[HN Gopher] Incompetent but Nice
___________________________________________________________________
Incompetent but Nice
Author : nemoniac
Score : 133 points
Date : 2023-03-28 17:28 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (jacobian.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (jacobian.org)
| neotrope wrote:
| being competent and nice is exhausting (due to personalities,
| policy, politics). its easier to compromise on being nice or
| slacken your ambition than to navigate existing disfunction.
| assholes used to be welcome, but the bias is now toward being
| nice, so we end up with entire divisions of people in the top
| left of the graph.
| washywashy wrote:
| Incompetent but Nice only seems to work when all managers and
| team members know it and they are given tasks they can't mess up.
| It does affect morale though, as working with a jerk would too.
| gavin_gee wrote:
| also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTo9e3ILmms
|
| trust vs performance
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Incompetent deserves further classification. Are they dragging
| other people down, or just not meeting the expectations set by
| their company. But I'd say that in a functional company, this
| person will be fired eventually. The evaluation process should be
| designed as to avoid biases and employees assessed based on their
| contribution and output. In that sense, a jerk could be seen as
| problematic for the well-being of the team, but being nice isn't
| going to save you.
| abledon wrote:
| I'd say a Nice Incompetent person can be as demoralizing as an
| Awesome Jerk. The Incompetent person is making you work harder
| taking care of their slack while they coast and get paid equal
| or more salary.
| Jensson wrote:
| And then gets the promotion since he spent the most time
| hanging out with the managers. Then he will hire more people
| like himself and there is no going back. After a while most
| companies are made up of mostly nice but incompetent people,
| and then they go under.
| abledon wrote:
| stop its too real!
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| The problem with Nice/Jerk is it's purely subjective. Whenever
| you hear a peer review that says "They're a jerk" you, as a
| people leader, need to be very on guard about the situation
|
| 1. The person making the claim maybe poorly calibrated, burnt
| out, or have an ego
|
| 2. In so far as peers compete for political will and promotions
| they have a vested interest to use whatever weapons they can
| against others, subjective / data free ones are the low hanging
| fruit
|
| 3. The person being called a jerk maybe desperately trying to fix
| something -- the tech debt, the broken culture, overwork/oncall
| etc. attacking their character in this scenario is the work
| equivalent of victim blaming
|
| The truth is it's maddening being the only (or minority)
| competent ones in the room, and with apathetic peers suddenly
| you're the jerk because they'd rather rest and vest than do
| effortful things to improve the situation.
|
| In my matrix doing the job is the base line. Can you do the job?
| Are you doing the job well? Are you not being blatantly terrible?
| (disagreeable is fine, abusive is not) Veing able to do the job
| is necessary, else there's not point carrying your dead weight.
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| cauch wrote:
| So, you are explaining that the person that says "they're a
| jerk" is, basically, a jerk. So you are saying "they're a
| jerk". So what you say should be apply to you?
| sergioisidoro wrote:
| Teams over individuals. Stop evaluating individuals in a vacuum,
| and evaluate them in team dynamics.
|
| Sometimes the incompetent nice person multiplies the productivity
| of a team through morale, creativity and by offloading simpler
| tasks from more competent people.
|
| The same goes for the competent jerk, who can be a 10x in output
| but also 1/100 overall by creating a completely toxic
| environment.
| munificent wrote:
| Damn near everything about human behavior makes more sense if
| you look at humans as almost eusocial like ants, where the
| meaningful unit of evolutionary fitness is an entire tribe.
|
| (My pet theory is that the _entire reason_ humans have such
| insane metastasized intelligence relative to other species is
| that we got ourselves into an evolutionary arms race _with
| ourselves_ where we needed greater and greater intelligence in
| order to distinguish in-group people in our tribe from bad
| actors in other tribes trying to exploit us. Ants are lucky
| because each colony just smells different.)
| hprotagonist wrote:
| i have a new junior on my team who might fall into this.
|
| he's also fresh out of undergrad, so i think he'll get the
| mentorship and runway approach.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I've always liked working with competent jerks, by which I mean
| "more competent than me". I assume their jerk-ness isn't that
| they blame me for their mistakes - but no CJ has ever done that
| to me (only incompetent jerks).
|
| I have very limited experience of running organisations. But I
| think that if your organisation is small, then it can't afford
| incompetent people, even if they're nice. That means that I think
| that to run a small organisation, you have to be a jerk,
| otherwise you're incompetent.
|
| I failed to sack a probationary employee before the probabtion
| period ended; I thought he would come up to scratch. Also, I had
| no taste for sacking people. I was wrong, and I cost the company
| money. I was nice, and I should have been a jerk. Ergo, I'm not
| competent to run a small organisation.
|
| [Edit] Incompetent people, however nice, are a permanent drag on
| everything. If they can't be taught, then they have to be
| removed. You can't make your other staff carry them forever.
| neotrope wrote:
| my best mentors were brilliant assholes.
|
| assholes respect competence and push out shitty performers.
|
| we've all been sold a lie.
| stringfood wrote:
| In other words, brilliant jerks don't BS you and tell you
| like it is. An admirable trait in my experience. And when you
| finally prove your worth to a brilliant jerk there tends to
| be a level of respect.
| bena wrote:
| Firing people doesn't make you a jerk.
|
| Your decision cost the company and likely also that person. You
| kept him on in a position he was either going to still get
| fired from, quit, or cost the company more than his paycheck.
|
| All because you didn't want him to have a bad opinion of you.
| You wanted to seem like a good guy so you avoided doing the
| thing everyone needed done. You caused everyone way more
| problems for your selfish ego.
|
| That's a jerk move. You weren't really nice.
|
| The nice thing to do would have been to acknowledge the hard
| truth in front of you and cut him during the probationary
| period.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| One option: be extremely open to them doing something else at the
| company. Most people would have to drop acid to hit this level
| openness. "Put him in _marketing_? But he's a software engineer!"
| Well, apparently he's not, or least not the kind you want. And
| don't half ass it and have them split time or do the old role on
| the new team. The easiest way would be to look down a list of
| open jobs and seriously consider them for like 30 seconds each.
| It'll be a brutal 10 minutes of focus, but only 10 minutes.
|
| I've almost never seen this job switch in a company work, but
| I've almost never seen it attempted. I _have_ seen it work many
| times between companies. Everyone who switches careers does it.
|
| I think there's a hang up around "incompetence". Maybe it's
| something inherent to the person, but you don't have much
| evidence for that. The evidence is the person/job pair. So,
| switch up the job if the person seems good.
|
| Sometimes when I've struggled with a role that doesn't feel right
| and I start blaming myself I think "Not _everyone_ can do this.
| What if some super smart, healthy, well adjusted person was in
| this role but was this bad at it. What would he do?" I imagine
| some baseball player, marketing genius, or renowned writer and
| that he ended up in this job instead of that one. I guess he'd
| leave? I've actually struggled to come up with an answer but it
| feels important.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > but I've almost never seen it attempted
|
| The vast majority of people don't want to have a different job
| than the one they signed up for.
|
| If you sign up for engineering, you don't want sales. And vice
| versa. 99% of the time.
| pge wrote:
| This has not been my experience - I have known a number of
| people that were in engineering and were asked to try sales
| and really enjoyed it. I've known fewer (only one that I can
| think of) that went the other direction. The best CEO I ever
| worked with had a real talent for getting people into the
| right jobs where they could be successful (which solves the
| "incompetent but nice" problem because "incompetent" is a
| function of the job they are being asked to do), which was
| sometimes a very different role than they originally signed
| up for. People stayed longer and were happier when they were
| in roles where they could be successful. It is unfortunate
| that many managers are hesitant to move people into different
| jobs than they originally signed up for. If the alternative
| is firing them because they aren't competent, finding a place
| where they can be successful is a much better option.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| People also don't want to be fired. I think there's a lot of
| value left on the table from people getting fired from jobs
| and getting similar jobs somewhere else that they're also not
| great at because they can't break out of a self image.
| paulddraper wrote:
| You'd think so, but not really
| travisjungroth wrote:
| More engineer than salesman, I see
| paulddraper wrote:
| More empiricist than theorist.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| It was a joke that your reply wasn't exactly
| _persuasive_.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| It's rare because it is usually illegal if they don't consent
| to a role change which is out of job description and not
| clearly a promotion (it's called constructive dismissal, an
| otherwise deviously clever way of forcing someone to quit
| instead of having to fire them)
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I don't know that constructive dismissal raises to the
| level of 'illegal', it's effectively the same as firing
| them.
|
| I mean if you do this, and they quit and file for
| unemployment, it's the same outcome as if you fired them
| right?
| Pxtl wrote:
| Agreed. People who are "technical-enough to understand software
| but don't have quite the right mindset to write it well, but
| everybody likes working with them" are often excellent in
| developer-adjacent roles like business analyst. They grok the
| system well-enough to be able to talk requirements and work
| with both developers and stakeholders, and can go to bat for
| their team and win the stakeholders over when it's a case of
| "okay the developers think they have a neat way to meet your
| needs but it's not exactly what you asked for what do you think
| of this???"
| esel2k wrote:
| I hate to admit that that's who I am. I made a pretty OK
| career as Product Manager / Head of Product. And I can tell
| that beeing nice is super important here as I deal daily with
| anything from customer, CEO, difficult stakeholders, sales
| and co.
|
| So no I don't think beeing incompetent but I had not the
| patience and grit for software development although I loved
| it.
|
| Edit: Typo
| gerad wrote:
| Or do the obvious: move them into management. This sounds
| snarky, but I'm not being sarcastic. Part of management is
| making people feel happy and supported, and you don't need the
| same level of competence in management that you do in IC work
| (or rather you need a different set of competencies, which they
| may have).
| akiselev wrote:
| That's the idea behind the Dilbert comics [1]!
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle
| edmundsauto wrote:
| The Dilbert comics assume people moved to management due to
| incompetence will remain incompetent in a leadership role.
| This is a big leap - people management is a separate
| skillset, and in fact it's less likely a 10x programmer
| will also be a 10x manager. For the same reason that Shohei
| Ohtani is a unicord - it's hard to find someone who is a
| superlative performer in 2 sets of skills compared to just
| 1.
| clnq wrote:
| It does not sound snarky, it sounds right. Promoting a
| stereotypical fantastic engineer into management is a great
| way to waste their talent. Promoting a people person into a
| management role will make them happier and the team happier.
| The only thing that saddens me about this approach is that
| middle managers can earn more than senior engineers in tech
| companies, and sometimes becoming a manager or a lead is seen
| as a natural career progression path.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| This right here. I personally know several examples; people
| who were not really incompetent, but were not up to the
| generally expected level of work of an IC. They became
| excellent managers.
| qsort wrote:
| Promoveatur ut amoveatur, a time-tested strategy.
| moonchrome wrote:
| I think your framing makes it seem like the negative impact of
| failure comes just from the judgement of others - I'd say it's
| much easier to build a positive self-image if you remove
| yourself from the environment in which you were found to be
| unfit.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. Is it that these people wouldn't
| have a positive self image if they were in a role that's a
| bad fit?
|
| Sometimes I've thought of that and realized how it would be
| wrong to label _them_ as incompetent when they'd be a star at
| something else. Other times I imagine they'd somehow still
| have high self esteem and handle this situation super well
| and I try to figure what that would look like.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| I had to lay off an employee who was incompetent but nice. She
| was constantly anxious and paralyzed by blockers. I did
| everything I could to reduce her stress levels, give her mentors,
| ensure her work was reasonable and achievable. She could not make
| forwards progress unless she had a pair programmer basically
| doing the work for her.
|
| She was in the wrong job at the wrong time. She didn't have the
| skillset to have a successful start. Her work patterns were
| unhealthy and ineffective. She couldn't learn how to unblock
| herself within the org, and became paralyzed by stress.
|
| We had multiple people to compare her against who did not suffer
| from any of these challenges. I am sure she can find a job that
| will work for her, as she was nice and did have successful
| moments, but a fresh start was clearly needed.
| neotrope wrote:
| layoffs are great for this. they allow companies to shed
| employees they couldn't justify firing before.
| flutterdev wrote:
| [dead]
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| "Incompetent" is very broad. I think you're going to let go of
| anyone who is somehow totally incompetent so I'm not sure that's
| a real case.
|
| I think most of the time though, someone who appears incompetent
| is suffering from one of three things.
|
| 1) They are being tasked with things that simply don't align with
| their talents. For example, there are certain tasks which are
| just very mathy. You can pass college calculus and still suck
| pretty bad at lots of math. This is a case where someone else
| should be doing this task.
|
| 2) They are being tasked with problems which are out of their
| present ability to breakdown and solve. Essentially, they haven't
| learned to be an engineer.
|
| 3) They have a skills gap (as mentioned in the article they need
| to get better with a specific tool).
|
| I think the thing that happens by far the most with people who
| get managed out is that they are a #2 but people try to help them
| as if they are a #3.
|
| I have been in a situation many times where I have seen other
| leads giving tasks to their junior engineers and then getting
| frustrated when their subordinates don't make progress. They try
| to help by pointing them to tutorials, docs, etc. but what these
| people often need is someone to sit with them for a significant
| amount of time and demonstrate how one breaks a problem down,
| builds small pieces that demonstrate functionality and then put
| those pieces together into a solution.
|
| This is expensive because it takes time. And it takes time from
| some of the most skilled people on the team. As often as I have
| seen people fail a team, I've seen teams fail people. A
| Pluralsight subscription is not a substitute for mentorship.
| Talking about networking and career planning is not mentorship
| (yes I believe it is important too).
| spawarotti wrote:
| > but what these people often need is someone to sit with them
| for a significant amount of time and demonstrate how one breaks
| a problem down, builds small pieces that demonstrate
| functionality and then put those pieces together into a
| solution.
|
| And what if this is done repeatedly for the junior engineer,
| and yet any initiative they show after that is still
| negligible?
| tom_ wrote:
| Then they are one of the exceptions?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I worked with a guy I nicknamed "Nice Guy, But" (the comma and
| spelling are important there:)
|
| A nice guy but we really didn't want him messing with the code.
|
| He was the unofficial leader of a group of people I named "The
| Defect Generators".
|
| I was billing by the hour at the time, so I viewed him (and them)
| as a revenue source.
| honkycat wrote:
| I've found the "competent but nice" crowd is actually usually:
|
| 1. Too mentally ill to do ANY job. ( 99.9% of the time it is just
| untreated anxiety or ADHD they have avoided treatment for )
|
| 2. Not doing any work and deflecting when people start to smell
| their stink.
|
| Either way: this "nice but incompetent" person stresses out, nay,
| TORTURES the rest of the team trying to wipe their ass and keep
| them afloat.
|
| "They're nice but..." No they aren't nice. They are emotional
| vampires sucking the blood from the rest of the team. Put them on
| a PIP, and if they don't improve fire them.
|
| I've seen enough ruined dreams and burned out engineers to no
| longer feel pity for the "nice but..." people. I cannot be atlas
| carrying the burden of everyone else's problems. And it is unfair
| for someone to ask that of me.
| ftxbro wrote:
| The ones in that quadrant are the ones who are your friends and
| in-group buddies who you hire creating a quasi-socialism within
| the bounds of a corporation, without having to include the
| undesirables or riffraff or other kind of out-group members.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I once worked with a "director of support" who was incompetent
| but nice. I was a lead developer. The problem was the director of
| support tried to treat me like level 2 support, they wouldn't do
| any problem solving, they wouldn't get clear explanation of
| problems from customers, they wouldn't collect the information we
| needed. (It was a small startup and "director of support" was a 1
| person department with an outsourced assistant.)
|
| But, this person was very, very nice to everyone. It made it
| harder to see the problem.
|
| How I solved this: I sat down with the person and "explained
| common sense." I pointed out that, when they were on the phone
| with the customer, the customer wanted them to solve our problem.
| They needed to be an expert in our product so that they could do
| their best to solve the customer's problem on the phone without
| 4-6 back and forth. I also pointed out that it was very
| embarrassing for us to ask for "obvious" information after the
| initial support contact, when they knew that I would ask for
| "obvious" information. (Like a clear explanation of the problem,
| or just very basic clarifying questions.)
|
| I then pointed out a very clear example where the director of
| support really dropped the ball. The customer was trying to share
| something and was typing in the wrong email address. I simply
| shouldn't have been involved, because the kind of troubleshooting
| I was doing was something that the "director of support" should
| be knowledgeable enough to diagnose, understand, and figure out.
|
| They quit the next day.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I've had to manage those folks. The relationship tended to not
| last, but I didn't need to fire them. I won't back down from
| requiring results, and they tended to have kind of "stress
| meltdowns." It wasn't a very good experience for anyone.
|
| For the people that performed well, despite their personalities,
| my team was a dream job, unless they were so bad that they broke
| the team (see "stress meltdown," above). I didn't really tolerate
| folks that wouldn't work well with others (lower right quadrant).
|
| I was fortunate enough to work with folks that fit in the upper
| right quadrant. I don't think I ever had anyone up in the corner.
| Most were near the middle, sometimes, middle right. My bosses
| tended to be lower right.
|
| Me? Depends on who you ask. I was probably middle top, for folks
| that worked well, and lower right, for folks that did not. Most
| of the folks that worked for me were technically better than I
| was, and that was fine.
|
| I didn't run a day camp, and did not insist that everyone be on
| the same "psychic wavelength," or whatever. I hired experienced
| people with diverse backgrounds and drivers. It was my job to
| manage each one, individually.
| etempleton wrote:
| I will take someone nice and incompetent every day of the week
| over a competent jerk.
|
| The competent jerks destroy team morale, make good people leave,
| and paralyze junior employees and those lacking self-confidence.
| They may be good at their job, but they make others worse.
|
| Incompetent nice people, as long as they are not so incompetent
| to be a liability can at least contribute to a strong team
| culture and make good competent people want to show up.
|
| Of course, ideally, everyone is somewhere in that top right
| quadrant, but in my experience on large enough teams you usually
| have at least one not so nice person on the team and one or two
| not so competent people on the team.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > Incompetent nice people, as long as they are not so
| incompetent to be a liability can at least contribute to a
| strong team culture and make good competent people want to show
| up.
|
| Until everybody realizes they are working harder to compensate
| for the dead wood on the team. The first person I ever fired
| was "incompetent, but nice", one of my team members said "We
| can always find someone who is nice AND can do the job to
| replace them" and that stuck with me for a long time.
| ekianjo wrote:
| You cant have a company full of nice and incompetent people.
| Useless people can only be allowed in certain numbers.
| neotrope wrote:
| A players attract A players, but A players also push out B
| players
|
| if you're tolerating < A players, you might want to take a hard
| look at yourself.
| nerdix wrote:
| There are companies that are viable businesses but that can't
| afford a team of A players.
| neotrope wrote:
| gotta find those that value equity > cash or look at more
| junior devs
| panarky wrote:
| Quality is free.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Minuscule side note: a lot of competent jerk are just immature
| and fearful young dudes who fall into the "people can respect,
| accept (maybe even love) me if I'm infallible on that one
| thing". I was like that, and recently I ran into 20yos who had
| the exact same psychology.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I think the term "jerk" is underspecified in these types of
| conversations. The "competent jerks" in the minds of the "pro
| competent jerk" people are not the same that the "anti
| competent jerk" people are thinking of. I suspect these groups
| would agree in many cases on whether to keep someone who is
| competent but excessively blunt (without malice), and whether
| to fire someone who is competent but tears down their coworkers
| with political games. Both of those people might fall under the
| heading of "jerk", making it too broad a category to base
| sweeping predetermined choices on.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think the key question is whether they are nice, incompetent
| AND teachable, because if the person can get where you need
| them with some coaching, then it is not a wasted effort.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| The flip side of this is that people will also leave because
| they get frustrated by having to either clean up after or
| repeatedly bail out the "incompetent but nice" folks, and will
| leave for that reason too.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| And if you don't do it cheerfully, day after day, week after
| week, sacrificing lunches, nights and weekends, missing piano
| recitals and skipping vacations... you'll become somebody
| else's anecdote about a "brilliant jerk".
| crabbone wrote:
| > I will take someone nice and incompetent every day of the
| week over a competent jerk.
|
| I won't. I had this dilemma before. And I chose to take
| incompetent people. My life became miserable. I don't care
| about people being rude. I feel uncomfortable with people who
| would like to be rude but can't because they think it's
| inappropriate or w/e other thing they tell themselves. Somehow,
| they are more disgusting than people who are open about what
| they think.
|
| Plenty of posters on moderated Web user boards belong to that
| later category: they'd like to be rude, but try to formally
| obey the rules of the board and still be rude. Just enough for
| the moderator not to ban them.
|
| Same kind of people who'd delete complaints about their crappy
| program on a public bug tracker claiming the ticket author
| violated their code of conduct.
|
| ---
|
| I don't like to teach. Some people get off on telling juniors
| what to do. Most those that I saw teaching did it to feel
| important in their own eyes, beside the eyes of the junior.
|
| But when I made the mistake of agreeing to hire incompetent
| people, the amount of chores increased by a lot in my life. I'm
| also not the one to force my convictions on those I have to
| teach, but that led to the "students" making bad choices when
| it comes to the tools they decided to use. Before they've made
| their choice, I made it clear that if they chose tools
| different from those I use, it becomes their problem.
| Unfortunately, they wouldn't be able to deal with that problem.
| And so their productivity was in the negative. They would still
| be unable to accomplish even very basic tasks, but they would
| also drag me down by trying to make me solve their problems
| with the tools I advised against.
|
| Instead of just being able to split the work somewhat evenly, I
| couldn't trust juniors to do things that required independent
| research -- they felt overwhelmed at such tasks and, if
| assigned one, would just waste my time by scheduling meetings
| with me to "discuss" their objectives, where, essentially,
| they'd expect me to do their work for them and dumb it down so
| that they could also understand what's being done.
|
| I also had to report to my boss on the progress my assigned
| juniors were making. I felt guilty that they didn't do squat,
| but at the same time felt like I might become the reason for
| firing them, and I didn't want to be that person either. Yet,
| at the same time, I didn't want to do stuff like taking over
| their branch and finishing their task, both because I think
| that not even the worst programmer deserves that and because,
| on a personal level, I didn't want to upset them -- after all,
| they were _nice_. It 's harder to be a jerk to nice people.
| Kranar wrote:
| I used to think the same way as you, and then I started a
| company and had to pay out of pocket for employees, and the sad
| truth that I almost hate myself for admitting is that if you
| have to pick between incompetent but nice, and competent but a
| jerk, you take the jerk. And yes, multiple people will even
| quit because you picked the jerk over the nice guy, and I still
| found it's worth it to take the jerk because of how competency
| scales. A good/competent software engineer can genuinely do the
| work of many, many mediocre developers and you're almost always
| better off with a small number of really solid developers over
| a large number of nice but mediocre ones.
|
| Now of course we can always exaggerate things to an extreme and
| compare a racist, sexist, jerk who swears nonstop, to someone
| who is mildly incompetent, and there are certain principles and
| boundaries that are worth upholding with respect to how people
| treat each other regardless of their productivity, but in
| actuality that's not really the difficult choice you end up
| facing.
|
| The really difficult choice you end up facing is someone who is
| nice and gets along with people but is ultimately too dependent
| on others to do their job versus someone who works
| independently and does an excellent job but is very blunt and
| can be an asshole in regards to the expectations they hold
| others to. Good software developers often expect their peers to
| also be at a high standard and will speak in very plain, rude,
| and blunt language if they feel others are not pulling their
| weight.
|
| And finally, I have observed that in the long run, competent
| people tend to prefer to work with others whose skill they
| respect and they feel they can learn from because they're
| really good at their job, compared to working with someone who
| is pleasant but is always dependent on others. Being nice is a
| good short term skill to have, but people get used to those who
| are nice but they never get used to someone who is incompetent.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > competent people tend to prefer to work with others whose
| skill they respect and they feel they can learn from because
| they're really good at their job
|
| Amen.
|
| The #1 "perk" any company can offer is working with a
| skilled, competent team.
|
| Birds of a feather will flock together.
| michaelrpeskin wrote:
| Back when I was a developer, I tended towards the competent
| jerk. I was pretty good, but not 10x and I was a bit short
| with people not a raging asshole, though looking back I am
| ashamed of my behavior. The good thing is that it makes it
| really easy for me to recognize now.
|
| On my teams, I don't accept incompetence, so even the nice
| folks get managed out quickly.
|
| I do have a strategy for handling the 10x assholes, though.
| We have a difficult problem domain (lots of math and physics)
| so I need those smart folks. I'm also lucky to have 2 hyper-
| competent nice devs too. I use them like jiu jitsu gyms use
| their enforcers.
|
| When an extra aggressive 20 something shows up to a gym and
| starts making it unsafe to train, the gym will pair them up
| with a black belt who will humiliate them but be super nice
| about it and put them in their place.
|
| I do the same. If I see asshole behavior surfacing, I'll pair
| them up with my one of my super competent devs and have a
| them do a in depth code review or something like that.
|
| Most of the time it works and the bad behavior goes away. If
| that doesn't work (very rarely), we'll manage them out.
|
| Sometimes the 10x jerk is a jerk because he's used to dealing
| with incompetence. But if you can show them competent-nice
| behavior, they'll often pattern match to that.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I'm not sure why a direct communication style is
| inappropriate. We all learn as developers not to write
| extra lines of code, to be economical with
| wire/communication protocols, and to avoid duplicating
| sources of truth. It's only natural that we extend these
| principles into our professional communication.
|
| When I use direct language, I am trying to economize the
| time and energy of everyone listening to me by speaking as
| clearly and concisely as possible. It's also a style
| practiced in military communication, where it's taught as
| the ABCs - accuracy, brevity and clarity. I don't think we
| as an industry should concede that this style is reserved
| for jerks.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| "You made a mistake here. Correct it."
|
| "You made a mistake here and need to correct it."
|
| "Please correct this mistake."
|
| "There's a mistake here that needs correcting."
|
| "Can you correct this mistake?"
|
| I'd say the top two are direct and definitely impolite.
| Number two may seem polite to a direct sort of person,
| but the blame makes it impolite. Of the latter three I'd
| say the top one is not only the most concise and direct,
| but also fairly polite. These last two are more polite,
| but lack directness.
| ye-olde-sysrq wrote:
| IMO all of this is too brusque.
|
| "Hey - <problem> is causing <symptom>. I think you have
| context on this - can you drive <solution>?"
|
| We're people. The nuance, tone, and empathy of what we
| say matters. I know some people will scoff at "coddling"
| or "beating around the bush". I think these people don't
| correctly prioritize the outcomes of their communication.
|
| When I talk to someone, my goals are, in this order:
|
| 1. That the other person like me and want to continue
| working happily with me in the future and feel
| emotionally safe talking to me.
|
| 2. Whatever "primary"/immediate outcome I'm shooting for
|
| Paying attention to 1 pays off in the long term. People
| are happy to work with you and it accelerates how
| effective you can be because people feel safe with you.
| lisasays wrote:
| _" Hey - <problem> is causing <symptom>. I think you have
| context on this - can you drive <solution>?"_
|
| Please don't go around blowing corporate-speak up
| people's asses like this.
|
| Seriously this a huge waste of time. If I made a typo in
| some important document or piece of code, just tell me
| what it was, and I'll fix it.
|
| We're team members after all. Plus we've been spent years
| at hard technical schools and are used to having our work
| evaluated and corrected by others. We're not babies.
|
| Granted, your approach is much more applicable (and is
| arguably necessary) when things are fuzzier, when it's
| not clear what the root cause is or who (if anyone) is at
| fault.
|
| Most of the time it isn't though - it's very
| straightforward, and has nothing to do with ego or blame
| at all. In these (the vast majority of cases) -- just
| give me the information so I get through the day, please.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| > Granted, your approach is much more applicable (and is
| arguably necessary) when things are fuzzier, when it's
| not clear what the root cause is or who (if anyone) is at
| fault.
|
| But can you always reliably tell? There might be a
| reason, what looks like a mistake to you, was done in the
| first place. A reason that's not obvious to you, because
| the error is in plain sight and takes up all the space.
| So, by "blowing corporate-speak up people's asses", you
| actually give them a chance to elaborate, without already
| coming to a conclusion and calling it a day. This is
| something I'd expect from a senior developer, for
| instance. I usually frame it as a question, to get an
| understanding as to why it was done.
|
| And trivial errors like typos in a method name get a
| comment with a suggestion, that can be applied by the
| original author in Azure DevOps with a single click.
| [deleted]
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Let's circle back to this question.
|
| It starts well, with "X is causing Y", and reminds me of
| a framework we had at one of my previous jobs - behaviour
| -> impact -> outcomes (or options?). It's a model to
| provide developmental feedback, but can be useful to
| frame other situations. In this case:
|
| "System X is currently way behind our target uptime. As
| you know, this was caused by the introduction of feature
| X which your team worked on recently. We need to get back
| on track and meet our SLOs before it starts impacting
| revenue."
|
| Tells them everything they need to know. You shared the
| necessary info and actions to be taken are obvious, but
| adding a "we need you to focus on this and take the lead
| on fixing it" will not sound aggressive.
|
| The approach you mentioned is very cloudy in comparison,
| "driving" something is not a clear outcome, "you have
| context" is soft blaming. It's just a very polished "it's
| your fault, fix your shit", and it would sound exactly
| like that to me. It's precisely the kind of beating
| around the bush that people scoff at. The message itself
| can be a lot better.
| jacobolus wrote:
| You missed various less-direct but often just as
| effective kinds of questions:
|
| "Can you find the mistake here?"
|
| "Is there a mistake here?"
|
| "Could there be a mistake here?"
|
| "Did you test this part?"
|
| Better still is to be specific:
|
| "What happens if <<specific edge case>>?"
|
| "I did it that way one time, but ran into <<concrete
| problem>>."
|
| "Your way here works just as well, but doesn't match our
| conventions."
| satellite2 wrote:
| Generally
|
| "Is this a mistake?"
|
| Is largely sufficient and a smart person will fix it.
|
| All the five examples are too direct and in case there
| was no mistake which happens most often than not with
| competent teams, will leave a sour aftertaste to
| everyone.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I agree, but it's not direct. And the OP wanted direct.
| tremon wrote:
| I think you're confusing direct and confrontational. All
| five of your phrasings are combative and lack specificity
| (and so does the GP's questioning phrase). Simply saying
| or asking "this is a mistake" is not identifying the
| problem at all.
|
| Maybe you implied there would be more context than just
| that one phrase, but in the interest of furthering the
| discussion, these phrasings are all better than your
| examples, and still very direct:
|
| - "This approach fails under conditions A or B"
|
| - "This code seems to assume X, where is this validated?"
|
| - "How does this code handle condition Y?"
|
| - "This code delivers the wrong result under condition Z"
|
| - "This does not do what's specified in the ticket: it
| should do S, not P"
| Mezzie wrote:
| I'll also add that it's a class signifier, as much as
| we're all loath to admit it. The upper-middle and
| professional classes really don't like direct
| communication and they have control over key parts of
| most companies.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I see a ChatGPT app here! Nobody sends messages to each
| other directly, instead everything goes first to the app
| which reads and rephrases the message in the manner that
| the intended recipient finds most agreeable - terse and
| to the point, or long-winded and circumlocutious, plus
| whatever else fits. The information gets delivered with
| minimal friction, everyone's happy?
|
| This would be an interesting experiment, anyway.
| kritiko wrote:
| Have you ever stewed over something somebody said to you?
|
| Miscommunication or negative comments can have
| productivity impacts.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| It's also a cultural thing.
|
| As a Frenchman, many Americans find my totally France
| compliant speech a bit rude.
|
| On the other hand, I find their way of calling everyone a
| "friend" and every single nice things "amazing" extremely
| annoying.
|
| But if people are adults, having a little friction is not
| a big deal. We don't need to appreciate all behaviors to
| live together.
|
| This is something that is well understood in jobs with
| harsh conditions, but in our very comfy IT jobs, people
| seem to sweat the small stuff way more.
| mongol wrote:
| I want to go on a tangent here and say I completely
| agree. I don't know how it happened but many people
| around me now express how they love this or that, most
| things are amazing or awesome, and they click on heart
| emojis in Teams on more or less every message. Not sure
| if it is generational, or cultural or whatever. I can
| imitate but to me if feels odd. I prefer a more balanced
| language. Btw I am in a large well known company in
| Europe with people from all over the world, but quite
| young for the most part.
| nabnob wrote:
| Those hyper-competent nice devs can turn incompetent
| engineers into competent ones, though, and have such a huge
| impact on work culture that they bring everyone else up
| with them too. A lot of incompetence can just be
| inexperience, not understanding what the priorities are and
| getting overwhelmed.
| neeleshs wrote:
| As long as it's the latter - inexperience - yes. But a
| lot of the time it's just the aptitude and that cannot be
| taught (easily). I've seen my fair share of experienced,
| nice people with less that good aptitude for the job. A
| year later being nice and teaching, I see marginal
| improvement at a huge cost. It's not worth it at least in
| startups. I've also seen many young devs with the right
| aptitude but no knowledge/experience and they've turned
| out to be assets within a short period of time.
| uoaei wrote:
| > A lot of incompetence can just be inexperience, not
| understanding what the priorities are and getting
| overwhelmed.
|
| This is the job of the manager to resolve. If that person
| really is incompetent rather than merely unfamiliar with
| the work, the manager has access to assets such as hyper-
| competent nice people for mentoring the less-competent,
| and should coordinate between the mentor and mentee to
| lift people out of incompetency.
| [deleted]
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Both competence and social skills are trainable. A specific
| shop may not be able to train both, but there are shops
| that can train at least one of the above.
|
| My last job I could take the most incompetent beginner and
| make them productive. In my current one, I really can only
| train that social skill side.
|
| Obviously tail behavior on either end may make training not
| worth it.
| carlmr wrote:
| >My last job I could take the most incompetent beginner
| and make them productive. In my current one, I really can
| only train that social skill side.
|
| The problem is not the incompetent beginner. The
| incompetent beginner has potential for future competence.
|
| Incompetent seniors are a bigger issue, since their
| future potential is usually limited, and they might still
| have sway due to their seniority. This is especially bad
| in big bureaucratic companies.
| aredox wrote:
| You just bet your company on that one employee... And your
| product has now a bus factor of 1.
|
| There's always compromises to make; just wanted to add a few
| more problems a competent jerk can add, long-term.
| charlie0 wrote:
| Yes, but he HAS a product, which is better than no product.
| lisasays wrote:
| _Good software developers often expect their peers to also be
| at a high standard and will speak in very plain, rude, and
| blunt language if they feel others are not pulling their
| weight._
|
| Speaking bluntly isn't what is meant by being an
| asshole/jerk.
|
| What we're talking about here is the completely gratuitous,
| "I'm so valuable here that I can get away with it" abusive
| behavior that has _no_ correlation with performative ability.
| Kranar wrote:
| Yes you have a point, but it's like either we're discussing
| something obvious and trivial, like a caricature of a
| person who is just complete asshole abusive toxic diva, or
| we're discussing the real grey area that is genuinely
| difficult to deal with.
|
| Luckily I've never hired a completely abusive and
| gratuitous but competent asshole but yes, I would fire that
| person as a matter of principle regardless of how competent
| they are.
|
| But come on, are we really discussing that scenario or are
| we discussing the much more common scenario like someone
| who is about as much of an asshole as 2010s Linus Torvalds?
| Someone who is really competent but gets very impatient
| with others, has no problem stating rudely that your work
| is bad, that you keep making the same tiring mistakes over
| and over again, that you should know how to do certain
| things by now, that you're expected blah blah blah.
|
| I think that's the more interesting and worthwhile
| discussion to have and it's the case where for my company,
| I decided I'll take the asshole over the nice guy.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Linus Torvalds is an asshole now? He used to use strong
| language, but he doesn't play favourites or is sexist,
| racist or any-ist, really. And he engages with arguments.
|
| Compare that with the US. In the US you cannot at all use
| even slight swearwords, people will take genuine offense,
| but authorititarianism by the higher-ups is commonplace.
|
| There may be a genuine disconnect between people what an
| arsehole actually constitutes.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| If they've got the skills of a 2010s Linus Torvalds, why
| are they working for you?
| lisasays wrote:
| If they really _are_ a 2010 Linus Torvalds, you just
| might have a case of keeping them on the team.
| Unfortunately, 99.99 percent of the people who seem to be
| trying to be this archetype -- just aren 't.
|
| _Or we 're discussing the real grey area that is
| genuinely difficult to deal with._
|
| What's so difficult to deal with? You make it plain and
| clear to them that their competence absolutely _does not_
| give them a pass for bad behavior. And that under no
| circumstances will it be allowed to continue.
|
| _I 've never hired a completely abusive and gratuitous
| but competent asshole but ... I decided I'll take the
| asshole over the nice guy._
|
| What? Mealy-mouthed / "strategically nice, but
| selectively an asshole" is the most common type actually
| - and still an asshole.
| Kranar wrote:
| >What's so difficult to deal with?
|
| Respectfully, if you think dealing with people is as
| simple as delivering ultimatums about their behavior then
| you likely have not dealt with leading teams of highly
| skilled professionals.
| lisasays wrote:
| The behaviors you are describing (and tacitly defending)
| - continually getting impatient with, and browbeating
| (not just criticizing) others - are those of overgrown
| kidults, basically. Not highly skilled professionals.
| highperfanon wrote:
| Those behaviors manifest when you work in high
| performance environments.
|
| Yeah, if you're on the sidelines in an over-funded
| environment with little connection to the performance of
| the business, then you can play tea-party and be nice,
| and inclusive, and oh so delightful.
|
| But when you've got a critical deadline you need to meet,
| and some fuckhead decided he was going to slack and cause
| the rest of us to have to pick up his end of things due
| to shear caprice, there's going to be strong language
| thrown around about the situation -- where all patience
| has already been exhausted weeks ago.
|
| Same shit happens in the Boy Scouts, same shit happens in
| the military, same shit happens in boardrooms, same shit
| happens everywhere people go to get stuff done.
| lisasays wrote:
| _[When someone does something stupid, and then people get
| angry]_
|
| That's not what we're talking about here.
|
| But rather: the type of people who basically prefer to be
| assholes, on general principle. Even when no one is
| messing up and everything is going perfectly fine.
| highperfanon wrote:
| Then we're talking past each other because our
| experiences are at odds.
|
| I have never met, what I imagine is, a gratuitous asshole
| in the workplace.
|
| I've met people who were just all-around cantankerous
| assholes outside of work, but I quickly distance myself
| from them.
|
| Maybe it's because I've never worked in a corporate
| environment -- but only small, close-knit teams where
| that shit isn't tolerated. Or maybe I've just been lucky,
| I don't know.
| lisasays wrote:
| Yeah the corporate world is absolutely full of such
| people.
|
| Granted, it usually isn't premeditated; it's more likely
| to be of the reactive / passive sort. Some form of: "Oh
| I'm having a bad day, so I'm going to spontaneously get
| salty at you over something completely non-consequential,
| or in fact, over an outright, and frankly pretty thick-
| headed misunderstanding on my part. Not that I'll ever
| apologize, though. Oh and good luck trying to go over my
| head to get one out of me."
|
| That sort of thing. Less frequently, outright nasty and
| career-damaging (and sometimes health-damaging) stuff
| happens too.
|
| Such that at some point, one realizes that, to a large
| extent -- putting up with this nonsense is what the gig
| is all about, and what you're essentially getting paid
| for.
| chrsig wrote:
| > What we're talking about here is the completely
| gratuitous, "I'm so valuable here that I can get away with
| it" abusive behavior that has no correlation with
| performative ability.
|
| Can you give a concrete example of this behavior? I'm sure
| I can think of some, but I'd like to be more clear on what
| you had in mind.
| lisasays wrote:
| This comment a few branches over describes a fairy
| typical example:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35363501
|
| Then there are all kinds of examples not specific to
| matters of pure and simple rudeness (e.g. all manner of
| politicking, manouevring and bad-mouthing that goes on),
| as well as not defending / standing up for others when
| you should, etc.
|
| There have been plenty of serious articles written about
| this topic; the search term to look for would be
| "workplace hygiene", which is the somewhat more formal
| description. ("Toxic work environments", "workplace
| bullying" also work but tend to be more second-hand, and
| sometimes spammy).
| lightbendover wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure about that, speaking directly/bluntly
| often gets you labeled as a jerk these days. I'm over it
| though, people are going to hear what they need to hear,
| whether that makes me a jerk or not.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Speaking bluntly isn't what is meant by being an
| asshole/jerk.
|
| That's not what _you_ meant. That _is_ what a lot of other
| people mean.
| comfypotato wrote:
| What hasn't been mentioned at this point in the conversation
| is that 0.1x incompetence is much more common than
| problematic jerks.
|
| It's not apples to oranges. Both should be removed, and if
| you have to take one or the other (and only one of each) the
| jerk is the bigger issue.
|
| If you normalize the jerk level down so that the jerks are as
| common as the 0.1x developers, I'd take those mild jerks any
| day.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| This 1000%. It's incredible how just being mediocre leads to
| so much pain down the road from wasted effort and bad design.
| roflyear wrote:
| Incompetent people are a negative multiplier to productivity.
| lightbendover wrote:
| If your productivity is way negative, just hire one more
| very, very incompetent person then.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| "Incompetent nice people, as long as they are not so
| incompetent to be a liability can at least contribute to a
| strong team culture and make good competent people want to show
| up."
|
| I think incompetent nice people completely destroy team
| culture. Competent jerks are also a problem but at least they
| get something done. The IT department at my company used to be
| full with very nice people that got absolutely nothing done
| (it's a bit better now). They talked nice, were good at
| meetings and really good at dinners after work. But at some
| point deadline pressure kicks in and you realize that you have
| to do their work if you want to finish. It causes a lot of
| resentment. Even worse is when nice incompetent people are
| gatekeepers for something you need (in this case security
| policies) and block your ability to make decisions.
|
| My conclusion is that both nice and incompetent people and
| competent jerks need to be removed if you want to have a strong
| team. But if I have to choose I'll take a competent jerk
| because I can get at least something. Incompetent people are
| useless.
| bawolff wrote:
| I think incompetent but nice can also lead to morale problems.
| Not as bad as the jerk situation, but eventually everyone
| notices this one person who does no work but is still getting
| paid. Which can lead to jealously and feelings of unfairness.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| "Doing no work" would be great. Understanding the commit they
| made last thing on Friday, which is incomprehensible and has
| broken your work, is not so great.
|
| In my last job, I worked with three incompetents, none of
| whom were jerks, in a team of ten. I reckon the rest of us
| had to do twice the work to navigate their mistakes.
|
| This is the "Please stop writing code" syndrome.
| etempleton wrote:
| It is a balancing act for sure.
| onos wrote:
| It gets worse when they become the norm. Then the rockstars
| start to think "why am I doing the work for five people but
| getting paid only 20% more" then they leave.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| It is more like why do I have five people who boss me
| around in addition to my real boss?
| etempleton wrote:
| Follow up: I have seen a mass exodus of a high performance team
| because of a single competent jerk that was allowed to wreck
| havoc.
|
| I have also seen an entire smallish company nearly completely
| collapse into itself because being a competent jerk basically
| became normal operating procedure and you either adapted or
| were bullied out of the company. Eventually the only people
| left were bullies and none of them could work together well
| enough to deliver.
|
| I have never seen an incompetent nice employee ever do anything
| so damaging.
| paulddraper wrote:
| The _WORST_ damage can be caused in socialization not
| performance.
|
| But the most _common_ damage is done by performance not in
| socialization.
| theamk wrote:
| I've seen multiple competent people quit the team, citing
| overwork and team's inability to deliver results.
|
| The reason that more than half of the team were "incompetent
| but nice". They'd take weeks to do what other team members
| would do in days, and would require a lot of support too. But
| they'd still take headcount spots, so the team could not hire
| more people without firing someone first, and everyone was so
| nice....
| Jensson wrote:
| > I have never seen an incompetent nice employee ever do
| anything so damaging.
|
| They tend to climb management chain and then you are left
| with leaders who can't understand anything, that is by far
| worse than what any competent jerk can accomplish.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| A know-nothing hands-on manager is a real headache, but a
| hands-off one may just let a team do their own thing?
| Jensson wrote:
| That can work short term if the team is still full of
| competent people, but wont work long term since the
| manager is in charge of hiring, firing and promoting
| people.
| neotrope wrote:
| > I have never seen an incompetent nice employee ever do
| anything so damaging.
|
| bullshit. how many incidents are due to incompetence? how
| many alerts were just forgotten? how many customers churn
| because of low quality ux? how many additional incompetent
| employees were hired because your nice friend let them
| through? incompetence erodes culture, leads to bureaucracy
| and the slow death of a company.
| fvdessen wrote:
| Worst case scenario that i've seen with 'incompetent nice' is
| when somehow a team was composed of only such people. Nothing
| they made worked, but because they were all nice it couldn't
| really be admitted that it was because of their incompetence,
| so other competent people were pulled in to help, but then
| under incompetent leadership, so they were rendered
| ineffective.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > but then under incompetent leadership, so they were
| rendered ineffective
|
| This made me realise that I'm pretty tolerant of
| incompetence so long as it's junior to me (where I can help
| them improve). But make me work for somebody incompetent
| and I will call them out on it, escalate it to their
| manager if need be, and leave pretty quickly if the
| situation isn't remedied.
| synergy20 wrote:
| a competent jerk is rare, statistically.
|
| a nice and incompetent one is common, if anything, they tend to
| produce more bugs then they can fix.
|
| if I'm the boss, I will hire a competent jerk and manage
| him/her well, instead of feeling good with a few incompetent
| nice guys while the company will sink, soon or later.
|
| the keyword is to survive you have to be competent, other
| things(nice vs jerk) is secondary, and that's a management's
| job to "fix", the incompetent-but-nice is nearly impossible to
| fix to me.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| Robert Sutton wrote a book about this.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule
|
| Edit: Interestingly, depressed people can also bring down team
| morale.
| rukuu001 wrote:
| One of the few very real regrets I have about the way we've run
| our business is not getting rid of a brilliant asshole sooner.
| It was boggling:
|
| a) How good he was. Just like really really good quality of
| work.
|
| b) How bad he was. Crying client. Regularly destroying team
| morale and productivity with incredible drama.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > One of the few very real regrets I have about the way we've
| run our business is not getting rid of a brilliant asshole
| sooner.
|
| If you can't isolate the brilliant asshole in a back office
| somewhere, you need to get rid of them.
|
| I'm always amazed when brilliant assholes are allowed to
| directly manage customer relations or co-workers.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I've had a BA working for me and leading a team. It was one
| of the highest performing teams I've ever had in my org
| (because everyone was hand-picked/self-selected into that
| team).
|
| It's not realistic to build teams like this and this team
| fell apart/could not be sustained when one of the key
| members eventually left. But they seemed happy and
| delivered like crazy.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Depends if we're talking manager or IC.
|
| A competent jerk IC can be put in a corner and be productive.
| More or less.
|
| That said, fire jerks and incompetent people.
| majormajor wrote:
| "Incompetent nice people, as long as they are not so
| incompetent to be a liability"
|
| This is veering into tautological territory but "not competent
| enough to be useful" is where my personal definition of
| "incompetent" would land. ;)
|
| I also don't want competent jerks but... neither end of this
| spectrum is good.
|
| (IMO the real trick is that neither of these scales (either
| competence or jerkhood) is universally the same across
| companies. Different people interact in different ways, and
| different teams have different problems to solve. Putting up
| with bad fits on your team for too long hurts your team
| regardless of the precise sort of bad fit. If you've tried to
| coach them on what's needed for months on end already with no
| luck, you have to make a hard decision, and "no action" isn't
| actually avoiding that decision.)
| glonq wrote:
| Nice + bad at their job = promoted to management
| superfrank wrote:
| In my experience, you give these people a long leash and lots of
| help to try and find a role where they can make some sort of
| positive impact, but if they are truly incompetent at everything
| you have to let them go.
|
| Two reasons:
|
| 1. At least in some cases they know they're not doing a good job
| and they likely have anxiety about when they're going to get let
| go. Ripping the bandaid off and firing them is kind of putting
| them out of their misery.
|
| 2. Probably the more common scenario is that the Nice Guy's
| incompetence starts to affect the people around them. If Nice Guy
| is so incompetent that other people have to pick up their slack
| and fix their mistakes people end up getting upset that they have
| to do extra work to address Nice Guy's shortcomings. If you
| remove Nice Guy from anything meaningful and only give them work
| with no deadlines or consequences for failure, other people
| eventually start to resent the fact that Nice Guy gets all the
| easy work.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| More likely they folks in the top left are playing you - they
| aren't nice. But they know if they act nice they can coast a lot
| longer. They are taking advantage of you and everyone else who
| need to pull the extra weight - that's not nice at all.
| cauch wrote:
| Well, they are playing you as much as the folks on the bottom
| right: they are taking advantage of their technical competence
| to allow themselves of not playing by the social rules for
| their own selfish reasons. It is interesting that for some, the
| top left are more guilty or immoral (or whatever the term is)
| than the bottom right.
| jedberg wrote:
| > People who are good at the work but not very nice are the
| "brilliant asshole" archetype. I could write quite a bit about
| how our industry mostly gets this archetype wrong - spoiler
| alert: they mostly don't exist - but that's another article.
|
| I would really like to see that article, because I've personally
| worked with a few brilliant jerks in my time. I'm still friends
| with most of them to this day. I guess I'm just good at working
| with them and ignoring their jerkiness, so I keep ending up
| working with them?
|
| I'm not sure why the author says this but I've seen quite a few
| in my day.
| vsareto wrote:
| >I guess I'm just good at working with them and ignoring their
| jerkiness, so I keep ending up working with them?
|
| This is definitely a skill. You can have, what seems to be, a
| bunch of jerks working together but they all have thick-skin so
| being a jerk to one another doesn't really affect any of them.
| Effectively hiring for this team is an exercise in finding
| people who think like they do.
|
| Good meshing of personalities can override the predictions of
| the incompetent/niceness matrix in the article.
| precompute wrote:
| These are usually people that are high in Openness, low in
| Agreeableness and with above-average Psychoticism. I have more
| than a few friends that fall into this category (they're very
| difficult to find!), and they're all brilliant at whatever they
| decide to do. But they're very likely to not take your well-
| meaning advice, likely to think that you must be missing some
| context, and after that would still like you to know what they
| think about [X]. There's definitely some that are neurodiverse,
| but there are others that are very neurotypically successful.
| You can entice both of these with weird theories and
| conjectures, and it's necessary to at least know where their
| worldview leads but knowing the "base" of their worldview.
|
| People of this kind are really only interesting when one has
| the bandwidth for long, potentially uncomfortable discussions,
| and when one is about as smart as the other guy.
|
| People much smarter that average usually don't have the narc-y
| vibe (although I'm sure there's tons of them in academia) and
| they usually fall under the "Nice" category. Many of these
| people get looked over because normal people have a very
| difficult time understanding what they're saying, and are hence
| liable to putting them in the "incompetent" category.
| andrenotgiant wrote:
| not OP. But in my experience there's a big gray area between
| "Brilliant/Nice" and "Brilliant/Asshole" quadrant where people
| who are very direct, have less patience for incompetence, or
| hold their coworkers to high standards go.
|
| IMO these are the best people because they intervene before a
| company or team veers too far off course.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Default work culture and job expectations are basically designed
| around the idea that you are hiring a married man whose wife is
| cooking, cleaning etc and all he has to do is his paid job. This
| is simply not reality in most cases.
|
| Also, while only 15 to 20 percent of people qualify as officially
| _disabled,_ studies suggest that at least 60 percent of people
| have some degree of impairment that would benefit from
| accommodation.
|
| I suspect the above two factors are the root cause of seemingly
| nice people who are seemingly resistant to change and just can't
| get their act together.
|
| These days, even just getting oneself adequately fed without
| excess time and expense seems to be a challenge for a large
| number of people. We have a variety of services trying to address
| that issue but, really, it probably needs something more like a
| cultural shift to address it effectively.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| So our entire society has become disabled, and the answer is to
| accommodate (read: pay for) everyone's inability to meet
| standard expectations of a full time role? It seems to me that
| the emphasis on accommodating people, avoiding negative
| emotion, stressful situations, and difficult conversation is
| what's _causing_ people to grow into adulthood incapable of
| basic functioning.
|
| People _need hardship_ in order to become conditioned to life.
| Depriving them of it does no one any favours. Ask your
| grandparents how they lived when they were in their 20s - what
| they ate, how convenient their lives were, how accommodated
| they felt by their employers. The answer here is _less
| accommodation_ , not more. Sink or swim. Most people, when
| faced with the choice of hard work or _real_ destitution, will
| choose hard work. This is the cultural shift you 're looking
| for.
| fleetwoodsnack wrote:
| My grandparents had church, social clubs, mutual aid
| organizations, and unions which all helped (paid for) support
| of one kind or another during their hardships.
|
| Working together and accommodating others is probably one of
| the strengths we've actually failed to foster in the
| contemporary context, to our detriment. The atomization of
| the individual and the cult of silent suffering is something
| they'd balk or pity us for.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I'm not so sure. Everyone I've met born before 1950 would
| much rather suffer in dignified silence than burden anyone
| with their care.
| fleetwoodsnack wrote:
| My grandparents were dustbowl survivors and veterans who
| humbly attribute their survival and later success to
| their neighbors, friends, and colleagues that helped
| them, and whom they spent their later lives trying to pay
| back in kindness and friendship.
|
| The influence of our relationships, and who we know, on
| our worldview is certainly fascinating.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Average life expectancy in 1920s America was 54 years.
|
| https://www.ncpedia.org/history/20th-
| Century/1920s#:~:text=I....
|
| It is now 78.9 years.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-
| expectancy-....
|
| We can deal with the reality that a lot of people are alive
| today who cannot work long and hard yet still need to support
| themselves.
|
| Or we can continue to whine about how the world is broken and
| unfixable and talk about UBI -- aka a universal dole -- as
| our imagined solution while not actually implementing it, I
| guess.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Your life expectancy figure is misleading. Life expectancy
| at birth was low due to high infant mortality. Life
| expectancy at age 15 was in the high 60s in 1933[1].
|
| Your initial post referenced ~60% of people are impaired to
| the degree that they need explicit accommodation. They
| can't all be over 60, the demographics just don't work.
|
| 1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-at-
| age-15...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The reality is that a lot of privileged people get the
| accommodations they need, they just don't blame it on
| personal impairment. People in the C-suite routinely have
| personal assistants to help them keep their schedule on
| track, write their correspondence, etc.
|
| They may be incapable of doing those tasks themselves but
| no one acts like they should. A lower level employee who
| has trouble spelling may be deemed incompetent. A higher
| level employee who can't spell gets automatic
| accommodation in the form of having their administrative
| assistant deal with their correspondence or check their
| writing if they write something themselves.
|
| There were a lot of things different in the past compared
| to today. In the time of President Lincoln, average
| education level for adult women was second to fourth
| grade. At one time, it was fairly common for people
| working on farms and the like to stop attending school
| after 8th grade.
|
| With an increasingly complex society, the expectations
| for "basic" competency at a lot of things is more
| demanding than it once was. This is not about feeling
| sorry for a few whiners. This a societal shift and we can
| figure out how to do this better or crash and burn.
| chrsjxn wrote:
| "Accomodations" in this case could be something as simple as
| noise cancelling headphones for employees working in an open
| plan office. Or a woman wearing a sweater because the office
| is cold. We don't tend to think of these as a disability
| measure because the problems are obviously caused by the
| setup of the work environment.
|
| Expecting people to suffer hardships and learn to work harder
| instead of using simple tools to improve their productivity
| is just bizarrely cruel.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| People should buy sweaters and headphones for themselves
| then. Accommodation in this context references something an
| employer must explicitly provide for employees (usually by
| law). Are you suggesting that employers need to hand out
| headphones and sweaters?
| chrsjxn wrote:
| OP referenced benefits from accommodations for employees
| who aren't recognized as disabled, so it seems pretty
| clear we're outside of the legal framework for workers
| with disabilities.
|
| And, generally, they do buy those things for themselves.
| Though plenty of employers will allow employees to
| expense these sorts of things, along with tools like
| ergonomic keyboards. They're cheap, in comparison to the
| cost of employees.
|
| Hell, maybe that's the example I should have led with.
| Some non-disabling health conditions might put someone at
| a heightened risk for carpal tunnel syndrome. Ergonomic
| tools seems like a no brainer, compared to hardship and
| learning to work harder.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _Accommodation in this context references something an
| employer must explicitly provide for employees (usually
| by law)._
|
| I said no such thing. Just making the observation that if
| people fail to change adequately to keep their job, there
| is probably an underlying reason.
|
| I spoke of a need for cultural change in details like how
| we feed ourselves. You making this about an expectation
| that it is entirely on employers to cater to the needs of
| whiny, incompetent losers or something is just that:
| _You_ framing it that way. I did not frame it that way.
| jdougan wrote:
| For open plan offices? Sure. One of the reasons open plan
| offices are popular is because they offload costs like
| this to the staff. Maybe there needs to be a cash
| allowance for that kind of thing, as prefs for stuff like
| sweaters and headphones are pretty variable.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Beware the incompetent, their powers are hidden, and you can't
| imagine what they will do to survive.
|
| Source: decade+ consulting in govt.
| ng12 wrote:
| Yeah, I wish incompetent jerks were fired quickly. Working in
| finance has taught me they rarely are.
| neotrope wrote:
| truth. ran into countless managers who are utterly incompetent
| but have a stranglehold over their position. of the few i got
| to know well, it seems intentional. they know they can't win on
| the competence axis, so they find their way into hiring
| roundtables, diversity groups, afterwork events, support
| critical initiatives, etc.
| pknomad wrote:
| Yes, but that's government for you.
| H8crilA wrote:
| A government is just a very big organization. Armies are big
| organizations, corporations are usually mid sized, small
| firms are small.
|
| There is no magic border that separates these entities, and
| no the fact that some are for-profit and some are not doesn't
| change much the day-to-day life of a cog in the machine.
| otikik wrote:
| It's not difficult.
|
| You don't hire them, but you go out for beers with them.
| bena wrote:
| Don't confuse "polite and friendly" with "nice". And don't
| confuse "terseness" with "jerkness".
|
| We do no one a kindness when we allow someone to continue to make
| mistakes that could be prevented. Sometimes, the kindness is
| letting them fail. To feel the weight of the mistake. So they
| gain the experience they need. So sometimes, we need to tell
| someone simply "No". And some people will call you a jerk for
| that.
|
| On the other hand, after you've spent so many resources
| attempting to train someone, continued incompetence is not "being
| nice". Someone who is truly nice would see that the skill is
| beyond them and remove themselves. Only a jerk would insist on
| maintaining a position they've demonstrated a repeated inability
| to perform. And only a jerk would try keeping them there.
|
| Incompetent but nice does not exist. Or, if it does, it does not
| exist for long. Either the person stops being incompetent or they
| stop being nice.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Incompetent jerks who become bosses get take the whole ship down
| before getting fired themselves.
| blablablerg wrote:
| Someone who is a jerk will be fired very quickly when showing
| incompetence. The bar is much higher for a jerk, and even then he
| can be supercompetent but still get fired because he is a jerk
| and not good for the team. Someone who is nice gets much more
| leeway, but if very incompetent will still get fired.
|
| So the problem with the reasoning in the article is discussing
| niceness and competence as dichotomies, while in fact they are
| scales and you can be much more incompetent when you are nice,
| but there still is a limit.
| sublinear wrote:
| A workplace is where... work gets done. For sure that axis is
| valid.
|
| The nice/jerk axis is way too vague. "Nice"... in what way
| exactly, and who cares? Being a "jerk" is only a problem when it
| gets in the way of communication. Bad communication _is
| incompetence_ , so the nice/jerk scale is not independent.
| strken wrote:
| Being a jerk is a problem in a huge number of ways other than
| communication. Not only is it unpleasant for other employees
| and a problem for retention, it implies lack of good intentions
| and thus lack of trustworthiness.
|
| If you're relying on employees to do anything, you need to
| trust them. If you want them to accurately report problems,
| then if they lie for advantage or send grudges up the chain,
| you're not going to get accurate information. If you want them
| to handle sensitive data without stalking their ex, you need to
| trust they'll do that.
| themerone wrote:
| I worked with an incompetent asshole for years. His only talent
| was telling the boss what he wanted to hear.
|
| The websites he built were so embarrassingly bad, I could only
| list my main customer, who I was almost exclusively contracted
| to, as my employer. The risk of being linked to his work was too
| great.
| Zetice wrote:
| Carlos Cipolla had a similar idea when he wrote "The Basic Laws
| of Human Stupidity", the chart commonly found in search results
| mirrors this one almost perfectly.
| whack wrote:
| Would you hire my extremely sweet computer illiterate grandma as
| a software developer? No? There's your answer.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I thought this was a great post. I've also struggled with how to
| handle "incompetent but nice" employees. It's never easy, but
| what I've found:
|
| 1. This is why it's important to give as _objective_ feedback as
| possible to employees, and to have it tracked over time. If
| someone is really nice but not performing, often times it 's hard
| for them to see because they are working really hard.
|
| 2. See if there is a place where the person can maximize their
| value even if it's working on something else. I've seen people
| move out of software dev because they were just fundamentally
| slow coders, yet they thrived in other positions.
|
| 3. I think it's important to not let it fester. If it does, it
| usually ends badly for everyone.
|
| The thing that's difficult is that software engineering is
| notoriously impossible to measure productivity in a purely
| objective/automatic way that can't be gamed. This contrasts with
| something like, for example, a sports player: if you're a
| baseball pitcher but your stats don't cut it, nobody cares how
| nice you are.
|
| That's why I think it's important to, _as much as possible_ , set
| expectations and review them frequently with employees.
| dahwolf wrote:
| From time to time one comes across an extreme version of the
| "nice but incompetent" character. Not only are they nice and
| incompetent, they are super optimistic, confident and ambitious.
|
| They pitch their idea to you. It's a terrible idea that for a
| billion obvious reasons will fail.
|
| What to do? Do you want to be the person to crush somebody's
| dreams?
|
| It's much easier to say to somebody that they made a mistake
| compared to saying that they simply suck at something and don't
| have what it takes.
| ulizzle wrote:
| "Incompetent but nice" means there's nothing you can do. It's
| only a matter of time until you get annoyed enough to let them
| go.
| rco8786 wrote:
| What do you use to create those handwritten style graphics?
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| Sorry, I disagree with this 2D reduction into stereotypes.
|
| I work with a number of sociopathic-leaning assholes who vary in
| talent. Mostly insist they have a monopoly good ideas and
| everyone else is wrong. There are some nice people with talent
| too. There aren't any people _without talent_ around.
| neotrope wrote:
| totally. let's dispense with all frameworks because labels are
| bad.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I will also assert with no evidence that the better you are at
| your job, the _harder_ you have to work to be perceived as
| "nice". If you're on the incompetent side, people cut you more
| slack because they feel sorry for you.
| ian0 wrote:
| I don't think many realise but most people are incompetent
| sometimes. We all go through phases of varying productivity and
| it can swing from one extreme to the other. It happens when
| people have kids, discover hobbies, get burnt out, have an
| existential crisis etc. At any one time 1/10 usually-good people
| will be like this.
|
| An effective strategy for dealing with this in an organisation is
| to move quick and minimise damage. When the shit hits the fan and
| this starts causing problems, its usually not because a person
| didnt do any work, but because they did crap work that burdened
| others. This is especially difficult in engineering. You can
| identify this and get them off the line quickly, then take the
| time to figure out whats happening and assist them back on track.
|
| The development of a culture that doesn't incentive people to
| hoard power helps, the last thing you want is a person performing
| badly to be in some critical role. People should be able to back
| down / step up depending on their current "phase"
| whydoineedthis wrote:
| can you fire the asshole please though? thanks.
| m463 wrote:
| This is a good time to bring up General H12
|
| His quadrant scheme was Clever vs. Stupid and Hardworking vs.
| Lazy
|
| _" I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking,
| stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are
| combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the
| General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90
| percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone
| who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest
| leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and
| strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must
| beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not
| be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only
| cause damage."_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord
|
| [1] what short name would you use for "General Kurt Gebhard Adolf
| Philipp Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord"?
|
| [2] opposed to hitler, btw
| H8crilA wrote:
| An extended writing on this idea, the Gervais principle:
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
| nicbou wrote:
| [1] The Hammer
| drewcoo wrote:
| "Nice" is just a suitably vague way to smuggle in bias. Just in
| case "culture fit" didn't already do the trick.
| peteradio wrote:
| I think we can at least all agree that incompetent jerks are just
| no good.
| annie_muss wrote:
| For much of my career I fell into the incompetent but nice
| bucket. It turns out it was/is ADHD. I would be very interested
| in my new job, but after a few months I'd make no progress, have
| no outdoor and couldn't really put my finger on why. After
| multiple such jobs I ended up quite depressed, that certainly
| doesn't help with productivity.
|
| Unfortunately, ADHD is not temporary. Most places will eventually
| let you go when you don't perform. The article is extremely
| generous in stating that firing is not the right choice, but for
| someone who is severely and permanently impaired I don't really
| know what the solution is either...
| uneekname wrote:
| I can relate to this. I know people who might call me
| "incompetent but nice" after having worked with me when my
| mental health was really bad. Figuring out how to work through
| my ADHD (and, manage to get real work done even when things get
| rough) is a constant battle.
| tgaj wrote:
| For me solution was to always seek something new. For now is
| product management - I think it's a good choice for ADHD
| people. And yes ADHD is permanent but anxiety and depression
| can be treated - and often they are bigger problem than ADHD
| itself.
| andersco wrote:
| Sorry, but if you're incompetent (with no potential for
| improvement), I don't care how nice you are. You're gone. Sorry
| not sorry.
| solarmist wrote:
| I've never met anyone with no potential for improvement. The
| closest I've seen is being incompetent at too many things at
| once.
| neotrope wrote:
| i've managed a few. its generally one of the following:
|
| 1. they have potential, but consistently get in their own
| way. they need therapy or a new career path, which is outside
| of the scope of a managers job to correct.
|
| 2. some engineers are not that talented. even the most senior
| of ICs can plateau -- some just do it at lower levels.
|
| 3. some have no ambition to improve or aren't invested in
| their jobs and no amount of cajoling or incentives will fix
| it.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Why is the y axis on the right side of the diagram?
| eimrine wrote:
| maybe x can be only non-positive here
| superfrank wrote:
| Someone nice created the diagram
| neotrope wrote:
| incompetence should never be tolerated, but incompetent + nice
| are the hardest employees to remove.
|
| incompetence erodes culture, leads to bureaucracy and the slow
| death of a company.
|
| assholes will help you push out incompetent employees
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Incompetent but Nice people I've worked with:
|
| 1. Nice, but clearly (in retrospect unfortunately) had some kind
| of executive function disorder like ADHD. I fired them and,
| later, helped them get their next job which they excelled at.
| They bought me a beer when they got promoted.
|
| 2. Really Nice, just had terrible long term memory, would
| constantly forget critical details about what they were working
| on. They wrote everything down but couldn't process it into long
| term memory, they would even forget they wrote it down. Could fix
| small bugs all day but couldn't work on anything that required
| multiple days of effort as they would forget everything by the
| next morning.
|
| 3. Really Nice, could not work remote. Sort of combo of the first
| two, bad memory and bad focus.
|
| 4. Really Nice, worked with them at a previous company, totally
| burnt out before coming in at the new place. I literally could
| not believe it was their code that a co-worker was complaining
| about and had to check the commit logs. Actually, this has
| happened twice to me.
|
| In general, the bigger problem is nice but on the threshold
| between good and competent ... those people stay on forever and
| can drain a lot of resources as you try to move them fully into
| the "nice and competent" category.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Interesting that you had to fire the person with ADHD. I guess
| you can't exactly talk to them about medicated.
| precompute wrote:
| This has some parity with V. Rao's Gervais Principle. Incompetent
| but Nice are the people that are in the "clueless" category,
| promoted to useless middle-manager because they're fantastic yes-
| men on whom you can pin the tail when anything goes askew.
| eat wrote:
| There are many factors that contribute to being good to your job,
| or I think more accurately, being perceived as being good at your
| job. Impossible deadlines, unrealistic client expectations, bad
| organizational policies and procedures... the list goes on. I'd
| argue that being nice to people is always your choice, whereas
| being perceived as competent is not always up to you.
|
| Measuring performance is also not entirely straightforward and
| objective as we want it to be, and the two axes may blend into
| each other when it comes time for reviews. In a peer review
| scenario, that nice colleague gets a boost.
|
| There are also varying degrees and types of incompetence. If
| someone is willing to learn, that's a lot different than someone
| who is knowingly slacking off and relying on others to pick up
| the slack. I'd argue that the latter is not exactly "nice"
| behavior.
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