<story><title>Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High</title><url>https://www.tlnt.com/toxic-workers-are-more-productive-but-the-price-is-high/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blue1379</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;16-057_d45c0b4f-fa19-49de-8f1b-4b12fe054fea.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;16-057_d...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It comes to a figure of 12k loss as the cost of replacing the toxic employee. Yes, replacing an employee is always a net loss in isolation.&lt;p&gt;It seems to be using a tautological definition:&lt;p&gt;defines a “toxic” employee as: “A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” Yes, that causes a net loss. By definition.&lt;p&gt;They also state they don&amp;#x27;t consider &amp;quot;productivity spillover&amp;quot; because they found spillover can sometimes be negative so they just assume it all cancels out. If Bob rebuilds something and saves every other employee lots of time going forward.... this analysis just ignores it.&lt;p&gt;The news coverage makes it seem like a tickbox study tailored to HR interests in large orgs, so they can pat themselves on the back for &amp;#x27;proving&amp;#x27; that teamwork trumps uncharismatic productivity, despite the study saying nothing about that.&lt;p&gt;If one wanted to truly study these costs, they&amp;#x27;d also be looking at charismatic unproductive people who, despite all making each other feel good, don&amp;#x27;t actually bring any value to an organisation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>commandlinefan</author><text>&amp;gt; tautological definition&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a picture that gets re-posted on LinkedIn periodically of Netflix&amp;#x27;s CTO Reed Hastings captioned with a quote attributed to him: &amp;quot;Do not tolerate brilliant jerks.  The cost to teamwork is too high.&amp;quot;  Although this is the sort of feel-good positive fluff that is perfect LinkedIn-bait, I can&amp;#x27;t help but notice that the people who re-post it and re-share it tend to be people who I remember personally as being mostly just regular jerks.  Look, I know better than to characterize myself as &amp;quot;brilliant&amp;quot; on the internet (and I honestly don&amp;#x27;t think I am, although I do think I&amp;#x27;m competent), two things I indisputably am are educated and experienced.  Since the subjective words &amp;quot;talented&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;brilliant&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;rockstar&amp;quot; are usually used as a stand-in for the more objective but contentious terms educated and experienced, I can&amp;#x27;t help but think that somewhere in the back of their minds, they&amp;#x27;re including me in their list.  The people in my network who re-post this platitude usually didn&amp;#x27;t like me very much because they found themselves in a sticky situation that they expected me to be able to get them out of.  When you&amp;#x27;re educated and experienced, but you still can&amp;#x27;t solve somebody&amp;#x27;s crisis on the spot, they don&amp;#x27;t think, &amp;quot;oh, well, I was asking a lot&amp;quot;, they think, &amp;quot;he could have helped me, but he didn&amp;#x27;t because he&amp;#x27;s a jerk who thinks he&amp;#x27;s too good for me&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High</title><url>https://www.tlnt.com/toxic-workers-are-more-productive-but-the-price-is-high/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blue1379</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;16-057_d45c0b4f-fa19-49de-8f1b-4b12fe054fea.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;16-057_d...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It comes to a figure of 12k loss as the cost of replacing the toxic employee. Yes, replacing an employee is always a net loss in isolation.&lt;p&gt;It seems to be using a tautological definition:&lt;p&gt;defines a “toxic” employee as: “A worker that engages in behavior that is harmful to an organization, including either its property or people.” Yes, that causes a net loss. By definition.&lt;p&gt;They also state they don&amp;#x27;t consider &amp;quot;productivity spillover&amp;quot; because they found spillover can sometimes be negative so they just assume it all cancels out. If Bob rebuilds something and saves every other employee lots of time going forward.... this analysis just ignores it.&lt;p&gt;The news coverage makes it seem like a tickbox study tailored to HR interests in large orgs, so they can pat themselves on the back for &amp;#x27;proving&amp;#x27; that teamwork trumps uncharismatic productivity, despite the study saying nothing about that.&lt;p&gt;If one wanted to truly study these costs, they&amp;#x27;d also be looking at charismatic unproductive people who, despite all making each other feel good, don&amp;#x27;t actually bring any value to an organisation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Nasrudith</author><text>Also &amp;quot;toxic&amp;quot; is a term abused to mean &amp;quot;heretical&amp;quot; at times. The guy pointing out HR works for the company not you and is encouraged to some negative dynamics to justify their salary by reducing liability and claimed productivity may be branded toxic.&lt;p&gt;Charismatic people building their own fiefdoms that view networking as king and actual productivity gains a threat are building not just houses of cards but full scale card mansions are more actual organizational harm toxic than any ill-mannered productives.</text></comment>