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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

#111

Post by arcticbull »

dleslie wrote: post #100
StrictDabbler wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons, etc. Local maxima. The best approach for the well-being of everybody is not always the most competitive approach. Your hypothetical co-operative company agrees to not testify and gets screwed over by the company that testifies against it. Capitalism selects for what works for certain individuals. We don't know that the success of capitalism isn't just a pyramid scheme that…

And the Romans and Chinese thought that they were at the End of History, as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history

Thinking it and having the ability to single handedly enact it are two very different things.

It’s one thing for me to personally think I’m at the end of history chilling in a coffee shop in SF, it’s quite another when I’ve got the finger on the nuclear codes.

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

#112

Post by atoav »

tomp wrote: post #69
lordnacho wrote: post #41

Earlier 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.

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.

Companies are rarely optimizing to give you as many eggs as possible for basically free.

Companies are optimizing for survival and draining their environment of as many resources with as little compensation they can get away with.

Companies are not optimizing for the benifit of the public. benefit for the public is PR and just like billionaire philantropes they would help humanity by magnitudes more if they paid their taxes instead of tossing cookies. No big company on earth would ever limit their usage of ressources just on their own in any significant way. if the resource runs out, they die or find another resource.

This is of course a polemic statement, and reality is more shaded than this. But capitalism can and will get nasty with increasing company size and revenue. They also get better in hiding the nasty, which doesn’t make it any easier

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

#113

Post by potta_coffee »

Asooka wrote: post #42
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.

The USMC also trains this way. If your team leader or squad leader is wounded, you're expected to be able to take his place and be effective.

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

#114

Post by dleslie »

arcticbull wrote: post #111
dleslie wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the Romans and Chinese thought that they were at the End of History, as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history

Thinking it and having the ability to single handedly enact it are two very different things. It’s one thing for me to personally think I’m at the end of history chilling in a coffee shop in SF, it’s quite another when I’ve got the finger on the nuclear codes.

It's less about the annihilation of humanity and more about belief in the superiority of a particular form of Governance.

From Wiki:

> The end of history is a political and philosophical concept that supposes that a particular political, economic, or social system may develop that would constitute the end-point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government.

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

#115

Post by jayd16 »

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.

In a perfect economic system, greedy, self interested parties would recognize this and hire accordingly. The reality is far from it, though.

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

#116

Post by shkkmo »

bduerst wrote: post #90
rahimnathwani wrote: post #79

"Toxic Workers Are More Productive" Isn't this just an instance of Berkson's paradox? [0] You might keep someone around because they're nice, or because they're productive. So if they're neither nice nor productive, then they wouldn't be hired/retained. So 100% of surviving not-nice people are productive, whereas the nice people is a mix of productive and non-productive people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berks…

I think you're talking about survivor bias, not Berkson's paradox. Also the study intentionally focuses more on the cost-benefit of retaining a specific population - productive toxic people - and doesn't care about non-productive (toxic or non-toxic) people since they don't factor into that specific C/B equation.

I think the reference to Berkson's paradox is spot on:

> The most common example of Berkson's paradox is a false observation of a negative correlation between two positive traits, i.e., that members of a population which have some positive trait tend to lack a second. Berkson's paradox occurs when this observation appears true when in reality the two properties are unrelated—or even positively correlated—because members of the population where both are absent are not equally observed.

But you are also correct, survivor bias can lead to Berkson's paradox.

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

#117

Post by atoav »

imh wrote: post #92
FakeComments wrote: post #34

Earlier 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).

It'll reward the companies with the best groups of people, but not the best groups of companies, which I think the other comment was getting at.

I am not sure what best means in this context..?

Most utilitaristic? Best in stealing public resources while being seen as a philantropist?

What the best is, depends on the incentives, the goals and the company culture. The best Mafioso in a group of the best mafiosi will be without a doubt a damn good Mafioso – but what does this mean for the rest of society?

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

#118

Post by tomp »

potta_coffee wrote: post #99
tomp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The companies with the most money that have been a long time can afford to buy their competition, buy influence in government and essentially rest on their laurels. I'd hardly call those companies the best.

Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft etc seem to prove your argument wrong.

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

#119

Post by fein »

harlanji wrote: post #12
forgottenpass wrote: post #11

In the last few years, the metagame strategy of work politicking has evolved to include the act of labeling things "toxic." Article like this are just ammunition in that. I get that this article is about the trade-off between productivity and a less-easily-quantifiable loss to morale. But only a sliver of the people hearing about the study from this article will be carefully applying the lessons learned in towards th…

Best to get ahead of the curve and self-identify as toxic.

The "safe space" work environment will end up becoming the new corporate behemoth style office type, and we'll start seeing 2012 style trendy startups looking for "toxic 10xers" or some sort of similar label. Having that edgy ground floor dev ends up being a new selling point.

I do wonder, if your whole team is made up of these "toxic" individuals, does productivity skyrocket as a result of the constant competition?

On an aside, isn't the end outcome of the article just an office full of mediocrity where no one really sticks out? How do you get natural leaders with that kind of situation?

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

#120

Post by wutbrodo »

unknowns wrote: post #96
ramblerouser wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everyone has something to provide, on many different levels.you are failing to see that, and that is your problem. 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.

Hold up.. there are "gangs" of bad employees who team up together just rag on those carrying the team.. (you... right?) 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.

> Man.. so glad Im insecure enough

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.

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