
Depending on circumstances this sounds like the description of someone who moves up the ladder. It seems there is a very fine line between this description of “toxic” and “achiever”.
Isn't that the point of the study? The system is broken if individually productive but net counterproductive people are labeled "achievers" and promoted.
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#67I 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?
> It's more like the article defines a toxic worker by the result, not the symptom. What does this mean? Symptom and result are the same thing.
Perhaps "underlying" cause was meant / as a symptom of something else. Unrealistic demands with high pressure for results may lead to cultures of misconduct for instance. If the policies lead to the behaviors getting rid of the result won't fix it.
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#68Just 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 auth…
But from a company's perspective, isn't that 23% the only number that matters?
The point of the study (and I have some issues with it too) is that the 23% could be 30% if you dealt with the toxic employee, or at the very least 23% is still doable without them, even though it seems like it isn't because they're better than average.
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Right, that's a single company's management system, but our economic system selects for best companies == groups of people. So, no, the point was completely wrong.
Re: Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High
#70This 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.
Imagine I happen to think that social and group dynamic factors are more important than individual competence. So I decide to start hiring prioritizing these characteristics over individual ability. If my hypothesis is correct, I'm going to be able to outcompete other companies in my industry and grow, achieve success, and so on. Having a large array of amicable charismatic employees at my disposal would even help for things such as favorably lobbying government to my benefit. It's win win all around.
This is the nice thing about capitalist systems. It simply selects for whatever works. At times this is not a good thing (e.g. - perhaps convincing people to buy drugs they don't need could be more profitable than making drugs people genuinely need), but in general it tends to be better, and more organic, than what any individual or group might try to dictate as what should be desired.