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A Measure of Your Team's Health: How You Treat Your "Idiot"
Esther Schindler (16185) writes "Every team has someone who at the bottom of its bell curve: an individual who has a hard time keeping up with other team members. How your team members treat that person is a significant indicator of your organization's health. That's especially true for open source projects, where you can't really reject someone's help. All you can do is encourage participation... including by the team "dummy.""
I can't rejects someones help on my open source projects? Linus Torvalds is really mean then.
"Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race." -Albert Einstein
is how management treats said person.
>> Every team has someone who at the bottom of its bell curve: an individual who has a hard time keeping up with other team members
The manager. Badoom-cha!
>> That's especially true for open source projects, where you can't really reject someone's help
New to open source, are we?
Some organizations are large enough and organized enough to help employees grow in their current and future roles but some are too small and cannot afford the down time as they require expertise right away.
That said, in my experience individuals who struggle to get to the level of competence required are more loyal employees hence a reduced cost of employment long term. They are also more accepting of a slower career path.
My 2 cents.
Slashdot refers to unregistered commentators as "Anonymous Cowards", so they probably have no issue publicly labeling the person at the bottom of their Slashdot curve as "The Idiot".
That's backwards.
In an open source project, you're free to ignore anything offered by the 'idiot' (if you were in a senior role, you'd not accept their patches, else you'd fork, become senior, then not accept their patches). (I'm assuming an unpaid voluntary scenario here.)
In a workplace, you're stuck with who you're stuck with. Even if you're a 'leader' or a manager. If you don't include the idiot, you'll be designated as not a team player, and you become the new 'idiot'.
Sorry, calling or dealing with somebody as a dummy or an idiot is not constructive. If other team members look down on an individual because their skills aren't the same then that's the teams problem and it's basically representative of an obnoxious mentality. While we all might laud our own abilities, in someone's eyes they're less than competent because it's all a matter of perspective.
Sure, there's people with deficient skills and that's a training issue. There's also my old favorite from WWII: "First you instruct, then you advise and if that doesn't work, you hospitalize."
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I’ve been very lucky. Over the past several decades, in different industries and roles, I’ve worked on quite a few teams that seemingly had a perfect balance of skills and personalities. That’s not to say that every project was successful – outside influences sometimes made them fail – but the experience always was deeply rewarding.
You catch that? The only time one of her projects has failed in decades, it was due to external reasons. Nope, not her fault, or the team, but "them".
I am willing to bet she has that same attitude about the people on her team. Nope, not her fault, but the "idiot" on the team. She was probably the idiot a few times, but was unable to recognize her own odor.
I finally updated my sig, but now it's lame.
...it's usually you.
How you treat your idiot? Give them a wedgie in the locker room.
Oh, I thought you were talking about sports teams.
Sure, there is someone at the bottom of the curve. But, in a healthy organization, that person is NOT an idiot. Even classically defined morons are capable of stuffing envelopes though, just don't make them project managers.
The way you handle persistent net negative producers, is to drive them away with pitchforks and torches. Preferably while they are still on probation.
How do you handle someone, who keeps coming to you with bugs he can't handle, when examples of these bugs include string concatenation operators winding up in SQL (once he starts hacking on the code)? Clearly he's out of his depth, trying to modify dynamically constructed SQL when he has yet to master string concatenation? Has to go. (Yes, the right thing to do might be to make a stored procedure, but that's another discussion.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I've had the delightful experience of being treated as the team idiot simply for declaring that the emperor had no clothes. It was one of those death march instances where a company decided to write a "version 2.0" of their extremely good program from the ground up. They brought in extremely skilled and expensive technical leads who developed a complicated new back end that was designed to be as "infinitely versatile" and then deployed a front end to match. The result was that they took a very good user experience and turned it into an arcane and slow -- but insanely flexible -- system. Client users absolutely hated the preview releases because they simply didn't let them do their work. I was the unlucky sap who had to provide feedback to the dev team. I decided not to pull punches and deliver a factual summary. The end result? The project lead declared that, "The consulting team simply doesn't understand how the system works" and proceeded to try to ice me out of the company. The organization ultimately failed because the project was such a mess. Unpleasant, but I'm glad I stood my ground and called a spade a spade. It took a while to regain my confidence after that, but my subsequent projects have all been successful and even award winning.
I've worked on teams with a variety of skillsets over the years ranging from fresh-out-of-college new grads to seasoned "dinosaurs" with 50 years experience. Everyone had something they were good at and could contribute to the project, though many times what they could contribute wasn't technically the role they were hired for.
There was only one exception: a fellow way back in the early '90s who got a job on the project I was on because he'd supposedly done programming for AT&T after graduating from Bowling Green.
The first time we reviewed his code, we realized it was bullshit. Before every single stdio function call, there was a "#include <stdio.h>" statement. Every single call!
Further investigation proved that his degree was a fraud -- Bowling Green had no record of any student by his name.
Despite that, he was stuffed in a corner and allowed to "work" the remainder of his six month contract by "reviewing" documentation and marking spelling and grammar corrections with a red pen.
He couldn't even do that -- his English sucked.
But firing him would have put the company at risk of a lawsuit, so they had him make the documentation binders.
So even the worst team idiot can do something "useful" if you've got no choice but to keep them busy with something. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Anecdotal evidence from one woman's opinion. Why again is Slashdot becoming a place to crosspost blog posts as fact?
Just for reference, I read this post in the same way this video sounds: http://news.slashdot.org/story...
and that's not a good thing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Really. Hey, they even call me "boss".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
(pssst.... it's YOU)
Not being technically competent is not necessarily the issue here. I've worked with plenty of offshore "resources" and they are very careful to AVOID making ANY decision whatsoever (to the point I suspect they must be trained that way). Which is good and dandy for IT work and simple bug fixes, but make them completely useless for software development.
Also, in my current team our "idiot" is so scared of making mistakes that she tries hard to basically do as little as possible to fit the verbatim requirement for a task. That basically means that she will rather put a patch than find and resolve the underlying cause of an issue, making the code base WAY more complicated than it should be, generally resulting in extra time and effort for the rest of the team.
We, of course don't use any derogative term to her (after all, we are all professionals), but the question planted in the article is still relevant and I simply see the term "idiot" as a vehicle to convey a concept rather than an insult of any kind.
"an individual who has a hard time keeping up"
No, they're just lazy and have a bad attitude and hate their job.
I thought we elected them to Congress so they couldn't hurt anybody.
Unfortunately, this seems to have changed somewhat in the last few decades.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
There's a meta-problem here if you call the slow guy in your team "an idiot". Anyway, just assign a bit leaner workload on him, problem solved.
Any team members that views themselves as somehow intellectually superior and views others as idiots should be shown the door.
In all situations, as a team leader, one has to find a use for the "village idiot" that as the article already states, that doesn't do more harm to the team. A sign of how "good" the team is, is how the individual members treat the well meaning, but incompetent, team member without guidance from the lead.
:-( sigh.
In a volunteer organization, it's imperative to keep all well meaning contributors on board, but in a company, that person has to eventually be moved out of the team since they're a drag on the group and definitely not suited for the position they're occupying. That's in an ideal world.
However, in real life, in a job situation. Nothing is ever this cut and dry. Not all "idiots" are well meaning, actually most aren't. There are also other dynamics at play at work, maybe the "idiot" is the owner's son... so there's nothing to be done, but elevate him to the level that the "owner" expects. At least for some "blood" relationships, the higher up actually recognizes the person is a cock-up, but has no choice because he/she is family.
It's actually even worse when the employee "idiot" is a "favorite" of one of the higher ups with no blood relationship. These people are the most dangerous to deal with. They can exert extreme negative pressure on your career since they have some "relationship" with the higher up, and that higher up will never listen to reports that they're favorite pet is not qualified for the job, nor doing a decent job, and usually the one that reports such things gets penalized for telling the truth. It's these people that make one's professional work life misery. It's even worse when there is some sort of romantic relationship between the "idiot" and the person higher up in the chain, especially if one or both have other official "significant others".
Unfortunately, in real life, at a job, one just has to try to minimize the impact on one's team, and shut the eff up and put up with it.
If you designate someone the 'team idiot', that does not make for a climate pf productivity. The receiving end becomes bitter and the team members wind-up with a scapegoat for his/her own shortcomings. Rookies might start off as the idiot, but they can surpass established members. You have to think, what is the mentality behind 'team idiot'? Is the 'idiot' getting all the resources they need? Are they kept up to speed on the project? Are they part of meetings and social outings? Sometimes business is discussed during these outings and this is how ideas gel. Do we have a culture of exclusivity or inclusivity? If you call someone the idiot, get rid of him/her and do it yourself. If you cannot function without 'the idiot', perhaps you have underestimated her/his abilitiies.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
...if they are really an "idiot" relative to the rest of the team.
In my experience, great teams have people with diverse skills. Some may be excellent diagnosticians and just decent coders, some may be great at writing tests that provide relevant coverage but poor at documentation, some may be very good at coming up with very efficient algorithms but not so good at debugging problems that cross many subsystems, and so on. At some point, almost every one of these people is occasionally thought, at least for a few seconds, to be an "idiot" by at least one of their team members (perhaps an unspoken sentiment though).
However, the interesting case is when someone is generally thought to be an idiot by most of the team and has no special skill that the team needs. In that case, the employee needs to go, and go quickly.
A good manager should be able to detect if a person has a useful and unique skill that the team doesn't realize the importance of. This is especially true when that skill is externally focused such as interacting effectively with your corporate customers when technical problems arise. If a person has such a skill that the team doesn't realize the importance of, the manager should (subtly) educate the rest of the group what the value of the person is and work with that person to expose that value to the team.
Some of the best decisions I've made as a manger are getting rid of people -- including those we all thought would be good employees when they were hired just a couple months earlier. It can be hard on the team, but keeping the under-performer around is much harder on the team in the long term (and for the employee who was let go - they are better off finding a job more suited for the skills/interests).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
...but how you treat each other. All it takes is a little respect, empathy and intellectual/emotional flexibility. Using the word idiot and dummy is pretty condescending and shows a lack of all of those things.
I played the role of the village idiot in my team for almost 2 years. It was due to an unique and very unpleasant set of circumstances [outside work, mostly family and health stuff] that totally destroyed my motivation, concentration and even my will to live. Now this might be somewhat different than what the fine article is talking about, as the condition was temporary and everyone knew I could perform above expectation even bordering on excellent.
Nevertheless, only my direct supervisor was aware of all the facts of my case and he never shared them with the MT [because I asked him not to]. Thus for the MT I was a case of lost motivation, reasons unknown. Despite that, considerable effort was executed both on team level as well on MT level to help me out.
More or less the action was as follows:
- Instead of doing long-term project with uncertain result they put me on important but short-term project so I could see the positive effect of my work immediately and boost my self-confidence.
- Every time I did something good, an MT member would drop by the office to congratulate me in front of everyone
- I never heard a single nasty word about me; no-one spoke about my performance and very importantly they all avoided in making me feel patronized. In line of this I did get negative evaluation for one of those years and was punished financially. I wanted this as I was afraid that if I get a "hand-out" I might loose some of the motivation to get better again.
- They send me working part-time to 4 different teams and also contractors outside the company - meeting and working with many new people on very diverse projects really helped getting back on my feet.
- When they saw the recovery progressing really nicely they threw me on the most urgent project in the whole company where I contributed substantially, gained more "fame" than ever before and was rewarded financially offsetting the previous punishment and then adding some to my career growth.
I count all this experience as a resounding success and I have told them many times how grateful I am.
This is Europe and more importantly the Netherlands. As I have stated here before, there is a bunch of neocon-like politicians in NL [alas, they have the power ATM] that are just itching to destroy the management system of the country, more commonly known as the "the polder model".
They claim the model is not profitable but what they mean is that it is not profitable for their corporate friends. Society as whole wins BIG TIME by using that model and it is CHEAPER (again, if you look at the whole country, not a single company or industry). What would be the profit for society if they kicked me out and I spiraled in misery and depression? Would I ever recover? Would I ever get another job? Could it be that I'd turn into complete burden for society, incapable of supporting myself. In such desperation people turn to drugs and suicide becomes a viable way out.
Ohh yhea, I just noticed that I imply in the beginning of the last paragraph that the polder model might not be so profitable if you look at specific business. That is false - the company also wins since if I had not recovered they'd have to spend tens of thousands finding and educating a replacement for me [I did the math, our solution was cheaper indeed than hiring another person]. So, apparently the polder model is not profitable for a very small group of people within companies who probably get their bonuses based on very short-term performance so that the long-term negative effects of fucking your employees is not visible at the moment.
Then you won't have to 'treat' them any more.
love is just extroverted narcissism
No matter where I go, 50% of the people are below average, and average is pretty damned bad.
The postulate "Every team has someone who at the bottom of its bell curve: an individual who has a hard time keeping up with other team members." is a misconception.
Knowing less or having less experience does not tell anything about intelligence or level of idiocy.
Handling newbies, noobs or laggards is an other matter though.
But be careful and contain your own arrogance or ignorance before judging someone else for being stupid.
The project, team or management is more likely to be the actual problem.
Is the documentation ok, is there any at all?
Do you have a program for enrolling new team members or do you just let everybody in?
Remember the golden rule.
When you point at someone, three fingers are ( usually ) pointing back at yourself.
We give him a 3D printer and then he leaves us alone while he make leaky Yoda coffee cups.
That is: I will respond to the article as if it's actually asking what it says it is.
If there is an idiot on the team, said idiot should be removed from the team. There are a number of ethical reasons for this. Unless you're implementing the Game of LIfe for the umpteenth time, the project does not have a trivial goal. Anyone else working on the project is perforce pulling said idiot's weight, which means they are being rewarded less than they should be, the project is being completed at a lesser rate than it should be and the project will be filled with more errors than it should be. You're also feeding into the idiot's self-perception that they are competent in that position and they will then fight being moved harder and will exert pressure for promotion that is unwarranted. You're also displaying a willingness to bring the quality of everything else involved down just to spare an idiot's feelings.
Short answer, You're promoting blue ribbons for all.
1. Lazy Dummies: Who, while they may be dummies, will never exert enough effort to really accomplish anything. You don't have to worry about them, just give them some trivial and unimportant set of tasks and let them go off on their own since the will never endanger the project.
2. Competent Dummies: They may be dummies relative to everyone else but they have a skill set that is capable of accomplishing some tasks. Assign them tasks commensurate with their skills and keep an eye on them.
3. Enthusiastic Dummies: They don't realize they're dummies and will take on tasks beyond their skills or capabilities, often without telling you because they want to contribute and think they can do it. These are the dangerous ones because they can cause a lot of damage before they are stopped. Keep a close leash on them.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
"Every team has someone who at the bottom of its bell curve...." . Even teams of moderators and editors, right samzenpus?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Every team has someone who at the bottom of its bell curve: an individual who has a hard time keeping up with other team members.
This is simply not true. Some teams are composed of members who are very closely matched.
(Yes, for any skill, there may necessarily always be someone who's least competent, but that can be by an insignificant margin. In fact, it can be by a margin so small that nobody can figure it out.)
That's a huge period of time in high tech. I haven't worked 5 years at any job in my life...
One of the better organizations I worked for if someone was significantly lower than the mean -- then they were "counceled out". There will always be some people that are not meant for the position they hold, and you have to move them out and make that position available to someone that can fit in. If you start holding onto everyone that is below average, your organization will sink and not excel. Any responsibility the organization has to it's employees is to keep it healthy and vibrant for the majority....
Now I know why I always get asked to collect the folding chairs.
*sigh*
Plan B is a Chinchilla Ranch. Anyone want a cool chinchilla-fur mouse pad?
I've been with many people over the years, and generally hovering a little above the mean, I've met a fair number of dev's that have struggled for various reasons (I've been many of these from time to time as well):
1. The boat anchor -- They have no idea what they're doing and they waste everyone else's time by having correct their lousy work, answering questions (usually the same ones over and over and over), and just generally fristrating to teach anything new to.
2. The lifer -- Not interested in learning anything new and rarely bother unless it makes their carreer on shaky ground -- These people work at a stable though generally slack pace and learn to develop the same way and will never both to investigate new ways of doing things. They are generally a stabilizing force on the team which is often torn between jumping from one paradigm to the next and those that refuse to change anything. Training them to use new tech can be a drag on the team depending on how stubborn they are
3. The free radical -- Generally younger and more naive though not always, the free radical will always try to escape from whatever constraints you attempt ot place them into, and will fight vocally and loudly to get what they want. They will often quote material from a blog or big name in the industry without caring at all how it affects the job or workspace they actually occupy.
4. The well wisher -- Those developers that really really want to do a good job and work hard day in and day out do better themselves, but due to lack of understanding, natural talent, or whatever have a hard time grasping concepts and new areas. You want to help them so badly, and they generally do get better with training, but will never free think themselves out of a problem and will almost always need some level of supervision (and generally they like that).
5. The paycheck -- They check into work to get paid, and although amazingly brilliant or a complete dullard, will never aspire to anything because they're just there to warm the seat and to get paid. Don't get comfortable with them though because they will almost certainly be the first to jump to the next company.
I'm sure there are many more I could add to the list, but I have a meeting to jump off to. Hope this rings some truth.
Bye!
"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members" - Ghandi
How does your country treat it's idiots, mentally ill, homeless, disenfranchised?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
His policy at GE was to lay off 10% of the workforce every year, then back fill with new hires.
We called the bottom of the bell curve the canaries. As long as they were around everyone else was safe
to me the more telling thing would be **how they define the "idiot" **
is it a team of jackasses? in those situations, the person trying to actually get work done will be in constant friction with other team members
so if a team of 5 has 3 idiots and 2 regular workers, and only 1 of the 2 is the type to speak up in groups...
that *one* person will be the constant voice of oppposition
and they become the "idiot" in a team of idiots...
Thank you Dave Raggett
What do you do when the idiot thinks that he is on par with the higher performing team members and rejects the menial jobs?
(I have this problem!)
But the person who does not fit in. He/she is usually treated poorly and is left out or sabotaged and this leads to poor performance. I have worked in projects "teams" where there has been no "idiot", there has been people with different talents and they are given different tasks.
repeatedly giving a team what it wants, the removal of anyone they don't like?
Whatever the answer is, that depends on them. Not you.
The manner in which the team members and project leader treat its weakest member is a symptom of the team culture, and a mark of its health. If you treat people well, they respond – and that always shows in the results you produce.
So let's pen an article referring to said weakest members as "idiots" and "dummies".
...then your hiring practices suck.
Normal distributions are expected when doing random sampling. If your interview and hiring process ends up with a random sample, you're doing it wrong.
Bell-curve performance management systems are predicated on this odd idea, that hiring ends up with a random sample.
http://www.linkedin.com/today/...
...We promoted him to Director and now he sits in his office being distracted by shiny things, allowing the rest of us to accomplish the actual business of operating our department.
Try it sometime! The only way it can backfire is if the person has actual-authority over something important--then the company might go out of business. But other than that I'm drawing a blank on negatives.
Who did what now?
The basic operating principle is that we're all fucking retards and our managers need to micro micro micro micro micro micro manage everything minute by minute and as long as they give us a ceaseless torrent of changes and firm 'direction' washing in like the sea and nothing ever gets done except endless control-freakism and textbook OCD we're fine.
Works for us.
I have a flaw that I have mitigated over the years but I have been unable to fix completely. Basically, there is always some small step I forget to do. It could be a test case, requirement, or an email notification to someone. I feel that I'm unable to consistently remember to check all the obvious details. I seem to forget a different thing each time but it happens more frequently than other members of my team.
Being ranked at the bottom isn't as bad as knowing that I have a blind spot that keeps me there.
Every member of the team must get themselves up to speed. Otherwise, WTF are they and you doing? Babysitting? The manager's job is in part to know how to do this for any given team member. Obviously, every new team member gets a grace period, but if after a reasonable amount of time there is no progress and they are still bumbling and fumbling, then perhaps a mistake was made in the hiring process.
Stupid people calling other people stupid is stupid. He called her out on her bullshit and you're white knighting now. Not surprising.
Am I not supposed to just give them a computer and a Slashdot account?
I would say that a Rock Star Dev only lives up to the title if they can lead and educate.
A dev that crank out large volumes of code, but is unable to articulately communicate or work with others might be skilled, but is hardly a 'Rock Star'.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If your interview and hiring process ends up with a random sample, you're doing it wrong.
Higher mean, lower deviation. It could still be a bell curve if it wasn't for the low sampling.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
I used to think otherwise, but have recently come to the revelation that even the most incapable member of a team can be useful under the right circumstances.
:D
:D
Example: One of my team members has been with us a few years. Their capabilities are limited to the most basic of tasks and the odds of their learning the more advanced concepts are slim. Yet, the way our company is structured, their compensation is the exact same as the most capable team members. Creates an odd environment to work in when the most capable are paid the same as the least. . . but that's another story.
One day I realized our LSTM ( Least significant team member ) had a very powerful hidden ability. They now have a code-name: Agent ITWMD. ( Yes, the Information Technology Weapon of Mass Destruction )
Anytime we get an overly pushy marketing department or someone trying to force unrealistic time-lines upon us, we simply deploy the IT WMD to handle that project, sit back and watch the chaos unfold. To give you an idea, what should take two hours will take TWO DAYS with our secret weapon. Imagine sitting on a conference call for two days on a project that any other team member can complete in their sleep in a fraction of the time. It's like being told it will take a week to rotate the tires on your car
After one or two of those sessions, the formerly pushy and obnoxious groups will all but BEG us to spare them the horror of such a weapon. We kindly tell them to behave and give us realistic timelines to work with and we'll provide them with a more than capable tech to work with. They usually learn rather quickly. We need only mention the IT WMD on the call when they start to go stupid again and they will instantly understand the direction they are going is the wrong one.
Keep this in mind the next time you have a LSTM of your own.
Interesting..... Honestly though, as great as it sounds, I have a feeling this may be another one of those practices I hear about (often from the Netherlands) that's excellent where it's used, but might not scale up very well for a larger nation (such as the USA).
From my observations in the U.S. -- we've got a lot of folks who accept jobs simply because they need the money, but really don't have much motivation to do the job they're hired for. Their motivation comes, initially, from the relief that they finally got a job and a desire to do whatever is needed to keep a steady paycheck coming.
2 or 3 years into it though? The best thing that can happen to them is to feel pressure to improve, or be terminated.
You could argue that this is a very broken system, and perhaps you'd be right in the "big picture" sense. Unfortunately, I don't think the big picture is fixable any time soon. (Core reasons for it include our nation making a decision, decades ago, to jettison most of our manufacturing and manual labor -- under the belief we were better off leaving those tasks to other countries.) Given the fact we have more people in need of good paying jobs than we have available good paying jobs? There's simply no real benefit to encouraging slackers to do better while a company keeps paying them to under-perform. There are too many other, unemployed candidates out there who'd LOVE to take that position and do much more work while they're in it. And as I say, the person you push out may actually need the "kick in the pants" to rethink his/her plans about the type of work to apply for next time.
Such warm and fuzzy articles aren't welcome here. We're interested in evidence.
We wonder whether it's best to cut a member loose or support. What about the top end of the bell curve? How are they treated? Are they operating at max? Perhaps that's something the idiot might be able to notice while everyone else is busy producing?
Without a decent study, who's to say?
I would like to link to an article and contribute something of substance but I'm not quite sure what to search for. I'm finding studies confirming leadership - need to search more to find anything referring to a group.
Perhaps the search term (buzzword?) for the article should be 'Emotional Intelligence'?
Going along that line the article is part of a group of ideas that people management is more important than technical skills. Both can be taught but our teaching skills are better at the technical. Maybe that's why knowledge is hoarded, damaging a company. In those smelly, fuzzy hippy companies where people, you know... have a good team feeling dare we admit the potential is better there?
- or is that just trendy to say that?
Like I say, need more info. It is out there but engineers don't like to admit it. It's good to just say how you feel without feeling inhibited - just totally honest. You should be able to do that at the same time as being good and fair. It's not an easy skill to learn. Women and gay men do a better job? Maybe but can be pretty catty too.
It's a real joy to meet people who are both technical and socialable. Even more a joy to be at ease with those people so you can just get on well. People who listen, and where you can treat each other rudely but we all know it's OK.
I do agree with the article that the idiot treatment is a marker - they're not saying anything more than that.
My own view - treat a weak member positively, everyone has something to give. And fire them if that's the right decision.
A blog I run for the wealth
Most organizations run by disciples of Jack Welch practice the 20-70-10 philosophy, where the `bottom' 10% are sacked each year.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon and most other high-tech companies adhere closely to this principle. Of course they have large amounts of eager applicants, so they can afford to do this.
There are two sides to this issue. On the one hand, it is callous and heartless. On the other hand, it is hard to argue that replacing poor performers with better ones does not improve the team's productivity.
Here is something I've found: most team members do not like under-performers. They have to work harder to compensate. Also, if the poor performer is not penalized somehow, it destroys the motivation of excellent performers. "He gets away with doing nothing, why should I kill myself?"
You water him once or twice a week and keep him near a sunny window.
Is there any other way to deal with your manager?
You just send [him] out to source answers from slashdot..
>If your team is distributed like a bell curve then your hiring practices suck.
You are correct but sadly this seems to be the normal state of things.
Most managers can't tell the difference between a good programmer and a bad programmer in an interview and are unwilling to learn how, many managers remain oblivious to the difference after the person as been working there for six months.
There are good companies and organisations out there but they are the minority.
To me, big companies are mostly skimming the bozo event horizon, when a critical mass of idiots get into managment they employ more idiots under them and over a period of years the whole thing spirals into a black hole.
it COULD be, but I suspect the real distribution (assuming reasonable hiring practices) is more likely the chi-distribution or some variant there of. Basically most of your applicants are average. You get rid of the truly crap candidates and are left with a ton of people who are a little better or a little worse than average plus your genuinely good or even great applicants. Assuming you are no better or worse than other firms these people are applying to, you get a random sampling of THAT distribution. This is close to the half normal distribution which can be represented by a Chi distribution with k=1.
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_distribution for more information
Strange viewpoint. When successfully selecting for a trait you get a narrower bell curve, but still a bell curve. What other distribution do you think would describe it better?
What if the idiot on your team *is* the bully.
i'm not an expert on statistics but I did take a class. In any distribution curve, it's almost impossible to avoid a bell curve. You get a group of geniuses, and there will be one person who is strongest and one who is weakest and most grouped somewhere between -- tadaa! Bell Curve again.
And I don't think hiring practices suck -- I ASSUME they do. People jump through hoops to get jobs and there's a lot of people seeking those who've done X, Y and Z but not much use for people who do X and Y really well and they could pick up Z if someone gave them the chance.
So what we need is better use and support of the bell curve and reality. Reality is; not everyone functions at their peak all the time. So even those people in the middle or the top may be on the bottom on occasion (like just after they have a baby).
I joined a Men's group a few years ago, because I realized I needed to share more than sports scores and work. The teams are often assembled from random every year or so and guess what? It amazes me that when you get to know people, they are almost always wise in some way, they care, and hey have something to offer. Most people in this world are good and most people have some kind of intelligence. You don't realize this in a workplace because everyone is busy fitting in and coping and not getting fired.
A great company, would be one that realizes that people are assets, and knows how to build good teams. I still remember a story about an IQ test given to an indian tribe, and they all pitched in to work on the same IQ test. "No," said the tester; "You've got to each take the test as individuals -- doing it together will give you a higher score and it's cheating." The Indians responded that the test was stupid because a good team always wins. From their perspective, I agree.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Really I think the "submit 100 resumes get one reply" model of hiring in the USA makes sure you get someone who is good at making resumes -- every time. Not necessarily someone who is great at working.
It's kind of like how we have an election system that allows us to get politicians who know how to get elected, but after that -- well, we have a politician who will say nice things in 2 or 4 years.
Getting a job is about networking and getting credit. I think a better way might to loosen the requirements, and have some kind of 2 week try out period for more candidates -- but it's clumsy and has HR risks. But it would be better for both the company and workers who were less skilled at getting hired.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
LOL.
I truly wish I had mod points.
Yes, most workers are mediocre because MOST companies are mediocre. I don't think that's JUST because of hiring --- it's MOSTLY because of corporate culture. The only penalty for being a Bozo is when you work for a Bozo -- and if the company is large enough and can game the system (such as a monopoly or Cable company), they can support keeping Bozos in orbit indefinitely. Have you seen amazing innovation from GM or Comcast? Ever? I rest my case.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9
No bell curve.
Fair point.
So the question is, tolerate idiots and sucky hiring practices, or start working on better hiring practices? :)
5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9
No bell curve. I think it's quite possible to get a distribution other than a bell curve, especially with fairly small sample sizes.
Here's one take on how reality generally works (where most people are actually below average), although I'll admit that the graph he's showing isn't an apples-to-apples:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jo...
tl;dr You can tell how an organization is doing (or at least how they're told they're doing) by how well, or poorly, they treat their least capable members.
Your treating an idiot badly does not necessarily reflect your own character, but instead may reflect upon the health of your organization.
... means that I am the team idiot -- for better or for worse.
licet differant, aequabitur
A bell curve?
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
We discovered a wonderful use for the warm-hearted student who was never going to get an A.
When someone was too embarrassed to ask a "stupid" question, we would have the "Designated Idiot" ask it. The professor might sigh a bit, but would always give a more complete answer, so the rest of us understood the material more completely.
And there were benefits all around. In a series of classes, we had a professor known to subjectively ding student's grades for "dumb" questions. Our "Designated Idiot" kept the class grades a bit higher as a result. In this class and others, we noticed that our "Designated Idiot" tended to get a higher letter grade than the test scores might have suggested.
In many cases, while it interrupted the flow of the the class, the professors saw the benefit in quizzes and tests on the topics. When the "dumb question" had been asked, the material covered was retained far better by the class.
So don't shoot the idiot. Find them a role that helps everyone!
If you're sitting there thinking "This is nonsense; my team has no idiot" then it's most likely you.
The last serious incident of this type I encountered the poor guy was "demoted" to testing and then the work load ramped up until he had an emotional breakdown.
He initially took on a job he was not qualified for and had lots of crazy opinions that pissed off a lot of people, but his managers failed him by victimizing him instead of helping him with career planning.
Now that I think of it, I think the same managers failed me in the same way...
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction