People who backstab teammates, why do you do it?
Some people prefer to get along with coworkers as if they were friends. I know this is not everyone's outlook on workplace relations. You may prefer to keep quiet and stick to yourself. Or you might prefer to keep relationships formal and professional. But what I don't understand is the mindset of actively sabotaging another's career by "snitching" on them, or telling their manager something they shouldn't know about. I personally haven't had this happen to me, but posts here suggest that this happens more than I thought. Telling a person's manager that they're job searching, or exaggerating shortcomings, being a snake in general. People who do this, why? Do you hope to curry favor with higher ups? Do you really think this small deed will earn you brownie points in the future as opposed to exposing your true character?
why not? it is fun!
I don't know if you're trolling, but if you're not, are you not worried for your own reputation for being untrustworthy?
Depends on how you are trying to color this. If someone is legitimately bad at their job and interfering with your success, then fire away. The managers don't always sense what is going on. At least try to make sure the person isn't going through a rough patch or attempt to get them up to speed first though.
Do you have an example of how they would be interfering with your job? Do you mean you cannot complete yla task because you have some kind of dependency on them completing a task?
Yeah, say an incompetent PM for example or someone who you've been waiting to complete a critical piece but keeps dropping the ball and makes you miss a team or personal goal. There's a line where people who are bad at their job fuck with my success, and once I try to help a few times and you still aren't getting it, get the fuck out of my way. I think this is a different idea than the OP though, where people backstab as an act to get ahead even if their team members are competent.
Close friends and relatives become the most dangerous enemies. I have so many anecdotes in my life.
The raise budget is finite and the raise process is zero sum
These types of people cannot help themselves. Instead of focussing on actual work, they tend to be bad at their jobs, have nothing truly impactful to contribute to the conversation, are envious of others and need to seek attention all the time to temporarily assuage their sense of confidence and self-worth. You know what’s even worse? Is when you realize that even the seemingly smart and powerful people are not immune to this - when your manager talks about your teammates’ shortcomings without any provocation. I’ve had many conversations with managers who, in their zeal to explain something, calls out a teammate’s weakness or fuck-ups to make their point. In these instances, the criticism of other teammates was not related to the question I was asking or the topic of the conversation. The embellished information was unnecessary and really bordered on cheap gossip. These managers don’t realize that as a report hearing this, I now wonder what kinds of gossip are they sharing with my teammates about me? If they can be two-faced and backstab their own reports and peers, I really cannot trust them to have my back at all.
These people are cancers for the organization they work for..managers should do extra efforts for identify them and eliminate them
Sometimes bad employees are immune to being backstabbed. sometimes the manager lets bad employee get away from slacking off. Out of office 80% of time and have 1/20 of other‘s responsibilities. How do we let boss‘s boss know if everyone in the office has all noticed it but not flagged it yet? An employee getting paid for working at his/her 10% of capacity.
Required at many teams at Amazon, due to stack ranking. I don’t backstab but I do feel pressure to avoid sharing information that could lead to promo projects
People who do this should really just find another profession. I feel confident enough in my abilities that I don't feel it's necessary to even bother with back stabbing.