
Dealing With Bad Apples - sant0sk1
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001154.html
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ojbyrne
First person I thought of when I read this was Steve Yegge. Sometimes bad
apples just need to find the right role.

Then I thought of (sorry for the sports analogy) Randy Moss and Terrell Owens.
Bad apples, lousy attitude, careers just about done, until they found the
right place.

Yes I'm contrarian. Perhaps a bad apple.

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Flemlord
After many years of hiring, I've found one warning sign that tips me off to
this type of behavior. If an employee complains excessively about his
old/current company during an interview then he's likely to complain about his
new company too.

In the three times I specifically remember the interviewee dragging his old
company through the mud, they ended up being a "bad apple" within six months
of working with us. If they're not tactful enough to sum up any old employer
problems with a wry, witty passing reference, then you should be worried about
how they'll act when they run into differences with the rest of your team.

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pjackson
This is a particularly interesting topic for Agile teams. Letting a team self-
organize sometimes leads to a team wanting to "self-organize someone off the
team".

I've had my Scrum masters come to me twice in the past two years and ask to
have a team member removed. One needed to get fired, one needed to be
reassigned to a position that better suited his talents.

In both cases, the team experienced an immediate productivity boost and jelled
better.

The key for the manager is letting the team know that you trust them enough to
bring those issues to you.

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deathbyzen
I laughed when he called the bad apple "Joe."

At my work, the bad apple is actually named Joe. Joe just doesn't flat out
know how to communicate with people. He's brusque and most of the time, just
downright rude. He's condescending and often wrong. He is nosy too. Always
giving advice and telling people whats what with their problems. The worst
part is that everybody just tolerates his crap when they need to. Otherwise,
they just avoid him and try to work with him as little as possible.

And just like this article points out, the people in my department blame the
leadership because they don't do anything about. We complain when he gets out
of hand and he has been talked to about his attitude, but the cycle simply
repeats itself.

I don't know why we keep him around. We can do A LOT better.

~~~
SwellJoe
I suspect most bad apples are named Joe.

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mynameishere
Am I the only one who enjoys the antics of really bad employees?

At least they make my own incompetence seem less raging.

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Hoff
So apply asymmetric management here; use basic Aikido. Tell Joe to go code it.
In JavaScript. Put up or shut up.

Yes, Joe might be a bad apple. Or Joe might really have a better solution;
either client- or server-side JavaScript.

Either of the two probable outcomes here works for the team.

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mk
Be very selective during the hiring process. You may be forced to throw out
what could be good apples, but at least it reduces the chances of you hiring a
bad apple.

~~~
ardit33
I have to say there is always two sides of the story.

Sometimes these "bad apples" are actually decent or good employees, but the
disfunctional dynamics, or even maybe bad managers can turn a potentially good
employee into a bad one.

When managers are incompetent technically, some tend to rely on few employees
they trust on decission. The problem is that these trusted employees become
trusted not necessary of their technical skills, but their affinity, (or ass
kissing abilities) to their manager.

A good manager, will be able to take advice from all his employees, and even
his most technical ones. A bad manager will rely a lot more on his chronies,
which, there is a great chance, they are going to be technicallly incompetent.

So, if you are actually good, but forced to implement things you think are
stupid, just because your manager happens to trust other people's opinion's
more, then it it is going to be frustrating. Some people suck it up, some
leave, some just moan and complain, and of course are labeled bad apples.

And this happens way to often, especially in larger companies. Small
companies, will go with the technical competence, otherwise die. Technical
incompetence and chronyism thrives is large coorporations, with lots of
managerial layers.

Sometimes, there are truly people that are bad apples, and shouldn't be there,
but often there are people that are great, but slowly become a bad apple b/c
of the above circumstances.

~~~
mk
Point taken. My point was rather implement a strict hiring process to weed out
bad apples even if it has the consequences of false positives and potentially
good people are thrown out.

Something that your comment reminded me of is that your team is only as strong
as the worst employee. If you are hiring bad apples as managers then it has
the very likely potential of being bad apples all the way down.

~~~
swombat
Be too selective and you won't hire anyone good either. Great people are often
eccentric, with weird personality kinks that can make them harder to work
with. In my experience, smart, creative, brilliant people are pretty much
always harder to work with, opinionated, pushy, and demanding. But I'll take
that over "average but does what he's told" any day.

