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

A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

blog.glyph.im

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 126 posts

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#31

Post by tbrake »

donatj wrote: post #22
alfor wrote: post #10

ADHD is probably the problem under this behaviour. Can’t complete tasks and underperform but want to help other, be part of the team. People with ADHD have developed coping behaviour to fit in but have very low control on their executive functions, they can’t keep working on something that doesn’t catch their attention. It’s very hard to understand for someone who don’t have the problem "why can’t they just do it!" W…

This sounds a lot like me. I do get a TON done, am always working hard, but I can’t single thread to save my soul. I have a tendency to work on 6+ tickets at the same time which has in the past clashed with what management has wanted - clean single threaded work that looks nice on a kanban board. For instance I have a project right now that in linear time has taken about a week but has taken well over a month in actu…

If you're a small enough team, this doesn't matter. But if someone else - whether a single dev or another team - depends on your work then you run the real risk of being a bottleneck to other people and the business.

At that point all the "potential" in the world means jack if we wanted to ship in June but pushed back to August.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#32

Post by [deleted] »

wun0ne wrote: post #8
milar wrote: post #3

I don’t understand how this is an issue that needs anxiety. Fire them. I’ve been this person early in my life, and deserved to be fired. Incompetent but nice is still, literally, incompetent. Incompetent people get dismissed.

Firing someone in the case of underperformance (particularly outside of the US) is rarely a straightforward process. You typically need to give the under-performing employee at least a chance to improve and meet the required standard - otherwise the hiring company will be leaving themselves open to a wrongful dismissal suit.

[deleted]

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#33

Post by flappyeagle »

manfre wrote: post #4
milar wrote: post #3

I don’t understand how this is an issue that needs anxiety. Fire them. I’ve been this person early in my life, and deserved to be fired. Incompetent but nice is still, literally, incompetent. Incompetent people get dismissed.

> I don’t understand how this is an issue that needs anxiety. Empathy. Some people have more of it than others.

Often it’s extremely misguided. It’s better for people to work at a job they don’t struggle with. Fire them and move on so they can too

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#34

Post by rtpg »

alfor wrote: post #10

ADHD is probably the problem under this behaviour. Can’t complete tasks and underperform but want to help other, be part of the team. People with ADHD have developed coping behaviour to fit in but have very low control on their executive functions, they can’t keep working on something that doesn’t catch their attention. It’s very hard to understand for someone who don’t have the problem "why can’t they just do it!" W…

There are definitely people who have ADHD and are simply not diagnosed, as well as people who are "afraid of" medication for reason X.

For people who are unsure about this, though, ADHD having-ness is not 100% equivalent to "being unable to do your job with focus".

Like parent mentions, ADHD is fundamentally about low executive control. So if you find yourself often saying things and immediately regretting it (often mid-phrase), having trouble with addictive behavior, and otherwise just doing things and regretting them in social spheres (as you "know better" in theory), then it could fall in there. The social issues that come up with ADHD are an under-rated aspect of the disorder, and rules out a lot of the "it's not ADHD it's capitalism" stuff.

If you just can't concentrate at work... might be something else. Handling ADHD with meds can make your life better, but at the end of the day your job might just not work for you.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#35

Post by tbrake »

tyingq wrote: post #23
jasode wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You typically need to give the under-performing employee at least a chance to improve and meet the required standard - otherwise the hiring company will be leaving themselves open to a wrongful dismissal suit. In the USA where most states are "at will" employment, a "PIP" (Performance Improvement Plan) or providing multiple chances for an employee to become better isn't required by law: https://www.google.com/search…

"some industries add a PIP as a social norm" I suspect they often do the PIP as legal protection, documentation they can produce later if needed. Even in an "at-will" environment, employees can sue for wrongful termination.

I think this is broadly the case. A few companies might be genuinely invested in improving performance with such a plan but for the majority it's a way of managing someone out. Over the years I've seen over 30 devs put on PiPs. 1 survived.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#36

Post by indymike »

weinzierl wrote: post #5
milar wrote: post #3

I don’t understand how this is an issue that needs anxiety. Fire them. I’ve been this person early in my life, and deserved to be fired. Incompetent but nice is still, literally, incompetent. Incompetent people get dismissed.

The article has a clickbait title: It uses the word "incompetent" when it should have said "underperforming" . There are may reasons an employee is not performing and the article discusses a few of them. Sometimes it is right to fire the person, sometimes another approach might be better. It's as nuanced as the reasons.

This article, and the one it was written in response to are both about the scenario where someone is under-performing because they are incompetent, not capable of becoming competent and really nice and likable. What both articles missed is that in many organizations nice, incompetent people often get promoted to leadership positions and become the subject of business books and bad memes... and unfortunately go on to hire lots of other nice but incompetent people.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#37

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

flappyeagle wrote: post #33
manfre wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand how this is an issue that needs anxiety. Empathy. Some people have more of it than others.

Often it’s extremely misguided. It’s better for people to work at a job they don’t struggle with. Fire them and move on so they can too

If people didn't need jobs to have food and shelter you might have a point, but as it is our society is constructed such that even the time it takes to find a new job will have significant impact on most people's ability to pay for basic necessities.

Maybe we should fix that? Nah, let's just treat people like expendable resources so we don't have to increase taxes on the wealth elite who never need be concerned with such things.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#38

Post by MontyCarloHall »

alfor wrote: post #10

ADHD is probably the problem under this behaviour. Can’t complete tasks and underperform but want to help other, be part of the team. People with ADHD have developed coping behaviour to fit in but have very low control on their executive functions, they can’t keep working on something that doesn’t catch their attention. It’s very hard to understand for someone who don’t have the problem "why can’t they just do it!" W…

>ADHD is probably the problem under this behaviour.

Whether this is the case quickly becomes apparent by working closely in tandem with the person, e.g. pair programming. It will be obvious within the first few minutes whether the person simply cannot hold a train of thought for as long as the problem requires. As you write, there are concrete ways of addressing this.

On the other hand, it is also obvious when the lack of productivity stems not from a lack of focus but simply not having a mind suited to the job. I’ve seen people focus intently for hours to complete a task that would take most others on the team a few minutes, and not for lack of knowledge or training; their brain simply worked at a much slower speed. There is nothing that can be done to rectify this. These are thus the hardest people to empathetically fire, since you’re basically letting them go for not being smart enough for the job, despite being an extremely diligent worker.

Re: A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”

#39

Post by indymike »

danielrpa wrote: post #13
wun0ne wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firing someone in the case of underperformance (particularly outside of the US) is rarely a straightforward process. You typically need to give the under-performing employee at least a chance to improve and meet the required standard - otherwise the hiring company will be leaving themselves open to a wrongful dismissal suit.

Everything you said is correct. And just to be clear, in the US it is technically very straightforward in most states and you can fire people for any (non-protected) reason or for no reason whatsoever without any notice. However, there is always a risk that people will sue the employer by claiming that they were fired for reasons other than underperformance (gender, race, religion etc). Employers in the US don't care…

> Employers in the US don't care about giving people the opportunity to improve, it's more about documenting the underperformance so there is an airtight case against the employee - nobody can claim a protected reason if the underperformance is very well documented.

Actually, these efforts often don't help much. As a rule, if you find yourself doing elaborate cover-your-ass excessive, you probably are doing something very systematically wrong. I've seen plenty of situations where the well-meaning managers documented everything, did the whole document poor performance, and a single deposition of a manager made it clear that the entire process used to document and remedy under-performance was simply collusion to fire someone for a protected reason... even though in reality, it was not. It goes kind of like this:

"So after four years of not a single entry in ___'s file, suddenly a poor review and a complicated PIP?" "____ just wasn't fitting in on the team."

"Hmm. _____ is the only _____ on the team, despite _____'s race/religion being ___% of the population. All hires made after you became manager were (insert manager's race/religion/sex). No other employees on your team are on PIPs. So, why is it that ___ wasn't fitting in?"

"I can haz consult with lawyer now?" (followed by settlement for 2x manager's salary)

Post reply on HN