4 ms·

I'm not sure about the 10x part. On my team I have roughly 15 coworkers. Two are pretty useless, or at least perform at a level dramatically lower than the othe

by greedo 4y ago

I'm not sure about the 10x part. On my team I have roughly 15 coworkers. Two are pretty useless, or at least perform at a level dramatically lower than the other 13. So how do we deal with it? Like the Internet, we route around them. Sure they're a waste of company resources/money, but big companies often waste so much money in IT that it's not really a significant factor. Now if your team is very small, one or two bad apples can be quite damaging.

steveBK123 4y ago
Maybe you've not gotten the truly bad apples, or have enough process in place to mitigate. I've been in environments with people who are breaking things at a rate that causes a day of their work to cause more than a day of work for others. Fighting with management for months and then shunting them off to their own 'strategic branch' for 6 months was the only way to protect the team until they were fired.
jghn 4y ago
Most people don’t understand how bad “average” is. It’s true that a bad hire has a large impact. But people assume this means the folks like you’re describing. When not taking money into account I view those types of people as net neutral. A good litmus is to answer the question “would the team be any better off if we replaced them with no one”, and usually the answer is “no” or at least close to it. Factoring money in does change things. Especially for smaller companies. But even then people overestimate what “bad” means when they cite the massive impact of a bad hire
- steveBK123 4y ago
  Yup - there are actually net negative contributors that simply removing would cause in an increase in team output. Whether it be rate of damage to codebase, manual interventions in prod, hurting morale, time suck in meetings/idle chitchat, causing drama with stakeholders that needs to be triaged, etc. They are rare, but they happen, and the process of onboarding, feedback, giving a chance, documenting, and off boarding can take a year.

by greedo 4y ago

steveBK123 4y ago

Maybe you've not gotten the truly bad apples, or have enough process in place to mitigate. I've been in environments with people who are breaking things at a rate that causes a day of their work to cause more than a day of work for others. Fighting with management for months and then shunting them off to their own 'strategic branch' for 6 months was the only way to protect the team until they were fired.

jghn 4y ago

Most people don’t understand how bad “average” is. It’s true that a bad hire has a large impact. But people assume this means the folks like you’re describing. When not taking money into account I view those types of people as net neutral. A good litmus is to answer the question “would the team be any better off if we replaced them with no one”, and usually the answer is “no” or at least close to it. Factoring money in does change things. Especially for smaller companies. But even then people overestimate what “bad” means when they cite the massive impact of a bad hire

steveBK123 4y ago
Yup - there are actually net negative contributors that simply removing would cause in an increase in team output. Whether it be rate of damage to codebase, manual interventions in prod, hurting morale, time suck in meetings/idle chitchat, causing drama with stakeholders that needs to be triaged, etc. They are rare, but they happen, and the process of onboarding, feedback, giving a chance, documenting, and off boarding can take a year.