Comment by err4nt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by err4nt | Hacker News Reader

The Incompetent Co-Worker: I once worked with a guy who constantly made a giant mess out of everything he touched. I later found out his last name was a verb at all of the competitors around town for 'to mess something up', and over the course of my job shifted from working alongside him to simply putting out all of the fires he created as fast as he could start new ones. My productivity _appeared_ to go down, while he was always ready to take on a new project (before handing it off to me in a mess). The worst thing he did while I was there was delete all of our copies of an entire website we had been working on for months, only a week before launch. He would also edit documents live using in-browser editors (with no undo history) and when he made a mistake we would LOSE code and have to re-write sections. He was always viewed as the hero, yet nobody seemed to realize that all of the issues he (eventually sometimes) solved were self-created and preventable.

The incompetent IT guys: At my college we ran a number of PC labs and a number of Mac labs. The guys in IT clearly had training enough to _use_ macs, but they really didn't understand the concepts of network administration. We were a design program and one of the requirements was that we be able to install custom fonts for use in projects. One day people got to class the morning a massive project was due and nobody could open their project files to print them! I discovered that the _user_ font folder had simply been replaced with a shortcut to the _system_ font folder, and we didn't have the permission to restore it. So they had deleted every users custom fonts already, and now after I discovered and proved their error they had to restore it to the way it was. They looked like _heros_ for fixing the big problem on the worst day, but ultimately it was only their incompetence that created the problem in the first place. Their reasoning was that TTF fonts can sometimes carry viruses within them that infect Windows computers… (And we use OTF fonts on OS X)

In the case of the coworker it seems like you could have documented each of these specific cases and confronted the person about it. How do you talk your way out of losing data repeatedly?

Some people can talk their way out of almost anything. I've personally had my mind changed about something that was totally obvious; it's a pretty bizarre experience, looking back. Sometimes it takes hours or days for the reality distortion field to wear off.

I've had at least one coworker like this at previous jobs. They've tended to fool me repeatedly until I notice the pattern and revise my opinion of them. The confidence they display makes me think they're smarter / more informed / more thoughtful than I am, until enough evidence causes me to stop all positive weighting of their opinions. It's worse when you have imposter syndrome for the first several months of any new situation.

Who would you tell?

I've had exactly one boss who understood (some) of what I do.

Managing others, I've been completely snowed by people who's work is outside of my areas of expertise (tech writing, translation, graphic design, etc).

We had a "hero" on one of my teams that was strong conceptually but made poor implementation choices. Hacks with poor design that invariably didn't integrate well. High energy, always jumped right in - when others wanted to slow down and consider stuff, it looked bad by comparison. Deadlines became more stressful with more last minute bugs (that he would special-case "fix" - hero!!), and it was impossible to complain about him because our manager wasn't deep into the code.

Your story is in past tense, have you since quit this job or is the manager and hero gone?

You needed code reviews and design documents. If your group was too busy for this, then it needed this "hero" to keep pushing code out the door instead of dwelling on design choices.

Great story, like a lot of people, I can relate. There is another type of worker that I run into a lot. The type that actually screws things up on purpose. I call this the "Red Sock Effect". When I was growing up, my Mom and Dad got into a big fight over who would do my Dad's Laundry. Mom relented and agreed to do his shirts. Now keep in mind, back in those days, dudes could not be seen in a pink shirt. Mom "accidentally" tossed a red sock into the wash with Dad's white shirts so they came out pink. From then on, there were no more arguments, Dad took his shirts to the cleaners. At work, I run into the "red sockers" all the time. They feign incompetence and as a consequence, management takes work from them and gives it to those that are competent.

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