
The Bad Apple: Group Poison - bdfh42
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001227.html
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jrockway
I really hate reading Atwood. His writing is generally boring, but I can deal
with that. The problem is that _random phrases are emphasized for no reason_.
Is his readership so dumb that they won't be able to extract the main ideas
from his article with them being _in bold_?

Anyway, it really annoys me. I wish Steve Yegge would blog more often and
drown Atwood out :)

~~~
Encosia
I thought that was off-putting at first too. Then, I tried it on my own blog,
and I see why he does it.

The difference in engagement was clear. More on-topic comments, lack of
questions already addressed in the post, lower bounce rate, longer time on-
site, etc.

You have to write for scanners. The majority of your visitors aren't looking
to read essays or blocks of text.

~~~
mechanical_fish
The theory of this is almost twelve years old:

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html>

And the data haven't changed much:

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html>

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zupatol
He's jumping to conclusions. "Get rid of bad apples" sounds horribly
intolerant. In the real world it is possible that the pessimist, the sceptic,
the unmotivated or even the jerk may just see a problem the others don't want
to aknowledge.

It's just as easy to jump to the opposite conclusions: a bad apple makes a
group question the validity of its goals. A group who spends time making sure
its goals are worthy is bound to be less productive, but is more likely to do
the right thing.

~~~
bdotdub
Well, I think there's a distinction. He's saying people a bad apples are
people who are skeptics, unmotivated, etc. but do not suggest anything better.

If they're skeptical of your idea or whatever, they should add constructive
input instead of dragging on everyones spirits.

~~~
twopoint718
Just playing devil's advocate, but why would that person have to have a better
idea? A person doesn't necessarily need to be in possession of good ideas in
order to be able to sniff out bad ones.

Though I admit, it would be weird if someone can tell an idea is bad, but not
be able to say why. In that case I think the detractor deserves to be ignored
on the grounds of insufficient proof.

~~~
zupatol
If there are bad apples in a team, they deserve some kind of presumption of
innocence. The manager should at least try to find out what's wrong. I've seen
bad apples who were frustrated because they weren't listened to, and they did
have good ideas which they could explain. In those particular cases I did not
witness how this situation developed, but I have no doubt that bad management
can produce bad apples.

All you can say about bad apples is that they point to a problem. To fire them
without asking is shooting the messenger.

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gaius
A group of 4 with one deliberately undermining a group is 30% less productive.
Now 25% of that is obviously just the 1/4 people not performing. Interesting
to see that the individual productivity of the other team members was affected
less than 2% each, which suggests that the larger the group, the less effect
the "bad apple" has - it's not the case that the behaviour spreads out of
proportion.

~~~
andrew1
That's not really correct, if they'd lost 100% productivity instead then each
person wouldn't have been (75 - 0) / 3 = 25% less productive. Dividing like
that's not valid.

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fhars
Indeed. They should have produced e.g. 400 productivity units (lines of code
<gd&r>?), but lost 30%, i.e. 120 units. 100 are due to the bad apple, the
remainig due to lost productivity of the other three. So each if them only
produced 93.333 units, for a loss of 6.667% of individual productivity. Which
is 233% more than 2%.

~~~
ajb
Yes. But isn't this just a corollary of a (small) group being more than the
sum of its parts? IE, A group of 4 _should_ be more than 4/3 productive than a
group of 3. The right comparison is to compare a group of 4 with one bad apple
with the productivity of a group of 3.

~~~
anamax
> A group of 4 should be more than 4/3 productive than a group of 3.

Why? Amdahl's law suggests otherwise, as does any non-zero cost of
communications.

~~~
ajb
Because the knowledge and skill set of the group is larger. However, yes, at
some point this is outweighed by the costs.

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ulysses
It's "Will Felps", not "Wil Felps". The paper itself is in "Research in
Organizational Behavior, Volume 27", Google Books preview of the paper is
available here:

[http://books.google.com/books?id=RKkxJnn73UoC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=RKkxJnn73UoC&printsec=frontcover#PPA175,M1)

