This is yet another post about stereotypical employees/coworkers. I don't like to think of people as hollow stereotypes that someone online can precisely nail d

This is yet another post about stereotypical employees/coworkers. I don't like to think of people as hollow stereotypes that someone online can precisely nail down so as to dispense wisdom on dealing with them. Yes, I've worked with lots of people who sort of resemble the stereotypes and I'm sure all of you have, hence the popularity of such posts. However, I urge everyone to please remember that stereotypes are templates and nobody fits the stereotype exactly. Everyone has something special about them that is worth considering. Just imagine if you do have a "mr. know-it-all" at your work who gets a bit frustrated when you ask him to do important but "boring" things like documentation or protocol compliance. Advice like this will suddenly put this person in your view as negative, despite the fact that "mr. know-it-all" is a very hardworking employee who is extremely loyal to your company. Nobody is perfect and thanks to this new stereotype that you just read about, you cannot help but compare him to the guy that "one everyone has to tiptoe around." Oh how you hate that stereotype and look, this "mr know-it-all" totally fits the description! You could solve your documentation problem in some other way but once you fire this guy, you got two problems - you don't have a loyal, hardworking, "mr. know-it-all" anymore and you don't have the documentation on what he did and how he did it I'm no managerial-guru but I sure hope nobody starts firing their top tech people because of random posts on the Internet. Of course, the hypocrisy here among most of us is that when a large company does fire key tech people from their staff, we all come in rallying for support of the tech folks, arguing "how can a company survive if they fire their lead tech!" Well, companies can survive. And yours could too despite the fact that you fired your key tech person as long as you have a good infrastructure in place. However, that doesn't mean your competition won't welcome them with open arms and now you got a third problem.