Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

tlnt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 229 posts

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

#121

Post by forgottenpass »

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.

That tech is already months old. There was even a blogpost on HN yesterday where someone humblebragged about controlling their toxicity in code reviews.

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

#122

Post by trhway »

happytotoss wrote: post #58

I have recently been labeled a “brilliant jerk” at a FAANG company and threatened with termination. In actuality I now know that I have acted like this (not always but sometimes) and I take ownership of it. In trying to come to terms with it, I’ve been doing a lot of research and I think the research is overly simplistic particularly when it comes to motivation. I am not a psychopath and I am not purely self interest…

> I often used, in a modified way, the Socratic method to show someone that their argument was wrong.

you do know how Socrates was punished for such a behavior ...

The Socratic like approach seems on practice to be "win the battle, lose the war", while, for comparison, Carnegie would be something like "win the war while may be loosing the battle". Being myself that typical "battle winner war looser" with the effect amplified by the typical Russian lack of soft skills, i was at some point given a enlightening talk by a friendly American which sounded something like this "Look, you're a . You say the technically correct things which you always start with 'No,...' and that doesn't let it to result in the otherwise possible productive effect. "

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

#123

Post by andrei_says_ »

rjf72 wrote: post #70
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.

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 fo…

Maybe “So I decide to start hiring prioritizing these characteristics along with individual ability?”

As for capitalism and productivity I highly recommend Dan Lyons’ Lab Rats exposing the complete chaos that human management is in.

People dynamics are complex and well, dynamic. Changes and rules carry potential for difficult to predict outcomes.

Humans are not hens and capitalism has turned out to be extremely unproductive in many situations requiring collaboration — who would’ve thought that putting short term self interest above everything else is not the best of ideas.

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

#124

Post by aylmao »

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.

> but wait... our entire economical system is based on this.

Hence our problems. If there's something I've learned to notice recently is that most world issues are or were very profitable for someone. I think we're past the point where "nature" is really that big of an issue, and now it's mostly just us pecking each other down either in the smaller scale, or in large, systematic ways.

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

#125

Post by leroy_masochist »

diminoten wrote: post #68
leroy_masochist wrote: post #40

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 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.

I get the concept of what you're saying with, "the 23% could be 30% if you dealt with the toxic employee", but I think that unfortunately is not true in a lot of cases. There are a lot of really talented, hard-working people who are also toxic leaders (some maybe not fully intentionally), and the challenge of dealing with them in an organization is that, as you point out, measurable performance is often all that matters.

I think the cost-benefit in an example like this is usually not so much "replace the asshole and get a 7% bump in growth"....it's more like, "it'll cost you a point or two of sales growth but that'll more than pay for itself in terms of lower turnover because we'll save $200k a year in recruiters fees because we won't have to pay them to find replacements for miserable junior people who don't stick around for very long".

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

#126

Post by psadri »

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 really like this insight.

However, just to play the devil’s advocate, software engineering is not like chickens laying eggs (a commodity skill). Sometimes, you have problems that most normal people can’t solve on their own and the only people who can solve them happen to be brilliant but toxic.

The existence and importance of these very difficult problems can give rise to a higher ratio of toxic brilliance in a field.

Of course, you can get lucky and have brilliant and nice. I am so grateful to have worked with some of these as well.

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

#127

Post by anon4242 »

There seems to be a conflation of toxic and productive which I don't think is necessarily true. In my case the most toxic coworker I ever had was one who was notoriously unproductive but managed to kiss upwards and kick downwards in ways that made it take a while before management noticed.

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

#128

Post by aylmao »

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).

> The method which worked better for chickens still involved selecting the best cohort (capitalism), and this improved over open breeding (socialism)

The method that worked best for people that is. It has been pretty damn horrible for chickens. From the comment:

> Indeed, for some strange reason, the individual breeding programs which had been so successful at increasing egg production now required hens to have their beaks clipped, or be housed in individual cages, or they would peck each other to death.

That doesn't sound like "better for chickens" at all. If I were a chicken I'd take open breeding any day.

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

#129

Post by jboy55 »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #97
unknowns wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the guy. 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 y…

As someone proclaiming that "manners are oil for bodies at friction", the ridiculousness of your rudeness is only surpassed by the unbelievable strawman you just set up. 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 co…

>If a snobbish, but highly talented employee builds toolkits/engines double or triple the production of the average employee

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."

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

#130

Post by vemv »

superkuh wrote: post #61

"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.

Exactly; happy someone said this before me.

'Toxic' is just a slightly more sophisticated way of saying 'big mean jerk' (i.e. something completely subjective and open to interpretation).

Post reply on HN