When Smart People are Bad Employees
blogs.forbes.com
blogs.forbes.com
Stop fucking complaining about "bad" employees who make you more money than everyone else on the team. Your job IS to deal with them - so deal with it.
Else be happy with the 9-to-5 lifers on you team and shut the fuck up. You'll find that you aren't going to be able todo jack shit with them.
I hate people who post shit like this.
Besides that, this doesn't sound like the typical "Employees aren't good unless they follow my every order to the letter and get along great with every single person in the company" meme that I'm used to hearing. At least there's an acknowledgement that companies might have to deal with these issues in certain cases.
Roger the Coke Fiend actually seems like he'd be manageable as a part-timer: keep him on the bench, and if you have a cool 72h burst for him to do, especially if the consequences of his failure are not bad in any case. A dull but productive and reliable guy makes a great accountant. It's all about the specifics.
For someone unethical, I'd be reluctant to do most business, but might be willing to do arms length product purchases. For instance, there are musicians who produce music I sometimes enjoy but wouldn't trust at all.
Your job isn't to deal with them, its to extract from them. Once you can no longer extract value beyond their cost, "poof, be gone".
Once T.O. isn't a great player, who's gonna put up with him? No one. With that said, when you look at most of the greats, think Gretsky, Jordan, Tiger, Magic, Bird, etc... they are the model player. The only major exception I can think of is Bonds, and with him, steroids I think I helped a lot. If not for the roids, I think Griffey and A-Rod look a lot better.
Clear example of this: Brett Favre. Skipping training camp by pretending to retire each year was fine if he could still put in a good season of football. Having failed to do that this year, he has nowhere to go but out.
> And if it had worked he would have repayed you with some amazing work.
This is wishful thinking. If it hadn't worked, it probably wouldn't be clear right away. Instead it would seem like maybe it was working, and you'd spend months to years in a hopeful and guilty cycle trying to help someone who didn't really want to be helped, or worse yet, wanted to be helped, but still couldn't overcome his addiction.
> Your job IS to deal with them - so deal with it.
Firing someone is one way to deal with them.
> Else be happy with the 9-to-5 lifers on you team and shut the fuck up. You'll find that you aren't going to be able todo jack shit with them.
Self-righteous feel-good bullshit. Organizations need all kinds of people. I have great sympathy for types (1) and (2), but there are many cases where they are clearly self-destructive and toxic to others.
Thanks for putting this up. Every time I read something like this is helps keep me in check.
My goal is to automate deployments, boost efficiency and introduce "force multipliers" to get the highest bang-for-buck ratio: basically getting rid of the roadblocks between the guys and them churning out awesome stuff at a terrific speed.
On the other hand, the company loses money (in the short term) when I automate things; if two-hour deployments are reduced to 15 minutes each, they can no longer charge the client that extra hour or two for every batch of work. Projects are generally quoted and charged by the hour; if the client's reasonably content with the cost and the resulting work then there's not much incentive to get things done more quickly, regardless of how wasteful we're being.
Sometimes I can clear roadblocks. Most of the time I can't. It's taken a year, but I've come to realise the company's and my own goals are orthogonal, that I'm becoming an Example #1, and that it's time to move on.
(Thanks for posting the article; it's nice to see these negative qualities clearly laid out.)
(I'll leave the post as-is so your follow-up doesn't look silly.)
OTOH, it may be easier for you personally to implement it and sell them on it once you've validated the model, externally.
Look how dysfunctional people can be, and how hard it is for an individual to change his behaviour.
Now, why are we surprised that it's hard to change a group's behaviour?
I.e. if you're frustrated with the slow pace of change at work, try to inventory some of your own pathologies and see how long they've gone un-fixed.
Note: this is not a shut-up-until-you-make-yourself-perfect message. It's more like "holy shit, I've been saying I'll lose 10 pounds for like 10 years now". Organizations are like that, but worse.
My reading of the lyrics snippet (and I'm certainly no expert in these things) suggests that the character is telling a girl to run away from him because he knows he's a dick. Specifically, he's a dick that's especially good at criticism and spreading negativity and of the list of targets, one group happens to be people who work a lot which implies to me that the character's less-than-hardworking nature looks bad by comparison.
So not only is the character a dick, he's a self-professed underachieving one and perhaps even proud of it. He might even be worried that the girl is one of those kinds of people he hates, or maybe he kinda cares for her and knows his personality is toxic on some level, or he just can't have nice things, or there happens to be a hotter girl one table over so this one has to go...
Anyway, it's just odd because it seems like the character that is "speaking" in the song is exactly the sort of guy who might bitch about how troublesome smart people are because he's always got to be the smartest guy in the room but refuses to put in the work required to remain the smartest guy in the room when there's other actual smart guys in the room. So the best solution in that case is to get rid of the others by telling them to "run away as fast as you can."
In summary, it seems to me like the lyrics are actually speaking more as a person who hates over-achievers and/or smart people than as a person who is one of those troublesome smart persons who hates average folk and therefore would appear to, well, not really support the author's actual argument. Or something?
I don't know. I'm probably not one of the smart ones. so... :P
So really he is the smart jerk who is trying to tell someone to stay away because he is a jerk and will just criticize her, although he really doesn't like who he becomes, but that's his gift.
He ends it with toasts to himself (and people like him). While he's toasting them, he clearly doesn't like himself.
I just don't get that at all from the snippet quoted, but I can imagine how the larger context of the song might flip the meaning of things around - but I don't know the rest of the song and was going only based on the words in the article with no way of knowing how those words were performed. :)
I suppose the use of "toast" could be a clue that he actually means some kind of respect, but then why respect "douchebags" and "assholes" etc? So my reading put large quotes around "toast" in the way you might "toast" someone sarcastically who just made a giant mistake or something.
If the greater context of the song established that the voice was being sort of facetious here, then I can see how my interpretation could be almost exactly backward - but again, without some grander context, I really feel I had no way to know that if that is indeed the case.
Side note: Over the years I've noticed that either, A) I just suck at interpreting song lyrics, or B) song lyrics are often purposely designed to be ambiguous. I suspect some of both is at work here. :)
The basic concept of the song is I'm a jerk, don't know why, but stay away from me because I'll be a jerk to you. The title of the song is Runaway -- the girl should be a runaway from Kanye.
Kanye belongs on your iPod, not in your Forbes opinion piece.
(I ask, very specifically, because you said "rap lyrics" and not, e.g., "music with immature lyrics".)
The point is that in order to be credible to a wide audience, as this article was intended, you need to convey the correct 'tone' so to say. This a part of what is called in classical dialectic the 'ethos' of an argument. (to pre-empt, no, just 'logos' is not enough, and neither should it be - but that's a different argument).
So, in order to build up 'ethos', one needs to present oneself as a mature, mainstream person in the context of the subject under discussion. (yes, some people make a career out of breaking out of this, in order to appeal to a niche audience; see e.g. that ruby webserver blogger guy that gets linked here quite a lot, but that's not what the author in the article does or should be try to do, as far as I can tell).
Like it or not, rap and hip hop music are not mainstream to the traditional Forbes crowd. Partly because (most) rap artists build their careers on their anti-mainstream views, violent and promiscuous images, and cater specifically to an audience who finds one of the draws to the music in that anti-mainstream aspect of it.
So that's what makes it inappropriate in this context. For this author, in this context, to convey his message to as large an audience as possible, he should stick to 'accepted' style figures. And rap lyrics aren't part of that. It was a gamble I guess, and he lost, imo.
(Just to pre-empt another 'hey look at this country boy hating black music!', I bought hip hop LP's (yes, LP's) before Cypress Hill had put out 'Black Sunday' and mixed them on my sl 1200's when many of the readers here were still in diapers. I bought The Chronic a few days after it came out and once hitch hiked 400 kilometers to go to a concert of what was at the time the only crew rapping in Dutch. I'm no stranger to hip hop and rap, and yes I realize that people like Jay-Z have build big businesses on it. Still doesn't make the quote in this article appropriate.)
The quote is directly relevant to the piece. It fits completely within the context of the article (personality vs. success).
I don't think something should be disallowed, just because it falls out of your narrow sphere of what's directly permissible.
Of course, I'm not the arbiter of social conventions but many times you ignore them at your own peril.
As an aside, if you are well known for breaking certain social conventions or are influential enough you can usually get away with it without much criticism. Nobody is going to scold Steve Jobs because he wears a black turtleneck to a board meeting instead of a suit.
Certainly not mine. ;-)
> not in your Forbes opinion piece
It's an opinion. His opinion. And he's free to use whatever quotes he wants. The worst that can happen is that it shoos away those who cannot deal with something they don't like and cannot read the article past the part they don't like.
The rest of the article is pretty interesting (and I have met people who fit in all 3 examples).
Considering that West himself has a reputation for endless work on his projects, I stand by that interpretation.
The main point being; if you like the latter - you put up with (or celebrate) the former.
I can't see any reference to underachieving in the lyrics - I think you might be projecting some personal assumptions.
The main speaker is most definitely talking about being a high-achiever.
This is what I see as a kind of reference to under-achieving by calling out and insulting people who work harder: "Let’s have a toast for the jerkoffs / That’ll never take work off." It seems to me that the voice is therefore showing contempt for over-achievers and, by taking the rest of the lyrics into account and the fact that I've met a lot of people who despise fellow employees that work harder than they do, I leap to the assumption that the voice himself must be like one of those under achieving dicks.
"The main speaker is most definitely talking about being a high-achiever."
Others have said similar. I think the voice thinks he's "all that," but in my opinion someone who feels a need to say things like this are decidedly not and therefore I don't agree that the voice is actually a high-achiever. It seems more like the speaker in the song is trying to justify his bad attitude by just declaring that he's the smartest/best person in the room and everyone else are idiots (as if by virtue of him saying that, it makes it true - because after all, he's so damn much better than everyone else!) - but that is not the mark of a truly intelligent person, IMO, and that's probably why I interpret the speaker as just being a dick. If he tried harder, tried to teach and support and didn't attempt to chase the girl away, he could be the smartest guy in the room. Instead, he just chases people away to make room for his ego.
Anyway, you could be totally right. I'm just trying to clarify where I was coming from. I would posit that in the case of interpreting art, there's no one truly "right" answer anyway, so it doesn't really matter - and maybe that's the point. :)
I know this is against the Silicon Valley philosophy, but that guy just put in almost two 40-hour weeks of work, not three days. It might have done him well to take the next 11 days off.
Edit: I realize he was on drugs, but I think that's a different discussion altogether.
Then later on: "He was addicted to cocaine."
So...no comment from anyone on how these two things are almost certainly related?
They may be even be right but their persistent negativity and challenging of the status quo (even in minor matters) ends up wearing people down. Then eyes start rolling when they talk and their rants are met with sighs rather than attention or acknowledgment. Then they start getting left out of meetings and email conversations as it is easier to get things done without them no matter how smart they are.
All of this feeds the Heretic's perception of being the only sane person in the asylum turning them even more cynical and negative.
At this point it's the management fault for not doing (having done) something about it. Firing the person, fixing the status quo or maybe empowering them to fix it.
And yeah, I'm aware I might now sound like the Heretic themselves :)
Though I guess it does get more problematic if they start attacking their coworkers as sheep/sellouts/etc. The popularity is easier to maintain if they stick to attacking management/bosses/policies and treat their coworkers as being on the same side.
Sadly for the Heretic, that won't help them when the boss fires them. It makes for nice post-"layoff" lunches, though.
Just curious, is your boss aware of your cycles, and does he/she plan for them? If not, what effect do you think trying to explain would have?
Tuns out he is an ex-addict (that's why he's rookie at 37). I don't have a problem with people trying to straighten themselves out. He doesn't get any preferential treatment from me - because it won't do him any good. As long as he does the expected work of expected quality he is fine with me.
Knowing that he is an ex addict is valuable to me so I can put our relationship in right context.
I don't understand how knowing about his past should matter if you're not going to behave differently towards him?
That's like asking someone’s sex on an application form - if you're not going to discriminate why do you need to know.
You are being disingenuous btw -- this is not like the gender question at all.
I beg to differ. Could you provide some reasoning?
>but there would be good reason to be wary
If you're not discriminating then it doesn't matter if they're a current drug addict, a past drug addict, partner of a drug addict - you judge them solely on their performance at work.
I say discriminate.
As for why it is not like the gender question: asking why a 37yo is doing entry level work is asking about things which it can reasonably assumed to be direct consequences of the applicants choices in life. Preselecting on gender is selection based on something the applicant has almost no control over (excluding the extremely tiny portion of post-op transgenders).
Edit: also I'm not blanket saying discrimination is bad, some types of discrimination are OK some aren't. For instance, discriminating based on "this applicant doesn't have the required skills" is perfectly reasonable. Any attempt to claim an all or nothing approach on a vague notion such as discrimination is nearly the definition of disingenuous, so please don't try and play stupid games with that either.
Haha, condescending ever.
The connotations are different, that's the slant someone is trying to put on whether their discrimination is good or bad. We change how we act towards one person such that they benefit relative to another's detriment. Whether it be preferential treatment by omission of detriment or preferential treatment by application of benefit if the treatment alters according to the characteristics of the subject then we have discriminated.
discrimination - "treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit" (Random House Dictionary)
preference - "a practical advantage given to one over others" (ibid)
>As for why it is not like the gender question: asking why a 37yo is doing entry level work is asking about things which it can reasonably assumed to be direct consequences of the applicants choices in life. Preselecting on gender is selection based on something the applicant has almost no control over (excluding the extremely tiny portion of post-op transgenders).
The question doesn't bother me. I don't think your assumption stands to much inspection - I'm sure you can imagine many scenarios that would leave someone in an "entry level" position against their will. Why does it matter how old the person is, can they do the job, will they do the job? One can change one's age no more easily than one can change one's sex.
>Any attempt to claim an all or nothing approach on a vague notion such as discrimination is nearly the definition of disingenuous, so please don't try and play stupid games with that either.
I love these sorts of closing statements, they must be the thinking man's ad hominem "anything that disagrees with my stated position would be idiocy", that's almost the definition of tiny-minded simpleton. </sarc>
Not sure what you are saying here. Please use grown up sentences.
> The connotations are different, that's the slant someone is trying to put on whether their discrimination is good or bad. We change how we act towards one person such that they benefit relative to another's detriment. Whether it be preferential treatment by omission of detriment or preferential treatment by application of benefit if the treatment alters according to the characteristics of the subject then we have discriminated.
You are a one trick pony -- once again you try to deflect. The guy declared he was not giving someone preferential treatment. It does not matter whether this is by lack of advantage or by taking away disadvantage, non-preferential treatment by definition is not preferential -- therefore no one is getting advantage to another's relative detriment.
> The question doesn't bother me. I don't think your assumption stands to much inspection - I'm sure you can imagine many scenarios that would leave someone in an "entry level" position against their will. Why does it matter how old the person is, can they do the job, will they do the job? One can change one's age no more easily than one can change one's sex.
Hrm.... deflection again! The fact that a reasonable assumption can be made does not eliminate other possibilities. Yes, a person's age is strictly a product of forces outside his control, however getting an entry level position at that age is certainly within his control. Why choose that route? There are other options. Why not choose them. In these cases of choice, it is worthwhile to examine the candidate. See by examining one's choices, you can maybe learn about their ability and willingness to do the job. (remember, these are the things you claim to care about, and now we can learn about them!)
> I love these sorts of closing statements, they must be the thinking man's ad hominem "anything that disagrees with my stated position would be idiocy", that's almost the definition of tiny-minded simpleton. </sarc>
Ohh, man out of nowhere-- deflection! I never saw it coming-- honest. It's not really ad hominem. Not even kind of. Im not even declaring you to be idiotic, in fact, since disingenuous is pretending to know less, I sort of did the opposite. I have no problem even with you disagreeing with my position. I was merely preempting a disingenuous position of moral absolutes being attached to a word that has vague boundaries on its applicability (rendering absolutes impossible). You have clearly demonstrated your understanding of the vague edges of the word discrimination by using it in two different senses already, so any claims of not knowing at this point would be false. Looking up the definition of disingenuous will get you the rest of the way to my statement.
Addict is never really cured. Once you're through with addiction, the cravings are there for life. Whenever you need to release your steam the craving for drug kicks back in.
My mentee is coping with that through writing, so sometimes he will not come to work on time - because he's setting his mind straight. So our agreement is that I don't care about his schedule - as long as his work is done according to specified parameters.
I didn't say I don't act differently towards him. I said he doesn't get preferential treatment in a sense that I won't be commiserating him for being an ex-addict. Instead I raised his tempo of learning while gently guiding him through the finer intricacies. But I demand highest quality of him. I also look out that nobody (especially superiors) will pick on him since he is pretty introvert - and I don't want him to slip back due to some extrovert having a bad day.
This guy needs to build character, courage and ultimately self-confidence. And not making it hard for him, plus helping along the way if possible is one of my goals.
However, it sounds like you are giving them preferential treatment. You say it's just different, but then if those differences aren't available to others they might also advantage it is a preferential treatment.
I guess one could argue it's not preferential in that you'd give the same assistance to another ex-addict.
Personally I don't think you have to help everyone just because you're helping someone, ie preferential treatment doesn't seem wrong to me a priori.
You said he's not wrong, and you're just arguing over semantics. Why argue? Why?
Sorry for not keeping my post cold and logical and HNish, but that's the problem: you're being robotic here and arguing just to argue.
Off topic but WRT your response - "people see the world differently" but apparently my fixation on truth isn't allowed?
On topic, why argue? He says that he's not discriminating but he describes discrimination. I simply wanted to point out that apparent contradiction.
Discrimination is some sort of bete noire of corporate society but I find it quite silly to suggest that we should not discriminate for people because of the peculiarities of their personal situations. If you find that robotic I find your response curious but I suspect you won't meet an enquiry about it well so feel free to move on to one of the other 10 million or so comment threads of the day.
>of course they'll apply different meanings to the same words, and even to the same concepts
If you use the same words to mean something else then we need to converse more to establish that which you are trying to communicate.
And now for the record to just rehash what I am doing:
1. The person is obviously being treated differently from others (he is being given a chance),
2. I will not treat his work differently due to his condition. I want him to get up to speed and I'm helping along,
3. He doesn't need blanket pats on the back. He needs them when they're due and he also needs a proverbial kick in the arse when due.
Also, discrimination is a term used when we act negatively towards someone. I'd be discriminating against my mentee if I were telling him that he's no good dimwit. Or are you suggesting that I'm discriminating towards others?
(PS sorry I accidently downvoted when I was trying to click up vote. Hard to hit the right arrow on Android phone.)
I think all creative people are like this, bipolar or not. The problem with the programming world is that a lot of non-creative types want to be programmers, and so they set soem "standard that assumes programmers are people that show up at 9am, click shit in Eclipse for 8 hours, and then go home. Unfortunately, in the history of the human race, clicking shit in Eclipse for 8 hours has never produced a working computer program. Programming is creative work; treat it like a 9-5 job and the result is shitty software.
The sad part is that there is a huge market for shitty software. I bet the car makers and bridge builders wish they had it this good.
However, I have to take issue with manic coders. I've seen the results of "heroic" coding. It sucks. Sure, it does the job, meets the deadline or whatever but the problem is that quick work is typically nothing more than a "rush job" that becomes a maintenance nightmare in the future.
The thing is no one wants to work with someone who is unstable or difficult. If the success of your enterprise depends on sporadic bursts of mania from individual workers, I'm sorry, that just isn't going to be sustainable.
Where did the she come from?
Yes it does: "they".
English does not have a unique[1], singular, gender-neutral pronoun.
[1] unambiguous
In terms of being understandable and elegant, the singular "they" is probably the best English can do. Unfortunately, it's not widely accepted because it "sounds" uneducated, despite being the current best solution to the problem. Gender-neutral neologisms, like Spivak pronouns [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun], are not commonly understood, while constructs like "he/she" or randomly alternating between generic "he" and generic "she" as in the OP is inelegant and confusing (hence this whole thread).
[1] I'm sure you could construct a contrived example.
Written language has more legitimate uses than completely formed sentences. Pronouns can be troublesome enough, figuring out the antecedent, without requiring yet more context analysis.
No one acts that way unless they have severe mental illnesses (such as the cocaine-addicted bipolar genius) or the company already has serious systemic problems. If you see things near the exaggerations in the OP regularly, the company is already diseased and needs major overhaul.
Started off strong, got ahead of schedule, had a mental breakdown, accomplished exactly nothing for about a month, and then quit (to avoid being fired).
That was my last mental breakdown.
I have done work for over 100 companies ranging from SMB to large enterprises. Independently (I'll tell you why in a moment) I just made a list of the 10 biggest assholes I ever met the other day. Eight of them were the #1 person in one of those companies. Seven of them are, not surprisingly, out of business.
(The reason I made the list was because I watched "Undercover Boss" for the fourth time the other night. The first three times were great. This episode, about the CEO of Norwegian Cruise Lines, was horrible. All I kept asking myself was, "Where the hell did they get this jerk?" He had no idea how anything happened in his company and had people and functional problems in all 4 departments he worked in undercover. One employee even remarked that he had a problem dealing with women. That's when I made my list.)
What is it about our processes in business that seems to favor assholes? I realize that my experience may not be the norm, but some of the things I've seen done by the President or CEO:
- getting drunk and firing the security guard
- throwing a phone book at his secretary
- belittling vendors until none wanted the business
- routinely yelling f words at employees
- firing other executives on a whim
- begging these executives to return to work
- committing crimes with the books to earn a bonus
- ignoring company saving advice (that would make them look bad)
- sexually harassing subordinates
- committing adultery (& other crimes) in full view of subordinates
If I sound like I think that our leaders should be held to a higher standard, it's because they should be. Hell, I'd settle for any standard.
I'd love to hear OP's take on the other side of the story, when smart people decide to stop making sacrifices for the assholes they got stuck working for.
Thus, they aren't as well represented amongst executives in established companies because that form of achievement isn't something they valued.
Nit: adultery is not a crime in most of the West.
(Some US states still have it on the books, but it's probably not enforceable, under the same Supreme Court ruling that overturned laws against contraception.)
I played the heretic role for a while, but eventually I quit because it was a loosing battle and my moral had gone through the floor.
Then, there's that kind of jerk.
He is disempowered - She feels etc.
Wouldn't it be correct to use "she" everywhere?
That being said, there are ways to be gender neutral without dropping the clangers that this author does. Be gender neutral by all means but for the love of the children don't switch back and forth like an eager yo-yo.
edit: remove snark :)
Overall, I think it's a decent attempt at having a hook for otherwise somewhat dry (maybe, but not really) blog posts. He is obviously going for contrast.
For instance, the KRS-One quote worked well on http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/14/why-startups-should-train-th...
The Who for this was obvious (and the theme too): http://bhorowitz.com/2010/11/15/meet-the-new-enterprise-cust...
I'd respect him more if he used the obvious Biggie quotes, though.
Ok. This is something I touched on in another comment: if you're known for breaking a certain type of social convention than you can often times get away with it, without much criticism.
So this was probably normal to his blog readers but confusing to those of us who were exposed to it for the first time.
Thanks for the explanation. It made me reexamine my initial knee-jerk reaction.
That’s fine, but remember: you can only hold the bus for one.