NPR, a few days ago:
I've not read a lot of Joel, but each piece I remember rubs me the wrong way like this one does. He writes as if he has found some great simple truth that the huge successful companies out there don't recognize. But his great simple truth is either a truism or is something that really isn't true in general. His first paragraph doesn't even mention customers for his "software that works". It sounds like supply-side nonsense (and we know how well that worked out for the economy as a whole).
Hiring great productive programmers is fine - who wouldn't want to do that? But if they're all jerks who can't work together or who make lives miserable for people who have to work with them, then it doesn't matter if they write working code 50% faster than their peers - they company will fail anyway. Or if hiring great productive programmers that cost 3x as much as hiring good, productive, flexible people who can learn to be great productive programmers over time - is the most expensive option automatically the best choice, especially long-term?
It must have been nice for him to have the time and freedom to write 15,000+ character posts like this so often. I wonder how he rated its effect on the bottom line...
:-/
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
DYLAN MINOR: Thank you for having me.
SHAPIRO: You looked at employment data from more than 50,000 workers across 11 companies. What did you find that toxic workers all have in common?
MINOR: I found several things. So it's not that literally every toxic worker is the same, but there certainly are some command traits. One thing I found is, on average, they tend to be much more productive. I also found that toxic workers tend to be more selfish than the average worker, tend to be more overconfident. And lastly and, I think, interestingly, surprisingly, to me, they also self-profess to follow the rules.
SHAPIRO: So some of those things don't seem to fit with the others - more productive than average, for example. You found that toxic workers are harmful to the workplace. How do you reconcile that with the idea that they're more productive than the average worker?
MINOR: Well, they're - presents itself a trade-off. So one area in particular is overconfidence. It turns out that those workers that are overconfident do indeed tend to be quite a bit more productive. However, those workers that are overconfident also are more likely to be toxic. And so fortunately, in this setting, we actually had the data that we could look at the effects of profits. And if you look at those two features together - that is, increased likelihood of productivity and increased likelihood of toxicity - you're actually still taking on a net thousand-dollar loss per worker that has greater confidence.
I've not read a lot of Joel, but each piece I remember rubs me the wrong way like this one does. He writes as if he has found some great simple truth that the huge successful companies out there don't recognize. But his great simple truth is either a truism or is something that really isn't true in general. His first paragraph doesn't even mention customers for his "software that works". It sounds like supply-side nonsense (and we know how well that worked out for the economy as a whole).
Hiring great productive programmers is fine - who wouldn't want to do that? But if they're all jerks who can't work together or who make lives miserable for people who have to work with them, then it doesn't matter if they write working code 50% faster than their peers - they company will fail anyway. Or if hiring great productive programmers that cost 3x as much as hiring good, productive, flexible people who can learn to be great productive programmers over time - is the most expensive option automatically the best choice, especially long-term?
It must have been nice for him to have the time and freedom to write 15,000+ character posts like this so often. I wonder how he rated its effect on the bottom line...
:-/
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.