Comment by rodhilton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rodhilton | Hacker News Reader

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I linked to as much hard evidence as I could but I'll agree that it's a little light. My hunch, just based on my own observation doing this for 20 years, is that an asshole is like a black hole of productivity, draining it from everyone else to such an extent that they're simply not worth having around, and that no matter how Brilliant they are, the rest of the team can figure out their areas of expertise with the morale boost they get after leaving (or drastically changing their behavior, though sometimes the bridges are burned too much for recovery).

Again this is mostly anecdotal, from what I've seen teams do when the Resident Jerk was fired or left. I've never in my 20 years as a professional software developer seen a single person leave a team and then see the team immediately fall to pieces because that person really was the critical lynchpin that people thought. I've seen lots of people stick around far, far too long because folks (management usually) were WORRIED that's what was going to happen, but it never actually seems to.

I have seen that a couple times, mostly in startups: a highly functioning brilliant jerk was doing a pretty good job leading teams, but they had no patience towards poor performers and that caused morale issues.

Eventually the person got managed out (not fired, just isolated from the teams) and upper management thought the team would just eventually thrive after some short loss of productivity, but that never happened: the poor performers were put in front of the customer who commissioned the project (role that was usually handled by the jerk, who was highly competent at that due to their technical brilliance and assertive personality even with the customer), and after a few round trips the customer smelled the incompetency and literally said “we’re going to quit this project, we feel like there’s no technical direction lately”. Massive loss for the company, in the 7 figures. It almost caused the company to fail due to that being the largest customer at that phase.

In those cases, the jerk did an amazing job at keeping a very productive technical communication with the customer, and keep the high performers on track towards what really needed to be done in those projects.

Part of the problem is an a--hole is surrounded by a zone of disaster and chaos of their own creation, which makes them all the more indispensable. A--holes do not groom successors, they burn competitors (which everyone else is).

The author is not saying that firing assholes is all you need for a successful company. Obviously hiring good people is also essential.

Disclaimer: I am an independent contractor mostly because I fled what I consider structural defects of the corporate world, so a bit biased.

Isn't it a matter of management though? Assholes can be productive to a company if you have a good manager doing damage control and sinking time into firewalling the asshole.

Given the prevalence of this disease and the abundance of managers, it seems like a good way to increase the hiring pool of a company.

As a manager, you want to contain an asshole just enough so that coworkers do not leave, also enough so that the asshole feels they have to make up for their social behavior with additional skill and hard work (which is not hard, they are often competitive).

I believe (and that's the reason why I don't want to employ people) that the optimal point for a business is when you maintain your employees on the edge of quitting. Assholes create stress and competition, an environment where projects often strive and individuals wither.

All the ethical managers or business starters I have known have been replaced by more assholish versions. This could be anecdotal evidence of course, but I think that assholes are better suited for a corporate world of greed and competition.

Why do you believe that the optimal point for a business is maintaining the employees on the edge of quitting? What are the pros and cons of doing this?

It seems to be a very simple way of looking at it: squeeze out as much as possible from the employee without losing the employee - hence on the edge of quitting.

However, I think it is way too simple to be useful. People who are happy and relatively less stressed are way more productive on average. (Yerkes - Dodson Law applies here)

Pro: employee is more productive.

Con: none for the company

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