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Comment by usefulcat | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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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.

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.

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.

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