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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

#161

Post by munchbunny »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #125
diminoten wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 matt…

This isn't exactly what you were talking about, but one of the best pieces of advice I've heard was this:

It's never worth promoting a potentially toxic manager into a managerial role, even if they're great in their current role. If you do, the whole team suffers. If you don't and they leave because you didn't promote them, they weren't going to let you keep them as an IC anyway. Best case is you reform them, but do that before and not after you promote them.

I've seen this pattern more than I'd like.

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

#162

Post by kazinator »

This article doesn't say anything.

I'm left to imagine what exactly is a "toxic worker", what it means for them to be "productive", and how that definition of productivity allows some metal shop in Pennsylvania to become more profitable ("value of shipments per labor hour jumping from $85-90 to $123) after losing these so-called productive employees.

No definitions of "toxic", or "productivity" are given, nor any concrete (or even vague) examples of behavior or work output from which these definitions could be deduced.

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

#163

Post by wppick »

braythwayt wrote: post #25
trabant00 wrote: post #13

> The findings show that avoiding a toxic employee generates returns of nearly two-to-one as compared to those generated when firms hire a rock star" Why do you need to choose between these two though? Can't an interviewer pay attention to both the technical skills and the attitude of a potential hire? This sounds like a forced dichotomy just to justify a study nobody needs. > While toxic employees are more productiv…

> do we really need a study to tell us that bad personality > people who rush half done jobs to get that KPI are not > what you want as employees? I suspect this is a rhetorical question, and what you may be saying is, "It's ridiculous that large swathes of business needs to be told this thing over, and over, and over again, and yet they will not learn." That is my slant on this, because I observe that often times, t…

Leadership and management is probably the biggest differentiator between a successful, growing organization and an organization that is decaying or stagnant. They say people don't quit jobs they quit managers. I've found that the role of manager self selects for people with more ego than brain, or someone who desires to have power over other people. I really agree with that quote, "You show me a metric, and I'll show you a game." There's a book The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Muller that talks about this. Essentially metrics are the mapping of a complex high-dimensional system into (sometimes) a single number, so that some self-important manager can make an easier decision. Metrics are in my opinion an instrument of power (which could be used for good or ill). The book Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott also has some interesting examples on how metrics and measuring things in general is used to control groups of people, and simplify complex systems.

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

#164

Post by username90 »

jedberg wrote: post #146
commandlinefan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Having worked at Netflix, I can tell you the difference: An experienced person says "In my experience, this is the best way to go because of X, Y, and Z". A jerk says, "The best option is my way and if you do it any other way you're wrong and I don't have to justify myself to you because I'm that good." In both cases what the person is suggesting is in fact the right way to go most of the time. The difference is whet…

Being the smartest person in a room puts a lot of extra pressure and stress on you. Proving certain kinds of people wrong is hard. Doing it without upsetting them is even harder. After a while you just give up and either stop teaching people making you "toxic because he only cares about himself", or you give up trying to explain properly making you "toxic because he think we should just listen without proper explanations". Only solution is to leave and find smarter coworkers.

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

#165

Post by mrfredward »

quadcore wrote: post #143

What is a 'toxic worker'? Can the 'toxic worker' of somebody be the perfect employee for someone else? Does everyone refer to the same thing when referring to a 'toxic worker'? I don't think that's appropriate. Flagged.

The word toxic is far too subjective to be meaningful. To a toxic boss, the employee who says "no I won't work 80 hours a week and lie on the reports" is being toxic (insubordination). If that employee tells other workers to stand up for themselves or act ethically, well know he's undermining his boss and sabotaging the company, and is considered really toxic.

When person A calls person B toxic, the only thing we can really conclude is that A really dislikes B. The study gets around this subjectivity by defining toxic to mean "harmful to an organization," but this definition make the study's conclusion a tautology: firing people who harm an organization is beneficial the organization.

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

#166

Post by maxxxxx »

Sharlin wrote: post #150
maxxxxx wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I am looking at it from the employee perspective. If you want to advance it’s probably better to risk being called toxic instead of being a good team player who never gets anywhere.

There are many unethical things you might be prepared to do if your goal is "getting somewhere". Where do you draw the line? Or is it a case of not hating the player but hating the game?

It’s certainly about hating the game it also accepting that if you want to make some money you probably have to play it.

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

#167

Post by roenxi »

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.

If we can find a better system we'll use it, but this chicken system isn't it. It relies on an all-powerful farmer with the power to arbitrarily reshape chicken society. It isn't based on getting best welfare for the chickens, and from the chicken's perspective isn't optimised for their welfare.

It would be very easy to outperform capitalism if you could find leaders who care more about the output of the system than their personal power. There is no evidence that it is possible to find such leaders, and lots of evidence that capitalism resists bad leaders for extended periods of time.

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

#168

Post by mrfredward »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #24

Sadly, with our irreproducability crisis in research, p-hacking, and agenda driven media I’ve stopped taking articles like this seriously. Sad because you don’t need a lot of bad apples to spoil the well and I’m sure more research is legit and intellectually honest.

You need not question their statistics to say the study is of little value. They define a toxic worker as someone who is harmful to an organization, and conclude with the tautology that organizations are better off without these harmful people.

In other news, red apples emit more red light than green apples.

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

#169

Post by mediocrejoker »

username90 wrote: post #164
jedberg wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked at Netflix, I can tell you the difference: An experienced person says "In my experience, this is the best way to go because of X, Y, and Z". A jerk says, "The best option is my way and if you do it any other way you're wrong and I don't have to justify myself to you because I'm that good." In both cases what the person is suggesting is in fact the right way to go most of the time. The difference is whet…

Being the smartest person in a room puts a lot of extra pressure and stress on you. Proving certain kinds of people wrong is hard. Doing it without upsetting them is even harder. After a while you just give up and either stop teaching people making you "toxic because he only cares about himself", or you give up trying to explain properly making you "toxic because he think we should just listen without proper explanat…

This sounds like a dangerous mindset to get into. If someone believes "I'm the smartest person here and nobody understands me" then I agree leaving right away is the best solution for everyone.

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

#170

Post by jmrobertson »

antisthenes wrote: post #131
jmrobertson wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, too bad in many cases in companies where people play politics, the term toxic will be used as it suits best the person in power and their personal agenda, regardless of the textbook definition. People took the notion of a fluid language and took it too far, by letting words mean whatever they think they mean and refusing to get corrected and/or abide by a standard definition.

Well yes, those instances would be companies that aren't on the train quite yet of understanding what a toxic worker actually is.

Which is the whole point of these sorts of studies: education

In areas where "toxic working" is ID'd as the risk it really is (i.e. this study is old, old news), it's never a term thrown around as a political term like you're concerned about. It's a specifically cancerous, horrible way of working that's seriously easy to identify. It's like trying to play politics with the term "water leaking" to describe anything other than water leaking.

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