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Sometimes I'm just happy to avoid the worst engineers. They do exist. Bad work ethic, poor foundational skills, hard to work with. I feel that if I can weed the

Sometimes I'm just happy to avoid the worst engineers. They do exist. Bad work ethic, poor foundational skills, hard to work with. I feel that if I can weed them out, I've done 75% of my job as a hiring manager.

foobarian 1y ago
So much this. As I've been changing teams at my company (which by and large has awesome people) there is the occasional person in the team that just drags down the rest so much, they are probably a net negative. And it's such a breath of fresh air when the whole team is excellent.
j45 1y ago
So true. Anyone who isn't wanting to be a self-directed learner misses the essence of working and growing with technology.
pbronez 1y ago
Yes, essential to protect the broader team from low performance and toxic colleagues. The trick is to get the disruptive folks off the team quickly without causing the productive folks to doubt their job security. Clear communication and transparent accountability are the way.
Centigonal 1y ago
Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer talk about this right at the start of No Rules Rules. Netflix had to lay off a big chunk of of their staff because of a funding crunch early in their history. Despite the negative emotional toll that took on everyone, productivity actually improved. The authors reference a Will Felps experiment[1] that showed that introducing just one pessimistic, lazy, or mean actor into a group of professionals cut the entire group's productivity by 30-40%. As a result of this lesson, Netflix now only hires "A-players" and is pretty aggressive about letting go of "B-players" and "C-Players." [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/370/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/370/transcript This has been borne out in real-world observational studies, too: https://www.washington.edu/news/2007/02/12/rotten-to-the-core-how-workplace-bad-apples-spoil-barrels-of-good-employees/ https://www.washington.edu/news/2007/02/12/rotten-to-the-cor...
- hobs 1y ago
  I think the hard part to figure out is how to fire those people without causing a lot of unintended consequences. I have been through layoffs 6 times now, and what I have seen often times they are high up in the food chain with a lot of power, and lay offs are pretty random because they are not telegraphed to everyone so you lose good people. The people in power circle the wagons around their preferred cliques, because they don't care about the business succeeding nearly as much as their buddies (because there's always the next job.) Then often the folks are left to do more work with the same pay and the impression that a random draw occurred and they lucked out, nothing more. It really can sour previously hard working folks and have them become that employee that you then think you need to get rid of. The truth is that most companies are not made of "only A-Players" and that its basically impossible to staff such a company, so you need to limit the damage anyone can do, create systems of checks and balances, reward brilliance and have clear objective levels of work people need to meet to keep their jobs.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Right, what you need are a, b, and c players- and no d or f players.
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      I think most significant sized operations are built and succeed or fail based on the quality and leadership of the B players. You just can't find enough A players to build an entire [large] company of them and hopefully the C players contribute in a steady, no-drama fashion, leaving the B players* as the differentiating aspect of your particular company. * - and the focus/determination/consistency with which you part ways with the D and F players.
      - mrandish 1y ago
        > You just can't find enough A players to build an entire [large] company of them The corollary to this is that too many real super star players can hurt a large company, especially if they're too close to each other. They need to be spaced out and inserted into the right places at the key moments when there are critical challenges they are uniquely suited to solve. Super heroes generally make lousy mayors. Super heroes are able to conquer insurmountable Cthulu-grade existential threats. But that often involves doing things you wouldn't normally do and can cause collateral damage. Fortunately, such threats are fairly rare. Of course, many people who use the term "A players" are really just referring to "good people" not true super stars. A wise F500 CEO once told me there were only about 20 such super stars in his >10,000 person organization but he shared it more with a tone of "thank goodness there's only about 20 of them" because identifying them and getting them onto the right problems was a constant challenge. He didn't think the organization needed more of them, it just needed to better manage and direct the energies of ones it had - and by direct, he meant "direct it outward" on a massive, high-value problem - not inward laying waste to the day-to-day structures that keep the org running.
osullivj 1y ago
One consistent red flag I look for after the hire is a refusal to learn anything outside their own narrowly defined scope.
- goopypoop 1y ago
  Do you mean outside their job description?
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    Most job descriptions contain some version of "other duties as assigned", IMO with good reason. No job description can realistically capture every responsibility; this language helps prevent bad-faith disputes when new tasks or responsibilities arise that aren’t explicitly mentioned but are 5 millimeters away from those mentioned and entirely reasonable to be considered as in-scope for an existing employee.
    - desolate_muffin 1y ago
      I think also it's the reality in most engineering roles that you will often have to pivot to new technologies, help out on unfamiliar projects using different technologies (e.g., work on the front-end for a bit when you're a backend engineer), etc. Some engineers aren't comfortable with this and it shows. This is how I understood the original comment, anyway.
  - Sammi 1y ago
    Anecdotally: People who aren't flexible about their job description are some of the worst people to work with. They always leave the tough unforeseen challenges to their colleagues to handle. Kinda the definition of "not a team player".
  - dehrmann 1y ago
    As an engineer, I had a job at a small company where I sat by the office phone, answered it sometimes, and had to get the door for deliveries. Not in my job description, but it needed to be done.
sokoloff 1y ago
This is under-appreciated, very rarely talked about, and spot on! I am personally guilty of being far too lenient and tolerant in overlooking "hard to work with". Bluntly, as an engineer, I enjoyed working with a few particular "brilliant assholes" (as their brilliance was often but their AH nature rarely directed at me) and so I tended to tolerate them too much when I transitioned into leadership roles. I don't know if that was biggest mistake as a leader, but it was for sure in the top five.

foobarian 1y ago

So much this. As I've been changing teams at my company (which by and large has awesome people) there is the occasional person in the team that just drags down the rest so much, they are probably a net negative. And it's such a breath of fresh air when the whole team is excellent.

j45 1y ago

So true. Anyone who isn't wanting to be a self-directed learner misses the essence of working and growing with technology.

pbronez 1y ago

Yes, essential to protect the broader team from low performance and toxic colleagues. The trick is to get the disruptive folks off the team quickly without causing the productive folks to doubt their job security. Clear communication and transparent accountability are the way.

Centigonal 1y ago

Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer talk about this right at the start of No Rules Rules. Netflix had to lay off a big chunk of of their staff because of a funding crunch early in their history. Despite the negative emotional toll that took on everyone, productivity actually improved. The authors reference a Will Felps experiment[1] that showed that introducing just one pessimistic, lazy, or mean actor into a group of professionals cut the entire group's productivity by 30-40%. As a result of this lesson, Netflix now only hires "A-players" and is pretty aggressive about letting go of "B-players" and "C-Players." [1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/370/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/370/transcript This has been borne out in real-world observational studies, too: https://www.washington.edu/news/2007/02/12/rotten-to-the-core-how-workplace-bad-apples-spoil-barrels-of-good-employees/ https://www.washington.edu/news/2007/02/12/rotten-to-the-cor...

hobs 1y ago
I think the hard part to figure out is how to fire those people without causing a lot of unintended consequences. I have been through layoffs 6 times now, and what I have seen often times they are high up in the food chain with a lot of power, and lay offs are pretty random because they are not telegraphed to everyone so you lose good people. The people in power circle the wagons around their preferred cliques, because they don't care about the business succeeding nearly as much as their buddies (because there's always the next job.) Then often the folks are left to do more work with the same pay and the impression that a random draw occurred and they lucked out, nothing more. It really can sour previously hard working folks and have them become that employee that you then think you need to get rid of. The truth is that most companies are not made of "only A-Players" and that its basically impossible to staff such a company, so you need to limit the damage anyone can do, create systems of checks and balances, reward brilliance and have clear objective levels of work people need to meet to keep their jobs.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Right, what you need are a, b, and c players- and no d or f players.
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    I think most significant sized operations are built and succeed or fail based on the quality and leadership of the B players. You just can't find enough A players to build an entire [large] company of them and hopefully the C players contribute in a steady, no-drama fashion, leaving the B players* as the differentiating aspect of your particular company. * - and the focus/determination/consistency with which you part ways with the D and F players.
    - mrandish 1y ago
      > You just can't find enough A players to build an entire [large] company of them The corollary to this is that too many real super star players can hurt a large company, especially if they're too close to each other. They need to be spaced out and inserted into the right places at the key moments when there are critical challenges they are uniquely suited to solve. Super heroes generally make lousy mayors. Super heroes are able to conquer insurmountable Cthulu-grade existential threats. But that often involves doing things you wouldn't normally do and can cause collateral damage. Fortunately, such threats are fairly rare. Of course, many people who use the term "A players" are really just referring to "good people" not true super stars. A wise F500 CEO once told me there were only about 20 such super stars in his >10,000 person organization but he shared it more with a tone of "thank goodness there's only about 20 of them" because identifying them and getting them onto the right problems was a constant challenge. He didn't think the organization needed more of them, it just needed to better manage and direct the energies of ones it had - and by direct, he meant "direct it outward" on a massive, high-value problem - not inward laying waste to the day-to-day structures that keep the org running.

osullivj 1y ago

One consistent red flag I look for after the hire is a refusal to learn anything outside their own narrowly defined scope.

goopypoop 1y ago
Do you mean outside their job description?
- sokoloff 1y ago
  Most job descriptions contain some version of "other duties as assigned", IMO with good reason. No job description can realistically capture every responsibility; this language helps prevent bad-faith disputes when new tasks or responsibilities arise that aren’t explicitly mentioned but are 5 millimeters away from those mentioned and entirely reasonable to be considered as in-scope for an existing employee.
  - desolate_muffin 1y ago
    I think also it's the reality in most engineering roles that you will often have to pivot to new technologies, help out on unfamiliar projects using different technologies (e.g., work on the front-end for a bit when you're a backend engineer), etc. Some engineers aren't comfortable with this and it shows. This is how I understood the original comment, anyway.
- Sammi 1y ago
  Anecdotally: People who aren't flexible about their job description are some of the worst people to work with. They always leave the tough unforeseen challenges to their colleagues to handle. Kinda the definition of "not a team player".
- dehrmann 1y ago
  As an engineer, I had a job at a small company where I sat by the office phone, answered it sometimes, and had to get the door for deliveries. Not in my job description, but it needed to be done.

sokoloff 1y ago

This is under-appreciated, very rarely talked about, and spot on! I am personally guilty of being far too lenient and tolerant in overlooking "hard to work with". Bluntly, as an engineer, I enjoyed working with a few particular "brilliant assholes" (as their brilliance was often but their AH nature rarely directed at me) and so I tended to tolerate them too much when I transitioned into leadership roles. I don't know if that was biggest mistake as a leader, but it was for sure in the top five.