Difficult Employees (and How to Handle Them) | Hacker News Reader

Difficult Employees (and How to Handle Them)

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45 pointsBerislavLopac58 comments

> Remember: Their cultural weight does NOT give them permission to override your actions and efforts as a leader. You don’t want the old corrosive culture of the past to subvert the new positive culture of the present.

Oh man, how dumb were those people in the bad old days before “you” showed up to save this dump? Good thing things are positive now that “you” are at the wheel, passive-voicing the veterans to death…

> "Being passionate about your work is valuable, but emotional stability is also a core job requirement. How can we help you find a more sustainable balance?"

What’s that old canard, “the beatings will continue until morale improves”?

It's funny that the first comment I saw in this thread is exactly the point when I stopped reading and had to do a double take to make sure it isn't satire.

Author of this article sounds like an entitled brat that sees enemies everywhere and thanks any change is progress.

This article belongs in the LinkedIn navel-gazing trash pile.

> Archetype #1: The Entitled Veteran

> They've seen initiatives come and go, leaders arrive and depart.

Yup, and they may have seen the exact same initiative you're trying, in the exact same conditions, multiple times. With the same results.

You may want to learn from their experience before becoming failed example +1 for the person replacing your replacement.

> Archetype #2: The Passive Resister

> Document agreements in real-time."I'm noting down what we've agreed to. I'll send a quick email after this meeting so we both have the same reference point."

If you're not doing it routinely for everything it means most of the meetings you have are just social ones. Not work ones.

> Archetype #3: The Brilliant Aggressor

I feel like the author is mainly in this category. Their way or the highway.

> Archetype #4: The Perpetual Victim

> Confirmation bias: They actively collect evidence that supports their narrative of being unfairly treated or blocked by others.

The author may never have had to deal with a reluctant "OPS" team. On some projects I ended-up adding 2 weeks to a month for ETA due to having to wait for things like servers or access to be available. Even when tickets were posted at the start of the project.

Some projects die continually because there is no "buy in" not because the project is the incorrect path. The advice on how to get the buy in seems reasonable and probably can be adapted or tweaked depending on the specific circumstances. I think the author is trying to get us out of the confrontation of "exact same initiative you're trying, in the exact same conditions, multiple times. With the same results." and more on the way of getting those employees on board with understanding what pitfalls caused the original plan to fail.

Looking through these examples with the employee lens I can see some of that in myself and can also see how that is not productive.

Well, this was the most terrible, demoralizing, demotivating thing to read on Hacker News in a while.

And it's taught me a lot as to what a CEO of an organization really thinks about their employees, and why the hell I'd never want to work at Canopy or a Canopy-using org.

Signed, The Guy That's All 5 Of These Archetypes

PS - type #5? Imagine having to deal with personal crises, week after week, with family care and eldercare and any other problems. I'm glad my team has my back when I have a 'down' week on performance when I've had to spend a night picking elderly people off the floor at home. They get some rockstar performance just about any other time I can give it back.

Amen.

> "But emotional stability is also a core job requirement. How can we help you find a more sustainable balance?" Really, the loved ones are eating into The Company’s Time… have you considered just not being exposed to difficult and important truths about life? Strong performance only on average doesn’t align with our new positive culture…

The insights the author makes are genuine, but the approach she has is grating. She assumes she has privileged access to objectively view the social reality. She mentions "real", "realize", and "reality" eleven times in the piece.

Sociologists have a name for this behavior - reification. It's essentially a map-territory mistake between people's mental model of how the world works and the reality. They confuse their mental model for reality and work toward progressing it as truth.

In this context, she's essentially leveraging her power as manager to get folks to agree to her reality. This is definitionally manipulative. I'd hate to have her as a manager. She probably isn't aware she's doing it.

> In this context, she's essentially leveraging her power as manager to get folks to agree to her reality. This is definitionally manipulative.

Well said, I got the same impression.

The first sentence tells you what you need to know. The leader assumes the worker is making a “web of lies” to get out of responsibility. This leader is trash. You need to listen to your employees and respond to their needs. If deadlines are being missed there is likely something wrong with the company; whether it be resourcing, time expectation from above or even just working conditions.

Seriously, look at their response on how to deal with a "perpetual victim".

Their advice seems to be that the fault is _always_ with the employee, never with the manager or project planning. When an engineer is discussing blockers, it assumes the engineer is playing at being a victim.

All these suggestions from the author do is turn everything into a "that sounds like a you problem" with their reports.

* You got a blocker? How are you, the IC, going to solve it?

* You don't think the chosen path is the right solution? How are you, the IC, going to convince yourself that the chosen path is the right one.

* Your parent died? How are you, the IC, going to get back to high performance output?

Everything is cold, turn the table, all problems are the fault of the direct report bullshit. It's never more clear than when he constantly recommends telling people what their role requirements are. As if people don't know them.

Makes you think the manager might have some of their self described "perpetual victim" mentality.

So almost every comment in this thread so far says this is a horrible article/horrible manager/just horrible.

I disagree. As a manager who has to deal with difficult people sometimes, I enjoyed it. The archetypes are recognisable but there are others.

Her recommendations aren't quite my style of management but I can see they are coming from a positive place. She is trying to help someone who is difficult find a productive place in the team, and giving them actionable things to take away.

Failing that, you move on and fire them of course. What else are you going to do?

To me it seems more like "How to be horrible to everyone" or "How to arm-twist people into becoming 'resources'" or "What to do when your spanner, er sorry human being, gets uppity."

Normal people are imperfect and instead of trying to kick them in the arse to try and make homogeneous things, one should work out how to use their strengths.

Actual problem employees are the ones who don't care about the job or other people and nothing works on them.

This.

Thanks.

Yeah, every person is a ... person ... with agency, self-awareness, and personality. HR loves to think of "cookie-cutter" people, but they don't actually exist, so HR often does more harm, than good.

As a manager, one of my most important skills, was finding out what was important to each of my employees, as that informed how I motivated or corrected them.

Agree, every person has it strengths, stear away from managers with complex psychological schemes to make you more better :D

'resources'

When people started using this instead of "people" or "employees" I know it's over.

Agree. Already tired to read this crap at linkedin and now it’s coming here too. Leadership is learning and a gift simultaneously. We know when we have. We don’t know for sure the exact formula. Reality always destroys the best plans and illusions.

As soon as I read this comment I knew the article would be some r/LinkedinLunatics style listicle about employee 'archetypes', and I was not disappointed.

So let me provide my own:

The Dirty Dancer: Nobody puts this baby in a corner, but they'll sure as hell pigeon hole everybody else! Concerned mainly with surface level attributes, they will do their best to find a box to put you and--most importantly--keep you in.

To this leader you are not a person, but an SCP awaiting containment. Avoid.

Thank you for introducing me to a new niche subreddit.

This is not your first day…

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub

While the archetype descriptions are spot on, the guidance provided to deal with them, is not great, with an obscene amount of CYA baked in.

This isn't about how to handle difficult employees, it's about how to polity guide them out the door. And once quit/fired you can tell yourself they were a lost cause.

Are there any good resources out there about how to actually mange teams, rather than the HR-coded ones? All I really see is either surface level, or buried in a doublespeak I'm not privy into.

1. Treat people like adults.

2. Set clear expectations.

3. Train aggressively, and prune judiciously.

#1 is very complex. You could probably write a whole book just on responsibility and accountability. In most (even very small ones) companies, it seems like personnel problems eventually become organizational problems and eventually technology problems.

Uh, like managing people who are difficult out is part of managing a team. A company has no obligation to keep people on who are difficult.

It often has practical problems with tossing people out like: I'm not going to get the money to be able to replace them. OR they know a hell of a lot and it will be years or never before someone can solve the brutal problems they can in a few minutes.

Then you have the issue that the new people you hire might be worse AND a huge pain to train. Or you spend 3 months getting them to know your system and then they leave for another job.

At some point people know if you don't care about them. If you cannot care about them why would they "follow you into battle?"

> At some point people know if you don't care about them. If you cannot care about them why would they "follow you into battle?"

That's true, but it also works both ways.

If the "problem" person is impacting others on your team, you owe it to them to address rather than ignore the issue. After all, why would _they_ follow you into the trenches if you've shown that you don't care enough to deal with an issue that they're saying is making their lives difficult.

(Good) management is about striking a balance - between the business's needs (otherwise you're all out of a job anyway) and the welfare of everyone on the team (which IMO, should always benefit from a bit of priority over the other).

Sometimes that does mean making a hard decision about someone who's very technically capable, but damages the wellbeing or efficiency of the rest of the team.

As an extreme example - I once worked with someone who was a pretty good engineer and knew where a lot of the bodies were buried in the codebase (i.e. keeping him around would be beneficial), but one day he started regularly talking, quite inappropriately about schoolgirls in the team skype group (and even defended doing so). Good engineer or not, sometimes things have to change.

All of that being said, I think the article is too hardline, at least if those are intended to be the opening gambit. There's a ton of people engineering that you can do before you need to reach the point of making it sound like a PIP.

I had to deal with a horrendous skilled person who made every meeting hell for those concerned. It's hard to fire people where I am but in the end we managed it. I am delighted to handle all the problems this caused because they are far less than the daily massive row.

So I'm no stranger to the whole thing. There has to be something coming back from the team members and if they essentially don't give a stuff and treat the rest of the team like dirt then I don't care how great they are - I don't want them.

Difficult according to whom?

Sometimes difficult is just a euphemism for not being a mindless drone that always does what it's told.

Sometimes it's a skill issue too, and it becomes not-difficult when you as a manager gain the necessary experience.

Yeah, just fire them outright. Very little of this article reads like an honest or grounded attempt at reconciliation-or-fire conversations.

I think it works that way because employers aren't therapists. These are all personality problems. If an employee is a problem they need to sort it out them selves

Sometimes the employer is the problem and just searches for a justification why they a right and the employee is wrong.

What in the actual hell is this doing here.

Every once in a while I like to read up on what the decision makers are saying about us to one another when they think we're not looking. Helps me remember that I need to care about getting as much as possible for me because that's what everyone else is doing.

This is a really insightful breakdown of dynamics I recognize from places I've worked. I think the "actions" section is a little....slanted towards one way of managing people but it feels like it comes from an experienced place.

I wanna give the author the benefit of the doubt but its hard to when they chose language like:

> Here are the specific steps you can take "as a leader"

Feels a bit leaders/followers mindset, makes me extremely uncomfortable.

While the article contains some level of decent herding cats advice it comes from the perspective of outsourcing the problem into the employee and while that can happen, I am sceptical of the framing.

In this thread: all the difficult employees

This article tells me much more about the author's type of character.

Does someone know other or even better resources / newsletters on topics like this and want to share?

Shit like this is what turns a manager into an annoying, insufferable pointy-haired boss.

It's so easy to just archetype everyone and throw it in a blog post for some of that lucrative "thought leader" (cue mega eye-roll) cred.

Just stop.

I think what is disappointing about this post is that it seems to be an attempt to categorize human behavior so that you can create a treatment for that behavior to conform that behavior to your personal standard. But people are people, the core function of any leader should be first to understand their goals and values so that they are not challenged when other people express their goals and values. Then it is to figure out how to align everyone's goals and values together towards a common goal. It isn't to have some formulaic, cog-in-a-machine approach to workers. Especially not technical ones.

when i was young i used to think that employers want smart, creative and innovative person because of capitalism.

I found out pretty quick that they want a yes man who always says yes to their superiors ideas and makes their superior look like a hero at every opportunity. There is literally no other secret to working in a corporate.

Yeah, no. That attitude is just giving up.

There are companies and bosses that know how to value employees contributions. I have heard it referred to as herding cats.

There are situations that are not good. Sometimes it is intentional when they have decided they want someone out. Sometimes the boss as you say only wants as yes man. Sometimes there are good intentions and without the needed skill.

There are realities to contend with, though. In corporate, unless someone directs a budget, the organization hasn't really issued any endorsement. Most companies are just churning rather than breaking new ground, so they value consistency.

giving up what?

I've made progress in my career being a suck up. I never contradict my superiors. Even the stuff i come up with i make it look like it was originally their "vision" that led to it. I always convince someone above to put their name as primary author on my proposals at work. This extremely simple "trick" has always led to me getting more money and promotions at work.

Its not a joke.

Start your own business. Then you will learn that your subordinates who are "smart, creative, and innovative" that aren't helping you get done what you need to have done are more hassle than they're worth. Alignment isn't just a concept that applies to AI.

Telling everyone to "start" their own business is hilariously out of touch. This is something the vast majority of people cannot do.

You're better off telling people to feel solidarity with their fellow workers, collectively organize, and collectively bargain through unions.

That is something more easily done.

That was more true before AI. In this day and age of AI, developing a business is easier than ever thanks to AI assistance at almost every step.

I have a family member that is 70 years old, social security is enough to barely pay for their mortgage. They have been trying to get any job for the last 5 years but haven't been able to, most likely due to age discrimination.

They're alive but I wouldn't call it a life worth living, more like subsisting. If they didn't know me they would likely be homeless but since I can help with a few bills they aren't losing their home and can get 3 meals a day.

How can this person start a company with AI? Honestly. Your suggestion is devoid from reality for tens of millions of people. It feels like a troll because it's devoid of any empathy.

You seem to have no concept of a retirement age. A person of 70 years old is not supposed to be working at all, although light part time work can be okay.

Starting a company using AI still requires significant innovative skills, and is not even for the random 20 or 30 or 40 year old. It requires offering a competitive service or product that no one else offers. AI is never a substitute for putting your brain and body to work in clever ways that others don't.

The only troll here is you for letting working age people rot in jobs that they will bring them to their knees in their retirement age.

This is what I mean, your experience is drastically not the norm for millions of people and I very much wish they didn't have to work but they need to if they don't want to subsist. The economy hasn't exactly been favorable toward the working class for the last 50 years.

20% of people in the "retirement age" still work dude.

If you also read my comments, this person isn't actually working and they have zero savings and while they get social security and medicare they still need to pay a mortgage, insurance, utility bills, and food. They want to work but can't.

According to you they should simply start a business with AI, what business who the fuck knows but apparently AI is enough to make him whole.

If the idea of his age bothers you, it wouldn't really be different if he was 55 or 45 or 35.

The issue I take with your comment is you don't really know what struggle is or how people live below the federal poverty line. Telling them to simply create jobs is akin to "let them eat cake."

A baffling statement made with no compassion.

Using AI to start a business is not for everyone. It is implied that one has to be talented, intellectually curious, and passionate, well above average. If you pick random people from the street, which is essentially what you are doing, of course it's not a game for them to play.

If the person has no savings, they should be pressing the local government, social services, and local politicians for more assistance. They might get lucky.

I have compassion which is exactly why I ask deserving people to take the route away from wage slavery toward doing something where they feel a greater sense of freedom and autonomy.

> Using AI to start a business is not for everyone.

is it for anyone? I don't know even one business that was started 'using AI'.

do you know any that actually make money?

A small business doesn't need subordinates anymore in this age of AI. It can still have contractors, with the contract deliverable clearly communicated.

i am not going to start a sweatshop lol to know that employees with enthusiasm are "more hassle than they're worth".

I read this book about a defector from the GRU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquarium_(Suvorov)

I can't remember the exact quote but his suggestion was that everyone needed a "sponsor" or patron above them and that patrons chose people who would otherwise not be successful. This way the patron had a number of junior protogees who owed them everything. When your patron rose up you would rise up.

I noticed this in at least one company that got into trouble eventually.

In others the yes man culture is very potent. Where I am now nothing is that bad.

There's a name for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system .

Well you’re sort of right, in that yeah, duh, you need your boss to like you to get promoted. If you are a very capable person, it won’t take long before you are looked up to for answers, which is where this attitude of “only doing what the boss wants to hear” falls apart, because, boss is depending on YOUR voice now. It’s not the end of the world if you plateau here, plenty of people do. Personally, while I too think corporate world is rife with idiocy, I’ve learned to largely detach from it. Constant negativity is mildly cathartic at best, and yet, it will burn you out very quickly.

You are not on to some “secret” here, all who participate in corporate work know it’s ridiculous. Seriously, open up a bit, and get to know some of these “terrible bosses” outside of work— they will shit talk with you like anyone else.

This falls apart around the VP layer, as from there up it’s actually insane people living in a different wealth reality than ours.

Now do managers

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