45 ms·

Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High

200 points by tarunupaday 8y ago

forgottenpass 8y ago
>A 2015 study by Michael Housman and Dylan Minor published by the Harvard Business School defines a “toxic” employee as: “A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” If this is how they defined toxic, then the findings of the study are simply tautological.
- deleted 8y ago
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- andylei 8y ago
  the study finds that > avoiding a toxic worker (or converting him to an average worker) enhances performance to a much greater extent than replacing an average worker with a superstar worker
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    Per their definition: >avoiding a (worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people) (or converting him to an average worker) enhances performance to a much greater extent than replacing an average worker with a superstar worker Well yeah, of course it does. A harmful worker causes harm. Duh.
    - mfoy_ 8y ago
      It is not obvious or tautological that removing a bad employee is more valuable than acquiring a superb employee.
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        A bad employee can affect the whole department quickly - its so easy for corrosive attitudes to spread. But a good employee? It takes time and effort to build goodwill and teamwork. It is better to remove a bad employee, than hire a better one. More urgent anyway.
        goodpoint 8y ago
        > so easy for corrosive attitudes to spread citation needed
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Lifetime of experience. If you have other observations, feel free to make them.
        diminoten 8y ago
        One person's experience is basically useless, statistically speaking.
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        How about one person, experiencing the same thing dozens of times?
        diminoten 8y ago
        Dozens is a drop in the proverbial bucket.
chosenbreed37 8y ago
The article seems to equate "Rock Star" to "toxic". Whatever the definition of a Rock Star employee is surely, well...by definition, they must be a net positive for the organisation :-)
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  > Whatever the definition of a Rock Star employee is surely, well...by definition, they must be a net positive for the organisation :-) What?
- 010101010101 8y ago
  It does the exact opposite of that. The argument is that the focus on finding “rock stars” who act as a positive force is less efficient than a focus on avoiding “toxic” employees who act as a negative force.
- sometimesijust 8y ago
  The article compares the return on the cost/investment of hiring a rock star vs NOT hiring a toxic. It acts as guidance on what part of one's hiring pipeline is most worth investment.
blue1379 8y ago
https://news.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/16-057_d45c0b4f-fa19-49de-8f1b-4b12fe054fea.pdf https://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 loss. By definition. They also state they don't consider "productivity spillover" because they found spillover can sometimes be negative so they just assume it all cancels out. If Bob rebuilds something and saves every other employee lots of time going forward.... this analysis just ignores it. The news coverage makes it seem like a tickbox study tailored to HR interests in large orgs, so they can pat themselves on the back for 'proving' that teamwork trumps uncharismatic productivity, despite the study saying nothing about that. If one wanted to truly study these costs, they'd also be looking at charismatic unproductive people who, despite all making each other feel good, don't actually bring any value to an organisation.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Did you swipe this from reddit? https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a_harvard_study_found_that_hiring_one_highly/egvetvs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - andrewflnr 8y ago
    Alternatively, you found GP's Reddit account.
    - EpicEng 8y ago
      Nope, checked that before posting here. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a_harvard_study_found_that_hiring_one_highly/egvop31/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a...
Symmetry 8y ago
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, 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. While the conditions for group selection are only rarely right in Nature, one can readily impose genuine group selection in the laboratory. After only 6 generations of artificially imposed group selection - breeding from the hens in the best groups, rather than the best individual hens - average days of survival increased from 160 to 348, and egg mass per bird increased from 5.3 to 13.3 kg. At 58 weeks of age, the selected line had 20% mortality compared to the control group at 54%. A commercial line of hens, allowed to grow up with unclipped beaks, had 89% mortality at 58 weeks. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KE8wPzGiX5QPotyS8/conjuring-an-evolution-to-serve-you https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KE8wPzGiX5QPotyS8/conjuring-...
- goodpoint 8y ago
  > 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.
  - crimsonalucard 8y ago
    It's not just our economy. It's the duality of human nature. We function better as a group yet we are competitive at the same time. As a result in practice a hybrid system of capitalism and communism tends to work the best aka socialism. See Scandinavia.
    - chatmasta 8y ago
      Work best according to whom? Just because something works in a tiny and homogenous country, under the shadow of a few hegemonic superpowers, does not mean that same thing will work in a super power like the US, which is larger, more heterogenous, and already contributes expenses to world society that benefit Scandinavia. Take the military for example. In any real world war, Scandanavia would depend on the help of NATO; and yet their contributions to NATO are significantly smaller than those of the larger countries. Would the Scandinavian system work if any of the Scandinavian countries had a population as large and heterogenous as the US? Or if Scandinavia did not save costs by relying on the power projection of larger allied countries?
forgottenpass 8y ago
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 their personnel decisions.
- harlanji 8y ago
  Best to get ahead of the curve and self-identify as toxic.
  - xkcd-sucks 8y ago
    The dose makes the poison, better to self identify as therapeutic
  - fein 8y ago
    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?
  - forgottenpass 8y ago
    That tech is already months old. There was even a blogpost on HN yesterday where someone humblebragged about controlling their toxicity in code reviews.
- brbrodude 8y ago
  I think thats a toxic article
- thegayngler 8y ago
trabant00 8y ago
> 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 productive, meaning getting more things done, the quality of that productivity often is less than desirable If work is not up to standards then it's not done work and can't be considered productivity, can it? Again, 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?
- braythwayt 8y ago
  > 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, the incentives in organizations are to do the wrong thing that leads to the local optimum, where we define "local" as, a particular manager's well-being. If a manager is rated by the measured productivity of their teams, the will hire for the ability to make the number and manage to the number, regardless of whether the number reflects the overall good of the team or organization. As they say, "You show me a metric, and I'll show you a game." In a dysfunction organization, everyone can be individually aware that the organization's management is dysfunctional, but it can't be changed without an overwhelming majority of managers simultaneously cooperating. <insert citation to game theory and cooperating vs. defecting> Not only that, but some managers actually do better by "quelling rebellion" and enforcing the dysfunction. They will actively undermine any effort to organize change. You don't need people to be ignorant of things like this, you just need people to be attached to their individual incentives, and you need a culture where those who try to make change are rejected by the host culture.
  - wppick 8y ago
    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.
gwbas1c 8y ago
I 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?
- harlanji 8y ago
  Example: a person is being singled out by manager and assigned the junk work and not supported. Other employees start using the black sheep as a scapegoat and “othering” them. Scapegoat is unskilled at interpersonal conflict, has few personal boundaries. They start drinking or otherwise coping, because overall they like their job. After 2 years they’re laid off and nobody reaches out to them or responds. Is the laid off employee toxic? Perhaps. Were there ignored warning signs? Is that toxic? Lots of nuance in judgement. Most people feel toxicity, but there are strong incentives to maintain situational homeostasis and capitalize on others’ blind spots. Personally I’ve dumped a lot of that programming and am looking for non-judgemental and discerning workplaces, like I remember from early in my career. Hopefully not a pipe dream.
- xkcd-sucks 8y ago
  Asking that question might itself be "toxic". If "the group" arrives at that decision, consensus is better than correctness etc
  - pojzon 8y ago
    When you are blaimed individually for the failure later on, is that also "the group" consensus? In the long run always individuals are blamed and not groups..
- deleted 8y ago
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- move-on-by 8y ago
  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 going to speed this up or improve the quality, we need time not warm bodies' Of course none of those things were what my manger wanted to hear. When things inevitably went south it all came down on me and I was managed out of the company. I'm much happier now, as I see that the job was what was toxic. My manager wouldn't listen to me and I wouldn't drink the kool-aid that all was well. In fact, I saw it as my responsibility to share these concerns and to not just go with the flow. Now that I've had time to look back on it, I just think that is his management style: grind people to the bone for all that they are worth, then throw them out and repeat to the next poor sap. Anyways, the article is about toxic workers - but if the managers are the ones deciding what is considered 'productive' and who is 'toxic' then that isn't a very complete view of the actual environment.
AllegedAlec 8y ago
> Toxic employees don’t care about a company’s goals, nor do they care about building relationships with co-workers. More than just self-centered office bullies, toxic employees are actually strategic and covert. This sort of describes the sociopaths of the Gervais Principle. I don't necessarily see how this is a Bad Thing to be. If relationships help you through the day, sure, go for it, but it doesn't help you in your goals. Furthermore, your goals are, unless you are working for your own company, quite often directly opposed to what the company wants. EDIT: let me expand on this: Companies want (basically) the following: - You to do as much work as possible - You to require as little payment as possible - Be completely loyal to the company, ie: work whenever they need you to, don't even think about changing jobs, etc etc. What you (should) want: - Have job where you'd be most content, which could be at your current job, but probably isn't. Let's be fair: your own ideas for projects would be much more fun to work on then whatever you do for the company. - Get paid as much for the work you do - Do as little work as possible, so you have more time for yourself, your family and friends. I don't really see how their definition of 'toxic' checks all the boxes above. I don't care all that much for the company goals, since they are (to me) much less important than my own goals. I don't care too much for relationships with co-workers; they're my co-workers, they're not the life-long friends I already had before I started this job. Furthermore, given that on average they'll be gone in 2.5 years, spending too much time and energy into creating a relationship with someone who'll be gone by then seems like wasted effort. Furthermore, I am covert about this (since saying these things outright would be bad for my career prospects). However, my input in this company is still a net win (for both parties). Their definition of 'toxic' is therefore inadequate.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  It is a matter of degrees really. Someone merely asocial and there to build up experience so they can launch their own pursuit isn't even really a bad thing. That is accepted as a free market fundamental - people need to get funds and experience from somewhere. The 9-5 guy with dreams elsewhere isn't really a problem. Someone passionate about their work would be better for the company but well perfect being the enemy of the good. Trying to get all "perfect" employees for everything is usually a "juicero" approach in majorly overspeccing for what could be better handled by the common. Just because rocket science and self driving cars need top talent and passion doesn't mean that your IoT waffle-iron company needs fanatics. Not meantcas elitism but "there are places for all kinds of people - and nobody is entitled to them". To bring the metaphor to a creepy but apt conclusion the AK-47 was legendary for its reliability with imperfect parts and loose specs while being roughly comparable to more expensive and precise rifles prone to issues in harsher environments. There are many valid approaches to things. However more pathological in a parasitic dynamic is clearly bad and sadly prevalent high and low in organizationsm
goodpoint 8y ago
How about toxic managers? For example the ones that hire the wrong person, or allow toxic environments to build up? Or the ones that promote people based on optics?
foolsgold 8y ago
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. http://soldiersystems.net/2012/05/27/kind-leader/ http://soldiersystems.net/2012/05/27/kind-leader/ Von Moltke (the elder) is also considered as the creator of a new, more modern method of directing armies in the field, which is still used today. He also commanded by intention than by direct action, von Molkte felt that strategy needed to be adapted as battle progressed, so rather than having his staff officers be held to rigid direct action orders the had everyone working toward a series of goals, making adjustment along the way, sounds a lot like Agile software development.
- Asooka 8y ago
  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.
  - tokai 8y ago
    It's called auftragstaktik or mission command. I experienced it during my conscription (not German, but we apply it in my country as well), and it worked really good. Before the end of the service I'm certain my division could have retained most of its effectiveness, should you have removed all the ncos and the division commander. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_command
  - potta_coffee 8y ago
    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.
rdlecler1 8y ago
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.
- mrfredward 8y ago
  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.
- 0db532a0 8y ago
  Apples generally spoil barrels or bunches. Dead animals will generally spoil a well.
leroy_masochist 8y ago
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 authors rather woodenly make their way through various analyses that make productivity the dependent variable, while also delving into the question of whether toxicity is contagious within workplaces. Overall I get the impression that the study authors have never actually spent time in toxic workplaces. The most toxic employees are not those who "[engage] in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people" -- as another commenter mentioned, this is a comically tautological definition. Rather, toxic employees are those who convince their boss that they are a superstar while making the company a worse place to work. A toxic employee isn't, as the study seems to imply, somebody who writes mean graffiti in the employee bathroom -- it's someone who berates junior staffers under the auspices of demanding excellent execution, and who finishes the year with sales growth in his division up 23%.
- dasil003 8y ago
  Yeah, the problem with this kind of study is that workplace politics are highly contextual to the individuals you are dealing with. And I can think of no situation where citing a study about “toxic” individuals is going to change the mind of any executive. At this level of abstraction senior leaders already have beliefs about the human dynamics in their org and how they should be managed; the way to influence them is with specifics in the context they know rather than broad proclamations based on a raft of dubious assumptions.
- diminoten 8y ago
  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.
jmrobertson 8y ago
The mil caught onto this in a serious way somewhat recently, the commissioning sources really lean into preventing this. Great to see this catching on in the business world
happytotoss 8y ago
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 interested. My motivations have never been money or climbing or anything like that. I’ve wanted to build cool stuff that people say can’t be done but that is also successful. I have always pulled in the direction of the company and not my own (at least in my mind). I have never treated anyone badly simply to treat them badly to make myself feel better or to put them down. I always thought it was best to give people direct and honest feedback. It’s almost never what I was saying that was wrong but how I was saying it. I was too harsh and I ignored emotional data. In trying to be objective, I tried to keep things logical and data based always; I would get upset when people could not follow a logical line of thought. I often used, in a modified way, the Socratic method to show someone that their argument was wrong. This led people to feel I was disrespectful to them because it would force a contradiction. By doing this, I meant to teach them but I was wrong; it simply made people feel foolish. I ignored the emotional side of things and that’s a big problem for me. It’s also not true that I would never concede I was wrong. You just had to have a really strong case. Up until now this has also “worked” as it’s gotten things done on time. In one case, my work saved a product line that would have failed entirely. It took a lot of courage to stick my neck out and said we had to change direction. The change in direction meant abandoning something I had spent a year designing. Nobody wanted to abandon that work and shift. It was the right thing to do though. I took a huge amount risk and flack at the time and probably was almost fired. So there is good and bad to this. I am working to change but something is going to get lost. I probably won’t stick my neck out like that again. I am also human. I make mistakes too and I’m trying to learn from all this.
- diminoten 8y ago
  It's... scary sometimes, reading comments like these. On one hand, I identify with what you've written here. I too had issues (still have) with working on a team. On the other hand, I find myself identifying with someone with clear narcissistic tendencies, or at the very least is supremely unaware of themselves. Why write this little confessional here, a place that's clearly not about you or your specific issue? Why couch it with tons of "but I didn't actually do anything wrong" notes? Why write it in such a rambling, stream-of-consciousness style? Why put these weirdly specific anecdotes, and why would the reader (who is the reader, by the way) even believe you? I see these comments, and I get scared, because I recognize that this is how some people view me, and that's... not good.
superkuh 8y ago
"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.
- vemv 8y ago
  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).
rahimnathwani 8y ago
"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/Berkson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox
- bduerst 8y ago
  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.
  - shkkmo 8y ago
    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.
- ThePadawan 8y ago
  You might also keep someone around because there are not enough candidates to fill all positions, never mind hire a replacement for them.
kartan 8y ago
> Toxic Workers Are More Productive, Not my personal experience. I have seen that they are perceived as better as they have less self-doubt and sound more authoritative. But, the ones I have work with were bad. Usually toxic workers seen as more productive and bad/inexperienced management go hand with hand.
wppick 8y ago
There will always be people with high ambition that want to perform and grow, and those people will likely be in contention with another type of person who wants a relaxing, stable, fun, and sustainable work environment. It's the job of leadership to match the right people together and set values and boundaries so that both of those employee types can satisfy their desires. It's lazy to just start labelling people as toxic. It's an oversimplification. Imagine putting a high performance athlete who is driven by the need to push themselves and compete with a bunch of lazy couch potatoes who just want to socialize and get a light workout.
anon4242 8y ago
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.
quadcore 8y ago
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.
- wppick 8y ago
  If it floats, it's a witch I highly doubt that 'toxic worker' has a consistent definition. Humans are tribal animals, and if you look through history I'm sure you can find see examples of 'toxic' members of tribes. Maybe at one point being left-handed made you a 'toxic' member of your tribe. It all comes down to what values and truths exist in the hive mind, and whose agenda is being served
- mrfredward 8y ago
  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.
true_tuna 8y ago
Net negative is the correct description.
kazinator 8y ago
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.
yowlingcat 8y ago
I'm beginning to notice a trend with these kind of organizational pop psychology pieces. There is usually (especially in this piece) a bias towards overvaluing the risk contribution of an individual and a devaluing of the risk contribution and ownership of the leadership structure. This piece is, to borrow a term, "not even wrong." There's no proof that "toxic workers" are more productive. By all accounts, toxic workers come in all shapes and sizes -- and what is a toxic worker, really? Is it someone who is physically and psychologically harmful to everyone in their lives and should probably seek rehabilitation before being reintroduced to society? Okay, that's one thing. Is it someone who is not being managed properly, pushed into the wrong role, not given the right tools to do their job? Are they stuck in a dysfunctional culture run by sycophants, idiots and bullies? Are they unintentionally paving a road to hell with the best of intentions and the worst of consequences? What I'm trying to get at here is the necessity of supervision. Organizations have command structures and hierarchies, whether implicit or explicit. The risks and consequences of those structures ultimately lies with management and leadership -- after all, it's with them that the true agency lies! If it's not the job of management and leadership to train, manage out or fire misfits within the organization, what exactly is their job? After all, it's not individual contribution. There's sales, marketing, fundraising -- but except for the last one (and even that's a stretch), these are all team efforts. You maximize output from your team by removing unnecessary friction. If that can't happen passively, active changes need to be made. Of course, such a brain-dead thinkpiece never couches with such responsibility or collectivist realities. They're comforting kernels of individualist tactics, sold to give the illusion of control. They're as attractive as a trendy new diet built on poor foundations, but about as effective: that is to say, not at all. Nothing can kill a company as quickly as poor leadership. As a company gets larger, logistics rears its ugly head. Pragmatic structuring can mitigate that, and good leadership can bring about directional change towards that. But, nothing can stop bad leadership until it wants to improve.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago
  > If it's not the job of management and leadership to train, manage out or fire misfits within the organization, what exactly is their job? I personally agree with this. But, there's this other school of thought out there (which I'm tired of, frankly) that seems to believe management is supposed to "hire the best", pay them well and stay the hell out of their way. The reasoning is that "all these geniuses we've hired" will create a vast new pool of profitability through unfettered innovation, deep insight, and wild creativity. Or something. I believe that Google and Facebook think they are doing this with their hiring practices.
Tomminn 8y ago
They define a rockstar as someone in the top 1% of productivity. In order to know how many average employees that equates to, you need to know something about the distribution of productivity across employees. Only then can you judge whether the harm caused to normal employees by the "toxic rockstar" is worth the price.
jmchuster 8y ago
This just sounds like the same as the nice guy paradox. If girls are looking to date guys who are both nice and good-looking, you only date guys who are assholes if they are really good looking. Same thing with a "rockstar" asshole engineeer. If you weren't an awesome engineer on top of being an asshole, you wouldn't even be employed and we're not talking about you. It's not because there's this magical correlation between being a "rockstar" and an asshole. This is just an outcome of sampling.
zeroname 8y ago
Can't you just have team made up of only "toxic" people? Do "toxic" people negatively affect the productivity of other "toxic" people? I personally wouldn't want want to give up entirely on all the socially inept assholes whose in-depth knowledge on crap that I don't care to know about (but rely on) seemingly knows no bounds. More specifically, I do want to keep the IT department.
HillaryBriss 8y ago
this is one of the very best articles i've ever found on HN. it addresses the most important aspects of the toxic employee syndrome which i personally have encountered in multiple working environments. every manager should read this article.
cryofan 8y ago
typically, "toxic" employees are created by management failing to control other employees...these "other" employees typically seek to exploit smart, hard-working co-workers so they can do less work themselves...this dysfunctional dynamic is created by management malpractice...and results in the creation of many "toxic" employees...

200 points by tarunupaday 8y ago

>A 2015 study by Michael Housman and Dylan Minor published by the Harvard Business School defines a “toxic” employee as: “A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” If this is how they defined toxic, then the findings of the study are simply tautological.

deleted 8y ago
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andylei 8y ago
the study finds that > avoiding a toxic worker (or converting him to an average worker) enhances performance to a much greater extent than replacing an average worker with a superstar worker
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Per their definition: >avoiding a (worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people) (or converting him to an average worker) enhances performance to a much greater extent than replacing an average worker with a superstar worker Well yeah, of course it does. A harmful worker causes harm. Duh.
  - mfoy_ 8y ago
    It is not obvious or tautological that removing a bad employee is more valuable than acquiring a superb employee.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      A bad employee can affect the whole department quickly - its so easy for corrosive attitudes to spread. But a good employee? It takes time and effort to build goodwill and teamwork. It is better to remove a bad employee, than hire a better one. More urgent anyway.
      - goodpoint 8y ago
        > so easy for corrosive attitudes to spread citation needed
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Lifetime of experience. If you have other observations, feel free to make them.
        diminoten 8y ago
        One person's experience is basically useless, statistically speaking.
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        How about one person, experiencing the same thing dozens of times?
        diminoten 8y ago
        Dozens is a drop in the proverbial bucket.

chosenbreed37 8y ago

The article seems to equate "Rock Star" to "toxic". Whatever the definition of a Rock Star employee is surely, well...by definition, they must be a net positive for the organisation :-)

pavel_lishin 8y ago
> Whatever the definition of a Rock Star employee is surely, well...by definition, they must be a net positive for the organisation :-) What?
010101010101 8y ago
It does the exact opposite of that. The argument is that the focus on finding “rock stars” who act as a positive force is less efficient than a focus on avoiding “toxic” employees who act as a negative force.
sometimesijust 8y ago
The article compares the return on the cost/investment of hiring a rock star vs NOT hiring a toxic. It acts as guidance on what part of one's hiring pipeline is most worth investment.

blue1379 8y ago

https://news.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/16-057_d45c0b4f-fa19-49de-8f1b-4b12fe054fea.pdf https://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 loss. By definition. They also state they don't consider "productivity spillover" because they found spillover can sometimes be negative so they just assume it all cancels out. If Bob rebuilds something and saves every other employee lots of time going forward.... this analysis just ignores it. The news coverage makes it seem like a tickbox study tailored to HR interests in large orgs, so they can pat themselves on the back for 'proving' that teamwork trumps uncharismatic productivity, despite the study saying nothing about that. If one wanted to truly study these costs, they'd also be looking at charismatic unproductive people who, despite all making each other feel good, don't actually bring any value to an organisation.

EpicEng 8y ago
Did you swipe this from reddit? https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a_harvard_study_found_that_hiring_one_highly/egvetvs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- andrewflnr 8y ago
  Alternatively, you found GP's Reddit account.
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    Nope, checked that before posting here. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a_harvard_study_found_that_hiring_one_highly/egvop31/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/asmvxc/til_a...

Symmetry 8y ago

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, 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. While the conditions for group selection are only rarely right in Nature, one can readily impose genuine group selection in the laboratory. After only 6 generations of artificially imposed group selection - breeding from the hens in the best groups, rather than the best individual hens - average days of survival increased from 160 to 348, and egg mass per bird increased from 5.3 to 13.3 kg. At 58 weeks of age, the selected line had 20% mortality compared to the control group at 54%. A commercial line of hens, allowed to grow up with unclipped beaks, had 89% mortality at 58 weeks. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KE8wPzGiX5QPotyS8/conjuring-an-evolution-to-serve-you https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KE8wPzGiX5QPotyS8/conjuring-...

goodpoint 8y ago
> 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.
- crimsonalucard 8y ago
  It's not just our economy. It's the duality of human nature. We function better as a group yet we are competitive at the same time. As a result in practice a hybrid system of capitalism and communism tends to work the best aka socialism. See Scandinavia.
  - chatmasta 8y ago
    Work best according to whom? Just because something works in a tiny and homogenous country, under the shadow of a few hegemonic superpowers, does not mean that same thing will work in a super power like the US, which is larger, more heterogenous, and already contributes expenses to world society that benefit Scandinavia. Take the military for example. In any real world war, Scandanavia would depend on the help of NATO; and yet their contributions to NATO are significantly smaller than those of the larger countries. Would the Scandinavian system work if any of the Scandinavian countries had a population as large and heterogenous as the US? Or if Scandinavia did not save costs by relying on the power projection of larger allied countries?

forgottenpass 8y ago

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 their personnel decisions.

harlanji 8y ago
Best to get ahead of the curve and self-identify as toxic.
- xkcd-sucks 8y ago
  The dose makes the poison, better to self identify as therapeutic
- fein 8y ago
  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?
- forgottenpass 8y ago
  That tech is already months old. There was even a blogpost on HN yesterday where someone humblebragged about controlling their toxicity in code reviews.
brbrodude 8y ago
I think thats a toxic article
thegayngler 8y ago

trabant00 8y ago

> 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 productive, meaning getting more things done, the quality of that productivity often is less than desirable If work is not up to standards then it's not done work and can't be considered productivity, can it? Again, 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?

braythwayt 8y ago
> 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, the incentives in organizations are to do the wrong thing that leads to the local optimum, where we define "local" as, a particular manager's well-being. If a manager is rated by the measured productivity of their teams, the will hire for the ability to make the number and manage to the number, regardless of whether the number reflects the overall good of the team or organization. As they say, "You show me a metric, and I'll show you a game." In a dysfunction organization, everyone can be individually aware that the organization's management is dysfunctional, but it can't be changed without an overwhelming majority of managers simultaneously cooperating. <insert citation to game theory and cooperating vs. defecting> Not only that, but some managers actually do better by "quelling rebellion" and enforcing the dysfunction. They will actively undermine any effort to organize change. You don't need people to be ignorant of things like this, you just need people to be attached to their individual incentives, and you need a culture where those who try to make change are rejected by the host culture.
- wppick 8y ago
  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.

gwbas1c 8y ago

I 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?

harlanji 8y ago
Example: a person is being singled out by manager and assigned the junk work and not supported. Other employees start using the black sheep as a scapegoat and “othering” them. Scapegoat is unskilled at interpersonal conflict, has few personal boundaries. They start drinking or otherwise coping, because overall they like their job. After 2 years they’re laid off and nobody reaches out to them or responds. Is the laid off employee toxic? Perhaps. Were there ignored warning signs? Is that toxic? Lots of nuance in judgement. Most people feel toxicity, but there are strong incentives to maintain situational homeostasis and capitalize on others’ blind spots. Personally I’ve dumped a lot of that programming and am looking for non-judgemental and discerning workplaces, like I remember from early in my career. Hopefully not a pipe dream.
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
Asking that question might itself be "toxic". If "the group" arrives at that decision, consensus is better than correctness etc
- pojzon 8y ago
  When you are blaimed individually for the failure later on, is that also "the group" consensus? In the long run always individuals are blamed and not groups..
deleted 8y ago
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move-on-by 8y ago
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 going to speed this up or improve the quality, we need time not warm bodies' Of course none of those things were what my manger wanted to hear. When things inevitably went south it all came down on me and I was managed out of the company. I'm much happier now, as I see that the job was what was toxic. My manager wouldn't listen to me and I wouldn't drink the kool-aid that all was well. In fact, I saw it as my responsibility to share these concerns and to not just go with the flow. Now that I've had time to look back on it, I just think that is his management style: grind people to the bone for all that they are worth, then throw them out and repeat to the next poor sap. Anyways, the article is about toxic workers - but if the managers are the ones deciding what is considered 'productive' and who is 'toxic' then that isn't a very complete view of the actual environment.

AllegedAlec 8y ago

> Toxic employees don’t care about a company’s goals, nor do they care about building relationships with co-workers. More than just self-centered office bullies, toxic employees are actually strategic and covert. This sort of describes the sociopaths of the Gervais Principle. I don't necessarily see how this is a Bad Thing to be. If relationships help you through the day, sure, go for it, but it doesn't help you in your goals. Furthermore, your goals are, unless you are working for your own company, quite often directly opposed to what the company wants. EDIT: let me expand on this: Companies want (basically) the following: - You to do as much work as possible - You to require as little payment as possible - Be completely loyal to the company, ie: work whenever they need you to, don't even think about changing jobs, etc etc. What you (should) want: - Have job where you'd be most content, which could be at your current job, but probably isn't. Let's be fair: your own ideas for projects would be much more fun to work on then whatever you do for the company. - Get paid as much for the work you do - Do as little work as possible, so you have more time for yourself, your family and friends. I don't really see how their definition of 'toxic' checks all the boxes above. I don't care all that much for the company goals, since they are (to me) much less important than my own goals. I don't care too much for relationships with co-workers; they're my co-workers, they're not the life-long friends I already had before I started this job. Furthermore, given that on average they'll be gone in 2.5 years, spending too much time and energy into creating a relationship with someone who'll be gone by then seems like wasted effort. Furthermore, I am covert about this (since saying these things outright would be bad for my career prospects). However, my input in this company is still a net win (for both parties). Their definition of 'toxic' is therefore inadequate.

Nasrudith 8y ago
It is a matter of degrees really. Someone merely asocial and there to build up experience so they can launch their own pursuit isn't even really a bad thing. That is accepted as a free market fundamental - people need to get funds and experience from somewhere. The 9-5 guy with dreams elsewhere isn't really a problem. Someone passionate about their work would be better for the company but well perfect being the enemy of the good. Trying to get all "perfect" employees for everything is usually a "juicero" approach in majorly overspeccing for what could be better handled by the common. Just because rocket science and self driving cars need top talent and passion doesn't mean that your IoT waffle-iron company needs fanatics. Not meantcas elitism but "there are places for all kinds of people - and nobody is entitled to them". To bring the metaphor to a creepy but apt conclusion the AK-47 was legendary for its reliability with imperfect parts and loose specs while being roughly comparable to more expensive and precise rifles prone to issues in harsher environments. There are many valid approaches to things. However more pathological in a parasitic dynamic is clearly bad and sadly prevalent high and low in organizationsm

goodpoint 8y ago

How about toxic managers? For example the ones that hire the wrong person, or allow toxic environments to build up? Or the ones that promote people based on optics?

foolsgold 8y ago

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. http://soldiersystems.net/2012/05/27/kind-leader/ http://soldiersystems.net/2012/05/27/kind-leader/ Von Moltke (the elder) is also considered as the creator of a new, more modern method of directing armies in the field, which is still used today. He also commanded by intention than by direct action, von Molkte felt that strategy needed to be adapted as battle progressed, so rather than having his staff officers be held to rigid direct action orders the had everyone working toward a series of goals, making adjustment along the way, sounds a lot like Agile software development.

Asooka 8y ago
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.
- tokai 8y ago
  It's called auftragstaktik or mission command. I experienced it during my conscription (not German, but we apply it in my country as well), and it worked really good. Before the end of the service I'm certain my division could have retained most of its effectiveness, should you have removed all the ncos and the division commander. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_command
- potta_coffee 8y ago
  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.

rdlecler1 8y ago

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.

mrfredward 8y ago
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.
0db532a0 8y ago
Apples generally spoil barrels or bunches. Dead animals will generally spoil a well.

leroy_masochist 8y ago

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 authors rather woodenly make their way through various analyses that make productivity the dependent variable, while also delving into the question of whether toxicity is contagious within workplaces. Overall I get the impression that the study authors have never actually spent time in toxic workplaces. The most toxic employees are not those who "[engage] in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people" -- as another commenter mentioned, this is a comically tautological definition. Rather, toxic employees are those who convince their boss that they are a superstar while making the company a worse place to work. A toxic employee isn't, as the study seems to imply, somebody who writes mean graffiti in the employee bathroom -- it's someone who berates junior staffers under the auspices of demanding excellent execution, and who finishes the year with sales growth in his division up 23%.

dasil003 8y ago
Yeah, the problem with this kind of study is that workplace politics are highly contextual to the individuals you are dealing with. And I can think of no situation where citing a study about “toxic” individuals is going to change the mind of any executive. At this level of abstraction senior leaders already have beliefs about the human dynamics in their org and how they should be managed; the way to influence them is with specifics in the context they know rather than broad proclamations based on a raft of dubious assumptions.
diminoten 8y ago
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.

jmrobertson 8y ago

The mil caught onto this in a serious way somewhat recently, the commissioning sources really lean into preventing this. Great to see this catching on in the business world

happytotoss 8y ago

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 interested. My motivations have never been money or climbing or anything like that. I’ve wanted to build cool stuff that people say can’t be done but that is also successful. I have always pulled in the direction of the company and not my own (at least in my mind). I have never treated anyone badly simply to treat them badly to make myself feel better or to put them down. I always thought it was best to give people direct and honest feedback. It’s almost never what I was saying that was wrong but how I was saying it. I was too harsh and I ignored emotional data. In trying to be objective, I tried to keep things logical and data based always; I would get upset when people could not follow a logical line of thought. I often used, in a modified way, the Socratic method to show someone that their argument was wrong. This led people to feel I was disrespectful to them because it would force a contradiction. By doing this, I meant to teach them but I was wrong; it simply made people feel foolish. I ignored the emotional side of things and that’s a big problem for me. It’s also not true that I would never concede I was wrong. You just had to have a really strong case. Up until now this has also “worked” as it’s gotten things done on time. In one case, my work saved a product line that would have failed entirely. It took a lot of courage to stick my neck out and said we had to change direction. The change in direction meant abandoning something I had spent a year designing. Nobody wanted to abandon that work and shift. It was the right thing to do though. I took a huge amount risk and flack at the time and probably was almost fired. So there is good and bad to this. I am working to change but something is going to get lost. I probably won’t stick my neck out like that again. I am also human. I make mistakes too and I’m trying to learn from all this.

diminoten 8y ago
It's... scary sometimes, reading comments like these. On one hand, I identify with what you've written here. I too had issues (still have) with working on a team. On the other hand, I find myself identifying with someone with clear narcissistic tendencies, or at the very least is supremely unaware of themselves. Why write this little confessional here, a place that's clearly not about you or your specific issue? Why couch it with tons of "but I didn't actually do anything wrong" notes? Why write it in such a rambling, stream-of-consciousness style? Why put these weirdly specific anecdotes, and why would the reader (who is the reader, by the way) even believe you? I see these comments, and I get scared, because I recognize that this is how some people view me, and that's... not good.

superkuh 8y ago

"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.

vemv 8y ago
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).

rahimnathwani 8y ago

"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/Berkson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox

bduerst 8y ago
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.
- shkkmo 8y ago
  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.
ThePadawan 8y ago
You might also keep someone around because there are not enough candidates to fill all positions, never mind hire a replacement for them.

kartan 8y ago

> Toxic Workers Are More Productive, Not my personal experience. I have seen that they are perceived as better as they have less self-doubt and sound more authoritative. But, the ones I have work with were bad. Usually toxic workers seen as more productive and bad/inexperienced management go hand with hand.

wppick 8y ago

There will always be people with high ambition that want to perform and grow, and those people will likely be in contention with another type of person who wants a relaxing, stable, fun, and sustainable work environment. It's the job of leadership to match the right people together and set values and boundaries so that both of those employee types can satisfy their desires. It's lazy to just start labelling people as toxic. It's an oversimplification. Imagine putting a high performance athlete who is driven by the need to push themselves and compete with a bunch of lazy couch potatoes who just want to socialize and get a light workout.

anon4242 8y ago

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.

quadcore 8y ago

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.

wppick 8y ago
If it floats, it's a witch I highly doubt that 'toxic worker' has a consistent definition. Humans are tribal animals, and if you look through history I'm sure you can find see examples of 'toxic' members of tribes. Maybe at one point being left-handed made you a 'toxic' member of your tribe. It all comes down to what values and truths exist in the hive mind, and whose agenda is being served
mrfredward 8y ago
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.

true_tuna 8y ago

Net negative is the correct description.

kazinator 8y ago

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.

yowlingcat 8y ago

I'm beginning to notice a trend with these kind of organizational pop psychology pieces. There is usually (especially in this piece) a bias towards overvaluing the risk contribution of an individual and a devaluing of the risk contribution and ownership of the leadership structure. This piece is, to borrow a term, "not even wrong." There's no proof that "toxic workers" are more productive. By all accounts, toxic workers come in all shapes and sizes -- and what is a toxic worker, really? Is it someone who is physically and psychologically harmful to everyone in their lives and should probably seek rehabilitation before being reintroduced to society? Okay, that's one thing. Is it someone who is not being managed properly, pushed into the wrong role, not given the right tools to do their job? Are they stuck in a dysfunctional culture run by sycophants, idiots and bullies? Are they unintentionally paving a road to hell with the best of intentions and the worst of consequences? What I'm trying to get at here is the necessity of supervision. Organizations have command structures and hierarchies, whether implicit or explicit. The risks and consequences of those structures ultimately lies with management and leadership -- after all, it's with them that the true agency lies! If it's not the job of management and leadership to train, manage out or fire misfits within the organization, what exactly is their job? After all, it's not individual contribution. There's sales, marketing, fundraising -- but except for the last one (and even that's a stretch), these are all team efforts. You maximize output from your team by removing unnecessary friction. If that can't happen passively, active changes need to be made. Of course, such a brain-dead thinkpiece never couches with such responsibility or collectivist realities. They're comforting kernels of individualist tactics, sold to give the illusion of control. They're as attractive as a trendy new diet built on poor foundations, but about as effective: that is to say, not at all. Nothing can kill a company as quickly as poor leadership. As a company gets larger, logistics rears its ugly head. Pragmatic structuring can mitigate that, and good leadership can bring about directional change towards that. But, nothing can stop bad leadership until it wants to improve.

HillaryBriss 8y ago
> If it's not the job of management and leadership to train, manage out or fire misfits within the organization, what exactly is their job? I personally agree with this. But, there's this other school of thought out there (which I'm tired of, frankly) that seems to believe management is supposed to "hire the best", pay them well and stay the hell out of their way. The reasoning is that "all these geniuses we've hired" will create a vast new pool of profitability through unfettered innovation, deep insight, and wild creativity. Or something. I believe that Google and Facebook think they are doing this with their hiring practices.

Tomminn 8y ago

They define a rockstar as someone in the top 1% of productivity. In order to know how many average employees that equates to, you need to know something about the distribution of productivity across employees. Only then can you judge whether the harm caused to normal employees by the "toxic rockstar" is worth the price.

jmchuster 8y ago

This just sounds like the same as the nice guy paradox. If girls are looking to date guys who are both nice and good-looking, you only date guys who are assholes if they are really good looking. Same thing with a "rockstar" asshole engineeer. If you weren't an awesome engineer on top of being an asshole, you wouldn't even be employed and we're not talking about you. It's not because there's this magical correlation between being a "rockstar" and an asshole. This is just an outcome of sampling.

zeroname 8y ago

Can't you just have team made up of only "toxic" people? Do "toxic" people negatively affect the productivity of other "toxic" people? I personally wouldn't want want to give up entirely on all the socially inept assholes whose in-depth knowledge on crap that I don't care to know about (but rely on) seemingly knows no bounds. More specifically, I do want to keep the IT department.

HillaryBriss 8y ago

this is one of the very best articles i've ever found on HN. it addresses the most important aspects of the toxic employee syndrome which i personally have encountered in multiple working environments. every manager should read this article.

cryofan 8y ago

typically, "toxic" employees are created by management failing to control other employees...these "other" employees typically seek to exploit smart, hard-working co-workers so they can do less work themselves...this dysfunctional dynamic is created by management malpractice...and results in the creation of many "toxic" employees...