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There are at least ten great engineers who've left my current company at least partially because of a single toxic individual. Every one of them decided to be
by noehp 12y ago
There are at least ten great engineers who've left my current company at least partially because of a single toxic individual.
Every one of them decided to be 'professional' to not 'burn bridges' and they did not name names. The toxic individual is still there. He is still incredibly powerful, and he is still destroying value left and right.
I really, really wish they'd named names. Right now management knows that they had ten undesirable voluntary terminations. They don't realize that they all have a single primary contributing factor. As such, there's no possible way the problem will get fixed.
- jackmaney 12y agoIf the situation is as you describe, then there is probably no way to truly fix the situation. Even if the toxic person was fired tomorrow, the culture would take a long, long time to change and recover.
- mgkimsal 12y agoThat's not always the case. In my situations, much of the damage was done in terms of people leaving, but after the primary individual was gone, things got 'back to normal' (with some new staff) within 6 months. Much of that will depend on management, and if they let the bad actors go on that long, one might question their ability to repair things, but it's not impossible.
- wesd 12y agoIs that person a manager? If not, how doesn't his manager not notice his impact on other individuals to a point where ten people leave the company?
- mgkimsal 12y agowhen their manager is an absent owner, or distracted CTO, or something like that, a lot can happen and be explained away before it's seen as a problem.
- noehps 12y agoThe toxic person was hired by the CEO and predates his manager. The toxic person was likely valuable early in the company's history (he's great at throwing together prototype-quality code), and that reputation makes him hard to fire.