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> There's little worse than a friendly but incompetent teammate What about a very competent but toxic personality who ends up preventing contributions from oth

> There's little worse than a friendly but incompetent teammate What about a very competent but toxic personality who ends up preventing contributions from other team members, because when they contribute they get belittled or bullied?

gherkinnn 5y ago
I'd take a nice incompetent over a highly capable arsehole any day. At worst, the former is a neutral in his overall contributions, whereas the latter will be a net negative.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > At worst, the former is a neutral in his overall contributions No, with an extra teammate the expectations on your team increases, so you have to work hard enough to pay for that guys salary as well. Lets extend this a bit, would you prefer to work in a team with 5 incompetent but nice persons who don't contribute anything, so your work has to be enough to pay all their salaries, or would you want to work with 5 assholes who work hard enough that you can slack all day because they pick it up? I'm sure a majority would prefer the second scenario, the first scenario would lead to burnout really quickly and soon they will call you the toxic asshole genius.
- blibble 5y ago
  how incompetent? I've worked with people that refuse to do anything in git other than commit, which means: - new copy of the repo every time origin changes - spending a week manually rebasing a dozen commits (obviously with many unique mistakes each time) after being sent multiple simple videos explaining simple things about git, and shown how to do merge/rebase multiple times by the lead using screen sharing and refuses to upgrade their monitor from 1366x766 even after being given the money to do it, because "it's not necessary"
t-3 5y ago
Someone who prevents work from being completed is not competent. The one-dimensional view of competence as being purely technical knowledge is not useful for measuring ability to complete projects and advance the goals of the business.

gherkinnn 5y ago

I'd take a nice incompetent over a highly capable arsehole any day. At worst, the former is a neutral in his overall contributions, whereas the latter will be a net negative.

Jensson 5y ago
> At worst, the former is a neutral in his overall contributions No, with an extra teammate the expectations on your team increases, so you have to work hard enough to pay for that guys salary as well. Lets extend this a bit, would you prefer to work in a team with 5 incompetent but nice persons who don't contribute anything, so your work has to be enough to pay all their salaries, or would you want to work with 5 assholes who work hard enough that you can slack all day because they pick it up? I'm sure a majority would prefer the second scenario, the first scenario would lead to burnout really quickly and soon they will call you the toxic asshole genius.
blibble 5y ago
how incompetent? I've worked with people that refuse to do anything in git other than commit, which means: - new copy of the repo every time origin changes - spending a week manually rebasing a dozen commits (obviously with many unique mistakes each time) after being sent multiple simple videos explaining simple things about git, and shown how to do merge/rebase multiple times by the lead using screen sharing and refuses to upgrade their monitor from 1366x766 even after being given the money to do it, because "it's not necessary"

t-3 5y ago

Someone who prevents work from being completed is not competent. The one-dimensional view of competence as being purely technical knowledge is not useful for measuring ability to complete projects and advance the goals of the business.