Dealing with a guy like this to a T at work, super productive and smart, but does what he wants (not what the company needs), and offloads everything else to his teammates. Despite this, management loves him. Anyone else experiencing this? https://www.tlnt.com/toxic-workers-are-more-productive-but-the-price-is-high/
“Rock star” is not a synonym for “toxic,” this article makes no sense.
These guys make the managers happy but don't follow procedures and sometimes think they know more than the end user groups. They can leave unmaintainable code, little/no documentation and try to take advantage of their favored status to get out of following standards. Best to bring them in under contract for a specific project and then let them go, they will get bored and cause problem when they start thinking they own the results of their work.
He’s talented, no denying that, the negative parts are subtle and didn’t come out immediately.
This is why interviews "testing knowledge" are pointless...
+1, most of it stems from being very self-focused without caring about the effects on the rest of the team long term.
There was a time when everyone was of a rock star calibre and work was interesting, even fun sometimes. Now, good work is the privilege of a few whose bosses are savvy. Most other people are just blocks in the pyramid being built by non-leaders.
I think I might be toxic too. Sorry team mates. :/
I think Facebook actively hires this type of person. Myself included.
Yeah, zuck wants carbon copies of himself
But, they aren’t more productive, if they aren’t working on things that advance the company’s goals and have a negative impact on the productivity of others. Doing useless things and causing problems is not productivity.
I agree, it’s productivity in the wrong direction. The article tries to clarify a little with “While toxic employees are more productive, meaning getting more things done, the quality of that productivity often is less than desirable”
> ...does what he wants That’s the important part. Management should support him and every other person to do what they want
I guess it’s important to make the distinction if the person is truly toxic, or simply everything else is not up his quality standard. Is he spending (too much) time to improve quality or spewing toxic words at peers Gordon Ramsay style?
Super productive and offloads everything else to his teammates don't make any sense.
To clarify, he’s cherry picking or making up the things to do that he’s most interested in working on, and any necessary but less interesting work is left for everyone else.
Don't you have a lead or architect or someone who is looking things over? He likes to do certain things and may be he thinks everyone is happy him doing so.