Ask HN: How to work with a psychopath? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to work with a psychopath?

13 pointsnotaPsychopath9 comments

Hi HN,

This is a throwaway account. I need your help to deal with somebody who has a psychopathic behaviour at my work place. Basically all he does is about self promoting himself, and he has very good communication skills. It seems that I am the only worker to have noticed it, apart from one or two colleagues. Examples of what he does:

- befriending all the managers

- spending more time writing documentation in the internal wiki than doing actual work

- posting lots of pictures of his life on facebook, which would be fine if he didn't have facebook before joining our company (we do lots of things on facebook) and presumably all his FB friends are from the company.

- organizing meetings with no purpose, where he appears to be making decisions

That guy is supposed to be my very closed co-worker, but his acting is taking its toll on me (basically he is more chatting with people he wants to please than working at his desk - and he's not at all in a manager/lead position), and for reasons I will not mention here, I can't quit my job at the moment, and so I need advices from you guys.

Thanks.

None of those behaviors are inherently indicative of psychopathic behavior.

But I can see how someone spending more time trying to look good then actually doing the work they were hired for might bug you.

If his actions effect you directly, then take appropriate action, like speaking to him and expressing your concerns, and then, if he fails to respond, speaking to your manager. Make sure you talk to him first, because any good manager will ask if you tried to work things out with him directly.

If it doesn't effect you directly, don't waste time on worrying about it. Instead, worry about how you are going to demonstrate your hard work to the company.

Actually, be cautious of speaking to another employee directly about such concerns. While that may be a traditionally expected and lauded route, in today's HR world, it can actually be a no-no.

I ran into this once, some years ago. I spoke directly -- and very politely -- with a coworker about a behaviour that was bothering me. The next thing I knew, I was called into a 1:1 meeting and chastised for speaking directly with the employee on the topic instead of going through my management.

As long as I am writing, I'll also speak briefly to the topic of dealing with a psychopath. In my limited experience, their world ultimately revolves around them. If a project or activity benefits them (in their perception), you may get along on it and do ok on that specific task/topic. (Although look out, when the exit comes.)

Otherwise, where your interests and outcomes diverge, for them their own will always come first. Any apparent involvement to the contrary will reveal itself, sooner or later, to be a facade.

It goes beyond just a conscious choice. This is the way they are -- to the core. Once you realize this, it's easier to limit your involvement with them and avoid further entanglements.

He just learned the lesson that you have to follow the path of "Continuous Visible Productivity" to get up in the hierarchy:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/21/how_to_get_paid_more...

You better learn something from that without turning into a douche.

I agree these behaviors don't seem psychopathic, merely selfish, irritating, and useless. It sounds obvious from your account that he is not being truly productive. You should try to have a polite conversation with him about "prioritization" to get him to stop unnecessarily writing documentation and holding meetings (actually that is pretty weird behavior). If he is wasting his time socializing instead of truly getting work done, he'll be his own downfall. The managers might like talking to him but at the end of the day, employees who get real, important things done are most valued. Perhaps you should devise a way to make that clear to your managers, maybe by being very productive yourself and subtly putting that in contrast with his work. Also you should befriend the managers too.

Try asking this question at http://workplace.stackexchange.com/

I don't mean to be psychopathic (I do mean to be), but I can't help but read this post as, "I'm jealous of a co-worker who is better at office politics and I'm looking for people to help boost my ego"...

> spending more time writing documentation in the internal wiki than doing actual work

I have to disagree that this isn't actual work, as long as he's documenting something important.

But this:

> organizing meetings with no purpose, where he appears to be making decisions

That does sound a bit like a narcissistic personality complex, doesn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disord...

You could separate out the behaviors that aren't bad from those that are, and document the bad ones, then bring that to a manager and ask for some help.

Every team I've worked with has that guy. Not psychopathic at all. He's Just more focused on improving his career by being friends with managers rather than being productive.

He's not a psycho just an arse licker

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