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Comment by rfrey | Hacker News Reader

In 25 years of working in the software industry, I have never witnessed somebody's assholity defended by their performance. I have also never encountered... NEVER encountered... an asshole who was also a top performer.

In contrast, the top 7 performers I can think of off the top of my head were to a person kind, generous with their knowledge, patient with those less talented, and generally Good People, both to work with and to be around in general.

So there's my anecdote to counter yours.

I will note that although I have never met an asshole who was a top performer, I have met many who were convinced that they were.

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>I will note that although I have never met an asshole who was a top performer, I have met many who were convinced that they were.

Definitely this. I find that insecurity also correlates strongly with the above description.

So what do you label someone who does most of the work while other contribute little to nothing? How to they profess that and not be labeled an asshole?

You are either involved in hiring and can remove useless people or you are not and shouldn't care what others are doing.

Im the executive who oversees all of UI/UX, Product, QA, Devops, and Engineering. This is one of the core aspects of my job hence its my job to care and puts me the fair position of giving a top down view of such issues.

edit: wow down voted into oblivion over this... I came for a reasonable debate. Its super clear now why "rude" people rule and all the passive aggressive do is down vote me over a reply.

Just trying to be helpful but mentioning getting downvoted attracts additional downvotes, in part because it is also against the site guidelines (2nd from the last one).

> So what do you label someone who does most of the work while other contribute little to nothing?

Most of the time: the guy that’s going to leave an overly clever undocumented, unmaintable mess. Bonus points if it’s in a language that none of the rest of the company uses.

Contemporary development is a team sport.

My former boss summed up to a T.

Depends. Sometimes such a person is on a team of juniors or truly inferior colleagues. I've seen the former a few times but never the latter. Sometimes, and more often in my experience, such a person simply thinks they're superior, they take much more than they should or can, and make every one else's job harder.

In the case where the individual truly is more talented they don't need to profess it aggressively. It will be quite clear in feedback from colleagues to their boss and by the quality of the their output.

The word for someone that truly does most of the work while others contribute nothing is called a patsy. If you're stuck in that situation it's usually hopeless. And you should leave.

That is different than a control freak that refuses to leave other peoples work alone.

The comment I referred to was very clearly talking about the case of people who are not actually top performers, but who think (wrongly) that they are. That does not sound like the situation you're describing, so I'm having difficulty understanding the relevance of your comment, either to my comment or the one I replied to.

Same. Not quite 25 years, but 20+. I've worked with assholes who thought they were the top performers, but I've never worked with top performers who were assholes. It's part of what makes them assholes- to them, it's just some heroic narrative about how they're no-nonsense 10xer straight shooters who get things done and don't tolerate fools, but what they're oblivious to is how much different that looks from the outside looking in. How other people see them is very different from how they see themselves, but part of their identity is intentionally rooted in not thinking about that. Nobody sees anyone's internal monologues or perceptions of the world around them or their heroic life narratives that they tell themselves about themselves, they only see someone who thinks they've magically earned the right to be a jerk based on their perception of their own awesomeness, which (at least in my experience) they aren't.

To be clear there are under performing assholes just they usual get the ax quickly if management is competent.

How would those 7 top performers act if placed alone in a situation of failure? Where its obvious the company is failing and is clear is certain individuals? Is it not "rude" to point that out? Or are we defining being rude or assholity differently?

I personally seen many times people who push back or raise justified criticism of anything be labeled as "rude"/"toxic"/"assholish".

There's a huge difference between saying someone sucks at their job and being able to point at specific failures and illustrating a pattern of behavior. One is constructive, the other is rude.

Save it for performance reviews. Be a professional.

Sometimes it's about being professional, but more often than not it is about taking and ignoring mountains of problems. You get called for being a whiner if you constructively point out problems, and a problem case of you try any solutions that are smarter than whatever your middle manager(s) comes up with. Worse, if they perceive you as a threat. Or fail to play office politics - you will be that guy who does most of the work, or hardest work with no renumeration. Favorite of all hiring teams until inevitably getting psychologically damaged if you're normal in any way. (Especially crude way is to give someone a problem insoluble by one person or overload a small team.)

Isn't Linus Torvalds a pretty strong counter-example to this?

Yeah, that's totally on point. Discussions about Torvalds show the opposite of what I claimed. I wonder what he's like in person.

How do you know that you don't recognize the achievments of assholes because you dont like them?

I mean, I find it very natural that one would overestimate the qualities of the people he likes, und understimate those of who he dislikes.

> I will note that although I have never met an asshole who was a top performer, I have met many who were convinced that they were.

Totally agree, although the trickiest times in my career haven't been when some IC is convinced they are a top performer and everyone should follow them, but when that person's manager also thinks the same. When it's both, it's almost untenable, as going to that person's manager makes some think you're a complainer going that high up the management chain.

> I will note that although I have never met an asshole who was a top performer, I have met many who were convinced that they were.

I thought I was an asshole, but then when I read descriptions of assholes vs descriptions of not-assholes I think I fall under the latter

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