Dealing With Bad Apples | Hacker News Reader

Dealing With Bad Apples

codinghorror.com

16 pointssant0sk113 comments

First person I thought of when I read this was Steve Yegge. Sometimes bad apples just need to find the right role.

Then I thought of (sorry for the sports analogy) Randy Moss and Terrell Owens. Bad apples, lousy attitude, careers just about done, until they found the right place.

Yes I'm contrarian. Perhaps a bad apple.

After many years of hiring, I've found one warning sign that tips me off to this type of behavior. If an employee complains excessively about his old/current company during an interview then he's likely to complain about his new company too.

In the three times I specifically remember the interviewee dragging his old company through the mud, they ended up being a "bad apple" within six months of working with us. If they're not tactful enough to sum up any old employer problems with a wry, witty passing reference, then you should be worried about how they'll act when they run into differences with the rest of your team.

This is a particularly interesting topic for Agile teams. Letting a team self-organize sometimes leads to a team wanting to "self-organize someone off the team".

I've had my Scrum masters come to me twice in the past two years and ask to have a team member removed. One needed to get fired, one needed to be reassigned to a position that better suited his talents.

In both cases, the team experienced an immediate productivity boost and jelled better.

The key for the manager is letting the team know that you trust them enough to bring those issues to you.

I laughed when he called the bad apple "Joe."

At my work, the bad apple is actually named Joe. Joe just doesn't flat out know how to communicate with people. He's brusque and most of the time, just downright rude. He's condescending and often wrong. He is nosy too. Always giving advice and telling people whats what with their problems. The worst part is that everybody just tolerates his crap when they need to. Otherwise, they just avoid him and try to work with him as little as possible.

And just like this article points out, the people in my department blame the leadership because they don't do anything about. We complain when he gets out of hand and he has been talked to about his attitude, but the cycle simply repeats itself.

I don't know why we keep him around. We can do A LOT better.

I suspect most bad apples are named Joe.

If he has a communication problem, try to give him a copy of "How to win friends and influence people"

Am I the only one who enjoys the antics of really bad employees?

At least they make my own incompetence seem less raging.

So apply asymmetric management here; use basic Aikido. Tell Joe to go code it. In JavaScript. Put up or shut up.

Yes, Joe might be a bad apple. Or Joe might really have a better solution; either client- or server-side JavaScript.

Either of the two probable outcomes here works for the team.

Be very selective during the hiring process. You may be forced to throw out what could be good apples, but at least it reduces the chances of you hiring a bad apple.

I have to say there is always two sides of the story.

Sometimes these "bad apples" are actually decent or good employees, but the disfunctional dynamics, or even maybe bad managers can turn a potentially good employee into a bad one.

When managers are incompetent technically, some tend to rely on few employees they trust on decission. The problem is that these trusted employees become trusted not necessary of their technical skills, but their affinity, (or ass kissing abilities) to their manager.

A good manager, will be able to take advice from all his employees, and even his most technical ones. A bad manager will rely a lot more on his chronies, which, there is a great chance, they are going to be technicallly incompetent.

So, if you are actually good, but forced to implement things you think are stupid, just because your manager happens to trust other people's opinion's more, then it it is going to be frustrating. Some people suck it up, some leave, some just moan and complain, and of course are labeled bad apples.

And this happens way to often, especially in larger companies. Small companies, will go with the technical competence, otherwise die. Technical incompetence and chronyism thrives is large coorporations, with lots of managerial layers.

Sometimes, there are truly people that are bad apples, and shouldn't be there, but often there are people that are great, but slowly become a bad apple b/c of the above circumstances.

Point taken. My point was rather implement a strict hiring process to weed out bad apples even if it has the consequences of false positives and potentially good people are thrown out.

Something that your comment reminded me of is that your team is only as strong as the worst employee. If you are hiring bad apples as managers then it has the very likely potential of being bad apples all the way down.

Be too selective and you won't hire anyone good either. Great people are often eccentric, with weird personality kinks that can make them harder to work with. In my experience, smart, creative, brilliant people are pretty much always harder to work with, opinionated, pushy, and demanding. But I'll take that over "average but does what he's told" any day.

I like bad apples, if they are good at what they do. Overworked software development teams where everybody just says "yes" to incompentent management that results in everybody having to work 200% because of poor choice of technology, waterfall development model and hiring people that don't do their job. The key for being a successful bad apple is to not bitch behind peoples back, but be straight with your criticism and improve stuff, or switch jobs.

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