
The 7 Habits of Highly Overrated People - edandersen
http://www.daedtech.com/the-7-habits-of-highly-overrated-people
======
Shenglong
For me, what's frightening about this is how often I used to reflect on my own
life, and at times, couldn't actually be sure whether I was useful or just
overrated. People would tell me what a great job I did and praise the amount
of time it must have taken, and while I'd smile nervously and modestly reject
their attribution, I'd often be left silently thinking, "I don't think this
was as difficult or took as long as you think it did." It took a while to just
accept that I did my part.

While there is danger in exaggeration, I also warn that there is arguably
_more_ danger in being too modest, and understating your own importance and
value of your work. I've met extremely talented individuals who were being
paid less than a third of what they deserved because they believed that their
_" work will speak for itself"_ or because they _" don't believe in self-
promotion"_. There is a healthy balance to be struck; remember that just as
marketing is essential to a successful product, promotion is important for the
self.

There are better ways to do that than the ways listed here, though. For
example, taking credit where credit is deserved _is_ extremely useful, but
ONLY when you're speaking to someone far removed, such as at a job interview.
On a team, you'll get further by promoting and pushing through other peoples'
accomplishments when they are too timid to do so. You'll earn respect from
both parties, and you'll breed a more productive atmosphere which can only
benefit you in the long term.

~~~
allochthon
_remember that just as marketing is essential to a successful product,
promotion is important for the self._

I agree that a little self-promotion is necessary in corporate America. But I
find this to be due to a flaw in American character rather than a virtue.
Self-promotion in any context apart from interviews is a little unbecoming in
my opinion.

~~~
kops
AFAIK neither the problem, nor the solution is specific to America. Link
bonus, salary or promotion to the amount of noise a guy makes and you can have
an army of self-promoting assholes overnight anywhere in the world. The baby
that cries the most, gets the milk etc. etc...

~~~
Hermel
> anywhere in the world

Not to the same degree. A common belief is that the Americans are especially
good at self-promoting in comparison to their European counterparts.

Maybe this can be partially explained by the size and nature of the US labour
market. The more often one changes jobs and the less likely it is that the new
employers knows the previous one (and thus can rely on their testimonial), the
less necessary it is for an employee to be able to promote themselves in job
interviews.

~~~
judk
Indeed, self-promotion is an obvious byproduct of democracy and bottom-up
economy, where the population at large chooses winners (through voting or
market force$) , instead a top-down command economy where everyine is rated by
fixed measures, or a caste society where privilege is hereditary and no one
gets promoted or demoted, so no one needs to impress anyone else.

~~~
nfoz
Self-promotion is an obvious byproduct of a highly competitive society in
which actors need to struggle against each other in order to survive, rather
than a more cooperative society where there's less pressure to survive and
less pressure to get as far ahead as possible.

~~~
judk
Would love to see such a cooperative society in this universe. I guess ants
and bees have that?

~~~
nfoz
Societal competitiveness vs. cooperation can be observed in the differences
between human cultures, even similar ones.
[http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/nc.htm](http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/nc.htm)
does a good job contrasting cultures in this regard, iirc. Moving to New York
from Canada, I was quite surprised how much more competitive people were, even
about things that don't matter. It's just _there_.

------
trustfundbaby
I would laugh, but I've seen this up close and personal and people like this
are more dangerous than they might look.

You have to remember if the person is thoroughly incompetent, none of this
will work, but imagine if the person is actually pretty smart and good enough
to get by, then make them personable and friendly ... and throw in a manager
who doesn't really know shit about what you do ... then its a whole new ball
game. In fact someone like this could wind up getting promoted over you into a
"architect" role or some quasi-dev manager role (bosses who don't really know
what developers do, love over communicators). I've seen it happen.

Often times, they can gather a mob (depending on their social skills) and push
out other engineers they don't like, or completely comandeer the engineering
organization into ill-fated directions.

What I'd like to hear from the OP is ways to counteract this kind of behavior,
I suspect there might not be a way to do it if you're a peer, only if you're
that person's boss.

~~~
a3voices
The author seems to be blaming these employees too much, rather than the work
environment. Perhaps they don't have enough incentives to be productive.

~~~
nordsieck
In my experience, productive people don't need an incentive to be productive -
they like work. They just need people to get out of their way.

~~~
a3voices
Well that's certainly true, but for the other side of the bell curve I think
the environment makes a difference.

~~~
trustfundbaby
I have to agree with you on this. The places I've seen people like this thrive
are big-company-cya-all-the-time kinds of setups.

------
grownseed
I worked with this guy for quite a while who I used to supervise as a
developer, being a bit tired of his incompetence but seeing that he still had
an interest in helping out, he and I suggested to my bosses that he be
reassigned to a position that might fit his profile a bit better. Shortly
after, the guy was made systems architect, without my prior knowledge (I was
still in charge of devs). I pointed out that while a less hands-on position
might be better suited, what he was doing clearly had nothing to do with being
a systems architect (in no small part because I was the one taking care of
that, if given the time).

My bosses and said guy agreed and decided to make him a "business systems
analyst". As of today I'm still not completely sure what that position
entails. The basic idea, I was told, was that he would discuss and gather
requirements from clients, then turn them into a useful set of documents and
clear explanations. And this is where this article particularly hit the nail.

Not once did this "business systems analyst" produce a valuable document.
While he was attending meeting after meeting, going to conferences around the
globe to supposedly learn about products he had literally no technical
knowledge of, I wondered more and more what his value to the company might
have been. He essentially created, with my bosses' blessing and encouragement,
a whole confusing layer in the development process.

He made a lot of noise, produced extremely confusing (and poorly written)
documents turning basic client requirements into any developer's worst
nightmare, readily passing the blame around without ever putting his position
in the balance. Missed deadlines would be the PM's fault, an incorrect feature
would be a developer's mistake, a misunderstood requirement would be the
client's fault, and the list goes on. Each and every single project he touches
simply becomes an absolute bane, but the amount of fuss generated through
useless emails, delayed replies and inconsequential yet time-consuming
nitpicking, has my bosses falling head over heels for him.

Long story short, four valuable people (including myself) have left the
company, and the guy is now "business systems director" (I did not make this
up) and is on the board. This is both a sad and terrifying state of affairs...

~~~
sanderjd
Counterpoint: we had a whole team of people seeming to fit your description,
and I thought they were one of the most useful parts of our process. They
mostly did sales support and _product_ management, while also supporting and
working closely with project managers. I suspect a lot of developers thought
they were useless and over-promoted, but they weren't, their value was just
not obvious to the developers. Now, you seem like you were in a good position
to judge whether or not the guy you're talking about was actually useful, so
it's likely that I just worked with a team that was good at this job, and you
worked with one that wasn't, but (IMO) technical people are often too quick to
judge the non- and only-partially- technical roles in the organization as
being less useful than they really are.

Oh, also, if anybody's job is "produce documents", rather than "gain knowledge
that can be communicated synchronously through conversation or asynchronously
through text" then that's probably a smell. All those meetings after meetings
are about the information, not the documentation.

~~~
marktangotango
My current boss fits this mold, he has a development background, and I don't
know if he can code or not, but when it comes to technical and/or
architectural concerns, he 'gets' it, and he's a presenting, selling, webinar
fiend. He frequently impresses the hell out of me by simplifying complex
requirements down to the basics and saying 'if you guys can get me this
subset, that will satisfy most of the costomers/prospects' or 'all I need is
this simple subset for most of the reporting requirements'. This dude is Gold.

~~~
mark_integerdsv
Thanks so much for posting this.

I am similar to the guy you describe. Background in development but been in
analysis for a while now... I kept seeing myself in the descriptions of
cretins in this thread while looking for a post like yours.

It's not just about functions and classes. A lot of what happens around actual
code is also very important. Specifically where it reduces the amount of code
that needs to be written which directly impacts quality.

------
overgard
What a fantastic article. I think the most frustrating thing about this kind
of person isn't that they don't do work, but that they'll go out of their way
to derail actual work with constant"questions" and "concerns", which always
require various meetings, because they need to put their stamp on things. Why
write a feature when you can spend a week talking about how to write it
instead? Ugh. Bonus points in that now the engineers that are actually
productive have to slow down to constantly explain/justify their work, making
them look equally mediocre.

~~~
coolrhymes
This!

I mean, I don't what to say other than punch that person.

I have had the first hand experience with this.

------
fragsworth
The author starts by claiming he was surprised that he couldn't come up with
positive things about a coworker, but then goes on to describe a list of
grievances about someone who was clearly intolerable. He even mentions this
later:

> If you’re currently doing them, stop. I’m not saying this because you’ll be
> insufferable (though you will be)

His initial "mistaken" judgment ("how did I get this so wrong? Am I just an
idiot?") of the person in question just doesn't seem genuine in retrospect.

~~~
jschmitz28
I read that as him starting to truly pay attention and notice these behaviors
in other people after the original guy had left (and not in the original guy
himself).

------
gallagher21
This article is spot on, I've seen all of it play out in the office
environment. I used to work with a guy who had little technical chops but
managed to become a department manager through a series of such manipulations.

When he first started out as a dev, he would endlessly call useless meetings
where he would talk for hours on end about marginal and tangentially relevant
things and try to project authority by looking important by hijacking these
meetings. No one could tell him to stop calling these meetings because no one
wanted to look like they were avoiding work.

Then the upper management mistook his behavior for proactivness and competence
and he got promoted to a "tech lead". That made the situation worse because
not only did he not back down, but he progressively got even more aggressive
and would actively micromanage and derail technical decisions made by the
architect simply to exercise authority and to let people know that he was THE
decision maker there. Everything he did was based on scoring social points and
not doing the thing that had the most merit. Furthermore, he would often have
these arguments with people in front of the entire office in a very
loud/aggressive tone, which made a lot of people reluctant to disagree,
because honestly, what normal person wants to have a huge argument in front of
the entire cube farm. He knew this very well and used it to his advantage.

I remember a number of occasions where he would actively overrule other's
(very sound) technical decisions with his half baked nonfunctional crap simply
to be "right" and to make other people "wrong". Again, all to score points and
buy even more authority.

Long story short, he has done a lot of damage and made a number of people quit
because of stress and humiliation. He is now one of the higher ups in the
company. Mind you, this is a very corrupt old-school company I'm talking about
and is barely staying afloat these days. People like this get found out and
filtered out very fast in smaller companies run by hackers instead of old
socipathic farts with no understanding of technology.

~~~
woody99
I had a similar experience in a startup founded by ex-googlers.

------
Tloewald
This is a pretty insightful (and funny and depressing) article. That said,
using these approaches can be quite dangerous because you can end up annoying
someone with clout. A simpler and safer way to be overrated is simply to do
the following:

1) Attend all meetings, ideally be slightly early OR slightly late (and
apologetic) but not on-time. One creates the impression you're punctual and
eager, the other that you're super busy and important -- so mix it up. If
you're always early then you clearly have nothing to do. If you're always late
then you're simply disorganized.

2) Reply to all emails within 30-60 minutes (NOT immediately because that
increases the probability of an immediate reply). 30 minutes is plenty of time
for the sender to get bored and work on something else, e.g. updating
Facebook. Ideally if you're being asked to do something you should either
request more information or somehow hand it off to a colleague (or, if it's
really easy, just do it -- unless you actually enjoy screwing with people).
This will create the impression that you are totally on top of things and
never the bottleneck.

3) There's no third thing. You're done. You can now rise to the top of
virtually any organization. Obviously, it helps to have some clue as to what's
going on (e.g. what project you're on and what your role is supposed to be --
your emails should at least make sense in context).

All the other stuff mentioned in the article is great if it works, but
potentially lethal if you screw the wrong person. E.g. claiming credit may
work great in the short term, but it will make you enemies. Remember, some
people in the organization may give a damn or know something. Why take the
risk? Just show up to meetings and answer emails. People will assign you
credit for modesty if nothing else.

I might add that if you do this stuff, and -- if only to avoid boredom -- pay
some attention during meetings, actually read the emails you respond to, and
try to be reasonable when you say or write something, you'll actually be a
way-above-average contributor to many bureaucracies.

~~~
mateo411
This is good advice, from a straight shooter who has upper management written
all over him.

~~~
Tloewald
Ouch!

------
jilebedev
Manipulative people succeed in life, and in business.

Unfortunately, this is a skillset orthogonal to focuses of STEM majors: hence
the drama generated by this post.

As the Marines say: improvise, adapt, and overcome.

~~~
javert
If you consider the miserable schmuck who barely gets by in his job by playing
games to be "successful in life," you're... well, you shouldn't.

Find something you ENJOY doing with your time 40+ hours a week, and do THAT.
That is the person who has won at life.

What value does the cheater actually gain? Almost nothing.

I mean, if that job is the only job he can possibly do to survive, and he is
genuinely incapable of doing it properly (because doing it properly would, in
practice, give him much more actual job security), he has gained a value...
but that is a very false hypothetical.

~~~
jilebedev
On other discussion boards, I'd assume you were trolling. There is enough good
faith on HN that I'll reply honestly.

> miserable schmuck > barely gets by in his job

People who are miserable schmucks barely getting by in their jobs are the very
antithesis of the manipulative human I described above. A manipulative person
is usually the director of sales. A manipulative person is someone who spends
20-30 hours in the office at the most, and the rest of it with his/her family
or vacationing.

You need to understand that manipulation of human beings isn't a character
flaw, or something done for its own sake. It is done with a laser-focus on the
results. Either you have manipulated the dev/ops team to work unreasonable
hours to meet a promise to a major client that will net you alone a 20k
benefit at the end of the month or ... you are going to be "just" the sales
guy.

People like "us" here on HN are cannon fodder for people who operate at this
level. Manipulation, persuasion, sales, negotiation - people who excel at this
eat people who "ENJOY" their 40hr jobs.

I - I'm writing honestly here. It's difficult for me to believe you are not
trolling. It's a very thin line for me to believe you are writing honestly
here.

> cheater actually gain? Almost nothing.

The ability to demand a salary equivalent and easily surpassing that of a 20+
year engineer for ... the ability to sell things? Do you realize this human
has no academic expertise whatsoever? They are PAID to manipulate and
persuade.

You can call that "cheating". You can find it detestable. You can cry about it
in eloquent and persuasive language as you have attempted to do above.

I sincerely do not mean this as an insult but: either you will adapt to the
fact that 'success = manipulation' in life, or you will become one of the
deluded schmucks in a dead end job because your skills with rails/js are
obsolete in 20 years. The ability to manipulate people has infinite job
security, and infinite earning potential.

As the Marines say: adapt, and overcome.

~~~
maigret
The sales folks I know are all very hard workers who often get yelled at for
flaws in the software that the engineers didn't care much about. They have an
overall view of the product that many engineers should but don't have. They
travel a lot additionally to their actual work time which is much bigger than
20 or 30 hours. Also, I have seen engineers being as much guilty of feature
creep, if not more than sales. Sales usually want the feature they need for
their current customer - fair game (product management must prioritize for the
greater good), and they would like the features to be implemented well. Of
course their job doesn't scale that well, but they are still very important
for major contracts.

Maybe if your sales team is not working this way, you should consider a new
employer, the same way many are advocating when the engineering team is
broken. Product management, engineering, marketing and sales should work
together.

~~~
davidgerard
Yep. Geeks really need to appreciate that sales, marketing, etc. are _special
skills_ , every bit as much as understanding computers is, and _you need these
people_ every bit as much as they need you.

~~~
ansgri
They are actually much more difficult, as are all soft skills that are poorly
codifiable. Learning to code is much easier than learning to sell, if only
because you can do it alone in a basement with a PC and a book. The reason we
engineers often don't get this is because under "natural conditions" more
people without special training possess these skills (which means they're
widely applicable in everyday life) and almost nobody has to reinvent computer
science to survive.

------
auctiontheory
Some of these habits may indeed be true of overrated people, although some may
just be true of successful people. (Overcommunicating versus
undercommunicating, for instance.)

But I think that one of the characteristics of genuinely successful,
contributing, people, which I hope we all strive to be, is that they focus on
their job and goals, rather than fall into the trap of gossiping about or
being distracted by how others are getting ahead.

------
ritchiea
How does this kind of stuff get voted up? He's clever, but ultimately just
doing a lot of complaining about his co-workers.

~~~
perlpimp
what is being said closely resembles corporate/government structure and it's
people (successful) ones at least by my experience. Mostly doing fiercely
mediocre job and doing the social part they advance themselves for sole
benefit of themselves. Where this goes against the grain of hn community is
that people who gather here are self starter types and have started or looking
up to who did start their own gig to avoid being in the same environment where
people like that strive - corporate ladder climbers etc..

------
ilaksh
I'm glad this guy is complaining because having a few people who are political
or manipulative, especially if they are unproductive or incompetent, can kill
projects or startups. And oftentimes those people are there and aren't
recognized, or they have some slight competency but are manipulative and hurt
the more productive team members.

Obviously in the most elite teams this usually isn't an issue because people
are too competent to admit or tolerate incompetence or the type of BS
described in the article. But there are plenty of otherwise decent teams
affected by this.

~~~
jackbauer
+1 on this comment. We have someone like this. Slight competency and
unproductive. His political manipulation (good competency there) damages the
team's overall productivity and cohesion. Thankfully the people on top seem to
have woken up to this - we are not in the US though, so no easy way to get rid
of him.

------
JackMorgan
I'd like to add another to the list:

X) Point out massive, widespread architectural flaws, then kick off your boots
till someone else fixes them. When asked to do something you don't like, point
to that as a blocker.

While useful to know the weaknesses of a system, the otherwise incredibly
useful skill of being able to see such flaws can definitely be squandered if
not used judiciously.

------
weixiyen
I showed this Fedex commercial to my team as an example of what not to do:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNCrMEOqHpc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNCrMEOqHpc)

I think the most important thing (just as important as hiring) as a manager is
creating a culture of giving credit to others and deflecting credit from
oneself. Let others speak for your work because if it's good, someone will say
something (and if they don't you should bring it up in a 1:1), because that's
the expectation and the culture.

Once you do that, everything else takes care of itself in terms of department
drama. People who are naturally well mannered will fit in perfectly and people
who would have been problems in other environments understand that this is the
type of behavior that's expected if they hope to progress, so they will follow
suit.

Besides that, correctly evaluating performance is important. For engineering
managers, one thing I noticed is that code doesn't lie. It's the most
objective metric you can use. All other metrics are subjective, and should be
weighed less in comparison. If you have no way to easily look up someone's
code contributions, it is nearly impossible to evaluate talent correctly.

Still trying to figure things out but those are just some of the things I
noticed.

------
mfrankel
Covey would probably encourage you to understand the insecurities of these
people and address them in a more positive way. Your mileage from his advice
may vary.

If you need a quick Covey review, take a 3 minute break and watch this:
[http://www.brevedy.com/7-habits-3-minutes-
video/](http://www.brevedy.com/7-habits-3-minutes-video/)

------
AlexDanger
>What I'd like to hear from the OP is ways to counteract this kind of
behavior, I suspect there might not be a way to do it if you're a peer, only
if you're that person's boss.

I think the article misses an important point - never attribute to malice that
which is adequately explained by ignorance (Hanlon's Razor). Many of these
behaviours are not malicious, but are borne out of lack of experience, fear of
failure, shyness or just plain misunderstanding. As a peer, you can certainly
assist with these issues. It should always be your first assumption when
appraoching the situation.

However, if you are dealing with a verified malicious/manipulative/lazy person
I think its management's responsibility to _do_ something about these
behaviours. As a peer I think you can be proactive to expose some of these
behaviours and the impact they have on productivity and team morale.

The key word is transparency.

Transparency to these people is like sunlight to a vampire. They will do
anything to avoid it. The tightrope act is highlighting these problematic
behaviours to management or other peers without being a dick about it. A key
part of this is challenging the behaviour rather than the person. Tackle
issues as if they are shared problems you need to solve rather than 'you
versus me'.

Here are some approaches that have worked for me:

>Be Bossy and Critical

This is easy. If someone tries to palm off their work to me, or give I simply
ask them to run it past management first as it may impact the deadline for
other tasks. 90% of the time they never ask. The _' Oh my god, whats up with
the reports? Am I going to have to do this myself??'_ attack is even easier to
handle if you can exercise a bit of self-control and avoid getting defensive.
Just reply via email (and CC the project manager) _' Yes, thankyou for
offering! I'm snowed under with my allocated tasks so we'll have a better
result if you're able to finish these reports'._

By thanking them for their generous offer, you turn the whole situation on its
head. What a team player!

> Shamelessly Self Promote

Line up the self-promoted activities with the goals of the project. If they
match, well, thats ok. If they dont, ask how we as a team can ensure we hit
our deadlines. Remember that we're all a team, and we all (management
included) want to hit our deadlines. As a team, will we have to cut back on
any low priority tasks? What should the team be prioritising? Team Team Team.

> Distract with Arguments about Minutiae

Acknowledge the minutiae, do not dismiss it. Then ask how they see this
impacting the project deliverables. Remember with project teams (and
particularly software teams) each individual is focussed on their part of the
puzzle....and that small piece becomes their whole world. I dont see this
behaviour as malicious. Just a side effect of the tunnel vision required for
difficult programming tasks. It helps to 'come up for air' every now and then
and see the big picture. That puts these minutiae issues into perspective. Ask
them to raise it as a discussion item post-deadline. Share your own little
minutiae problem and how much it annoys you, but describe how you live with it
because ultimately there are more important things to worry about. In my
experience, this minutiae thing is not about laziness, its about team empathy
and acknowledgement of effort.

> Time It So You Look Good (Or Everyone Else Looks Bad)

This is one of my pet hates. I work with an international team and some people
really abuse the time difference with this scam. When _two_ people on the
opposite sides of the globe do this, its a thing of beauty. 4 days of non-work
to restore a SQL .bak file. To be honest I dont know how to deal with this
aside from daily progress reports which expose how little work is getting
done. Explicity stating 'if you encounter a problem that stops you, just put
it aside as we dont have the time to lose' sometimes helps.

> Plan Excuses Ahead of Time

I've noticed that sometimes this is not about excuses, its about a lack of
confidence. Perhaps bad time syncing in linux can cause big problems? Who
knows? Many people are scared of breaking things they do not understand. This
is a reasonable attitude. Just need to encourage pro-active thinking. Ask them
what they did instead? Perhaps set up a couple of VMs that people can play
with and not worry about breaking? We've had alot of success with this
approach. We had a support team who couldnt solve any customer tickets because
they were terrified of 'messing with the system' and hadnt received proper
training. After a couple of months active encouragement, a no-blame approach
to problems, and a few short training sessions focussing on how to diagnose
issues rather than following a script....they became incredibly effective. Now
they'll jump right in, have a go, if they cant fix it, they'll describe what
they did and where they got stuck. Ticket turnaround time dropped by about
75%.

> Take Credit in Non-Disprovable Ways

I dont really know how to handle this. It used to worry me but I dont really
care any more. I've had the most indivual success when I remain team focussed
instead of expending mental energy worrying about my personal brand. Granted,
I now work in a large organisation. I've seen this behaviour in a small
company (ie a manager/owner 'king of the castle' egomaniac) and it was
terminal. Time to polish up the CV.

~~~
S4M
> The key word is transparency.

> Transparency to these people is like sunlight to a vampire. They will do
> anything to avoid it.

I think it's the opposite. People like that - I think michaelochurch calls
them psychopaths - like, in my experience, be transparent (or at least, appear
to be transparent, but in any case they will openly promote transparency).
They will always have something to say. "I did this and that to make the
system better and to share better information between us." They will be able
to talk at length about what they are doing and how it will make everybody's
life better.

~~~
AlexDanger
Certainly these people are communicative, but that doesnt make them
transparent. In my mind transparency implies an outsider having a reasonably
accurate picture of the true state of affairs. These people (some of them
psychopaths) will go to extraordinary lengths to convince as many people as
possible that they are doing the great thing.

>They will be able to talk at length about what they are doing and how it will
make everybody's life better

There is no crime in this. Everyone should think about these things. But I
would argue that the malicious people _need_ to spend more time communicating
with many people to manage their perception - its almost like a propaganda
war.

>openly promote transparency

This is vital information. If they openly promote transparency, you can use
this attitude to suggest and implement _real_ transparency in systems and
workflows. Most of these people will recoil in horror at the idea of being
exposed.

~~~
a_olt
You are correct in that transparency is to those people like light is to
vampires. If you (or anyone else) is interested in the academic treatment of
these 'games' (that is what they are called), read Eric Berne's short book
"Games People Play". In the book it is explained how what you called
"transparency" can be achieved by giving the player the "antithesis" to his
game.

~~~
AlexDanger
Brilliant, i'll check it out.

Can you recommend further academic publications or research on this type of
toxic behaviour in the workplace? What is the term for these people? Some of
them are psychopaths but that seems a bit extreme for this range of
behavioural traits.

------
ChuckMcM
Nicely written. I met way too many folks like that during my time at Google,
it was very frustrating when someone would say "Oh be like so-an-so, he is
very successful." and I would say "But he doesn't actually do _anything._ "
and they would say, but he is _successful_ at it. :-)

I don't know about the Slackware anecdote, in a similar situation if I was the
manager I would just let them go. But that brings me to the real point of
this, which is managing such people is pretty surreal. Especially if they are
in full on misdirection mode. I suppose if you can get to some concrete
deliverables for them, that they are not allowed to bother anyone else for,
you can test their ability to complete some task or not.

------
nsxwolf
This article is a great Impostor Syndrome trigger.

~~~
aclevernickname
Thanks for making me look up [1] that term.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome)

------
timrogers
I found this article particularly amusing because I think we all see these
behaviours in ourselves some of the time. The real trouble comes if you're
working in this way most or even all the time.

------
001sky
A follow up post on resume/interviewing would be equally illuminating. Every
organization needs its team players and people who are 'useful' rather than
merely 'pruducutive' in the sense of objective talent. But the bozo-factor is
more what this essay is getting at, and it seems for the most part these are
the folks best left in place at their current gigs.

------
sramsay
Anyone notice that this reads more-or-less like a description of Steve Jobs?

~~~
jbeja
I don't even know the guy

------
snorkel
I've found that over time bullshitters who produce only noise are weeded out
eventually, but there's also the opposite problem of actual producers stay so
quiet that upper management has no idea who they are what they do, in which
case it's good to demo your work to upper management whenever possible, even
if not asked to, ask the top brass for time to show them something then give a
quick demo explaining the business case of why that thing you created will
change how the business operates for the better. This is especially joyful if
you have a bullshit supervisor and you have to go around them to demo up, it
makes clear to upper management that you create and maybe your supervisor just
creates noise.

~~~
woody99
It happened to me once but the upper management couldn't really care because
it's a startup with no real business yet.

Also, later I found that although the upper management criticise about X
privately but claims their support to X in public. I guess that the upper
management could not admit that they made such a mistake, the whole company
would lose their faith if it's officially confirmed that they have been
wasting time for years.

------
michalu
I wonder how should one behave if such person is your colleague or team
member. The article concludes "don't be that guy" but that doesn't help if
that guy is your colleague. Any thoughts from HN?

------
AndrewWorsnop
This is pretty much the selection criteria for "The Apprentice".

~~~
walshemj
For the panel or the fantasists that appear on the show?

------
adamconroy
There is a fine line. Sometimes these habits are required to fend off being
underrated. I've been on projects where the attempts to make people look bad
are brutal and relentless.

Another scenario I experienced was where I took a contract at a company where
my cousin is CIO. It wasn't pleasant, there was a constant assumption that I
was just there through nepotism, and that I was overrated.

------
jackbauer
I work with someone like this and he has 6 out of 7 of these
habits/attributes. No speculation. I completely agree with this article in
terms of perceived vs actual productivity. Coupled with that are perceived
super skills, but which are actually quite novice. Just another framework
jockey.

For the 7th, he is not an over-communicator - but has these hazy / fuzzy
communications at stand up.

------
shuaib
Well put. But I think this is only half the picture. What happens when you do
NOT have these habits, and are on the verge of being labelled the most
incompetent/lazy team member, even though it might be you doing the actual
work. Won't such a person, seeing that his work isn't being appreciated, get
down to actually following these habits to be appreciated?

------
edw519
8\. Protect your job: Write code that only you can maintain. Always have a
"backlog" in dev that needs you to promote it. Cultivate customers who want
only you.

9\. Bring up the same fundamental company flaws every staff meeting. This is
_very_ easy to do because there are so many and they hardly ever get fixed.
"Testing is broken because..."

10\. Provide vivid postmortems of problems in meetings and emails. Again, this
is so easy to do (and, oddly, greatly appreciated by management).

11\. Block out tons of time in Outlook for "faux meetings". You must be
important to be so hard to schedule.

12\. Leave complex voice mail instructions: "If this is for ORP, contact Joe.
If this is for Europe, ping me at...". Makes you look way more important than
you really are.

13\. Always have lots of complex diagrams on your white board. Change them
often.

14\. Always have lots of paper plastered to your wall. Change it often.

15\. Publish & email explicit status reports often. Make it look like you're
the only one who really knows what's going on. "I talked to Mary and she said
we have to..."

16\. Write & deploy lots of "generating" software that writes other software
and runs cron jobs. Make sure your initials are perpetuated on logs
everywhere.

17\. Always walk quickly. Never have enough time to talk. "How's it going,
John? Catch up with you later. Late for a meeting in dev..." (Bonus: always
carry important looking papers/folder)

18\. Always be on your cell phone. (Not texting or surfing; that make you look
like a slacker. Always talking loudly and urgently: "No! The other log
program!")

19\. Always leave food on your desk. Only busy people never have time to
finish what they're eating.

20\. Always have treats to share with others. They may not realize it, but
they'll probably never allow themselves to notice any of your possible
apparent faults.

21\. Get your name/initials on as many tickets and documents as possible, even
those with only one line of code of just a quick comment on some little thing.
People subconcisouly measure in quantity as much as quality. ("Wow, Ed's
really been busy lately!")

22\. Never use the words "but" or "can't". Put others down (thus elevating
yourself) without offending them.

23\. Always say things like "Yes, of course," "I am at your service," or "If
you ever need help, let me know," You don't actually have to _do_ anything.
Just say that you will. People will remember it as if you actually did
something.

24\. Never chit chat in the break room, hallway, or social get-togethers.
Don't accidently destroy your carefully cultivated "too busy" persona.

~~~
philwelch
So, stop me if I'm crazy, but I thought vivid postmortems were actually
valuable?

~~~
mechanical_fish
Vivid post-mortems are valuable _if_ they serve their purpose: Motivating
action that prevents future post-mortems.

But post-mortems themselves are not valuable at all. Quite the opposite: Every
post-mortem signifies that something has died. Resurrecting the dead has
probably consumed a lot of time and resources that could have been better
spent on something else.

An organization should never write the same post-mortem twice, and should see
the rate of post-mortems diminish over time, to the point where they are
incredibly rare. But that doesn't always happen.

Instead, fetishizing post-mortems can be a real problem. It is easy to
accidentally build an engineering culture that glorifies firefighting. Every
day an expensive team of trained technicians comes to work and dives into the
usual series of daily emergencies. Each emergency winds up with a glowing
after-action report that gets filed with the other reports. People compete to
tell the most entertaining tales of command-line heroics in the face of
hilariously broken systems. It can actually be kind of fun, like a game.
Everyone feels very productive and important, because without constant
vigilance the software would die dozens of times every day. And the post-
mortems may be of the highest quality, because every employee has ample
opportunity to practice writing them.

In such an environment it's astonishingly easy to lose the plot: It is better
to be the organization whose software consistently works, and which never
writes post-mortems because _nothing ever dies_. A boring report is a quality
report!

~~~
philwelch
I think it's good to build a culture where having to write a postmortem is a
mark of shame. It seems incredibly perverse to do otherwise, and while I
appreciate the thrill of a good crisis, any professional should endeavor to do
no more and no less than sleep soundly knowing that nothing will break and
page them at night. (Developers aren't in the on-call rotation? That's your
first problem.)

------
sidcool
You know, you are right, this all seems wrong on paper. But that fact remains
that it works. It works in impressing your boss and others. It helps in
promotion. It's like marketing. I don't believe in doing so personally,
because I lack this skill. But I am working on developing it.

------
creade
I'd heartily recommend the book version of _The Peter Principle_. A lot of
people are probably familiar with its namesake principle, but the book goes
into a lot more detail about what the implications of it are and wider
concepts of useless and destructive employee patterns.

------
falsedan
How do management not spot these behaviours? I've worked at places where
habits would be a sure-fire recipe for a stellar performance review--heck,
some line managers even suggested that I adopt a couple!

------
krmmalik
Having made some poor choices and ending up with overrated people for the last
several years over and over; I narrowed it down to two things.

1\. Ego - Low Self Esteem and Narcisstic behaviour

2\. Finding excuses not to get things done.

------
djillionsmix
Sounds like Patty McCord's been following this guide to a T.

------
mathattack
Funny article, but don't people see through this very quickly? Folks that
don't play well with others get found out very quickly.

~~~
michaelochurch
The trick is to be subtle and nice while doing it, especially around important
people. You're not coming off as bossy but over-helpful. You're not being
critical to be mean, but you're sharing your expertise and giving advice about
the right way to do things. You always pick a level where you're aggressive
enough that people move around you as you wish, but not so much as to cause
issues.

OP's advice (and if you get to the end, he points out that this will _not_
work except in a dysfunctional environment) is great for people who are
looking to inject themselves into power vacuums. If the boss is never there
and you start asking for status reports, people start treating you as if you
were the boss-- and being passively deferential in the hope that you'll go
away and let them get back to work-- and soon enough you've made yourself #2.
Then you just need to get the real boss promoted or demoted or fired or
disinterested enough to vacate.

------
rajanikanthr
OMG..damn accurate as I experienced the same by one of the teammate.But as a
contract employee I can't do much

------
WalterSear
People who behave this way are generally too self-absorbed to realize that
they are behaving this way.

------
SkyMarshal
__> 4\. Distract with Arguments about Minutiae __

Aka, pg 's "middlebrow dismisal".

------
codeonfire
I could write a book on these types of tactics. For instance, in a meeting
that involves your boss, command your coworkers to do what they were all
already going to do. "Commit that change and send out an email describing what
you changed." They can't not do their job, so it appears to your boss that
everyone else is taking orders from you. If someone challenges you, passive-
aggressively suggest a time they can get help from you.

~~~
ExpiredLink
I have seen this, too. But all those tactics can and will backfire. Soon the
'overrated' will be cut off from information and support.

------
marincounty
If Moses was the most modest man in the world; would he even make a statement
claiming he was the most modest man in the world?

I can handle a little self promotion, but it's always from the wrong guy. Too
many of those wrong guys had wealthy fathers who financed every thing. I guess
in order to get laid, or promoted they need to let people know what "talents"
they have? Some of you computer guru's are the worst offenders.

------
notmyrealnick
This is some terrific advice on how to hold on to a paying job while finding
some time (and mindspace) to work on my startup idea -- great!

