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> Somebody who is universally hated by their co-workers

How many times have we seen a company fire whoever they consider "dead weight" but keep the universally hated guy because he's a 10x rockstar whatever?

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I've seen the opposite happen: fire the unsocial guys and keep the social guys that do absolutely nothing but flame and troll on slack.

A 10x person who brings down 20 others to a small fraction of their potential and causes other rockstars to leave is still net-negative. Good management understands this.

(And I'm not sure why I'm downvoted for this. Nothing about that should be controversial?)

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/we-fired-our-top-talent-be...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15474893 (2017) (133 points | 130 comments)

Exactly. So the company keeps the guy everyone hates after laying off people that get along. The next people to leave the company are the ones disgusted by the move.

Depends on the company. I've seen the opposite case were such a person was let go, much to everybody's relief. Some people had to clean up his mess, which was genius in the sense that it worked flawlessly, but nobody else could maintain it, so he had locked in a minimal bus factor. Which makes such a move harder to execute, but the earlier the better.

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