from Hacker News

Don't be addicted to losers

by eykanal on 10/23/17, 6:45 PM with 22 comments

• by ev0lhanson on 10/23/17, 8:08 PM

  This is extremely bad advice. Firing people because you think they are "losers" is a sure fire way to make your work place toxic. This is what lazy managers and companies do.

  Someone who is underperforming should be informed specifically how they are underperforming and what they can do to become an excellent performer. They may not be aware they are underperforming or believe they are overperfomlng but they are doing the wrong thing. Having open and honest discussions with people, giving them chances, offering guidance/training, and treating people like adults is how you build a company that is not full of "losers".

  It's not being lazy to work with an underperforming employee to turn that around it's lazy to just fire them because to you they appear to be a "loser".

  Positivity is super important especially when you are a manager. This article has such a negative tone it's disappointing that it's author might actually be a manager some place.

  Additionally comparing poorly performing employees with serious drug addiction is just not super cool.

• by mikestew on 10/23/17, 8:00 PM

  I really do wish sometimes that there were a downvote button for articles. This one is not so egregiously offensive that it deserves a "flag", but the quality is poor and brings nothing new to the table. And the metaphor sucks.

• by hobofan on 10/23/17, 7:57 PM

  TLDR: "A-players hire A-players; B-players hire C-players"

  Beyond that, the article doesn't offer much and doesn't even explore the possibility to deal with the "lazy problem employee" in any other (humane) way than to get rid of them.

• by evanlivingston on 10/23/17, 7:57 PM

  A workplace that promotes characterizing people as losers sounds like an awful, awful place to work.

• by learc83 on 10/23/17, 7:57 PM

  This article was ridiculous. Comparing humans to heroin might be forgiven if the analogy provided any insight at all, but it didn't.

• by wirrbel on 10/23/17, 8:03 PM

  uh, yet again one of those blog posts that offer simple solutions for simple problems. As if life was so simple.

  In a workplace situation, you'll realize, that sometimes "looser" person is just a looser in the mind of that one manager, and the person that holds together the CI infrastructure of the team, putting in countless hours integrating changes from colleagues (because the rock stars cannot be bothered to do that). Or that grumpy looser is in fact the only one with the guts to speak up. Or, the tasks assigned to that person do not match their expertise.

  I have often heard people recount stories about how a transfer from one manager to another manager in the company turned their situation upside down.

• by rm_-rf_slash on 10/23/17, 7:59 PM

  The "loser" in this post is somewhat of a straw man. How can one tell the difference between an incompetent/ineffective employee and one that might be undergoing home life stresses (my family had 2 deaths and another near-death this year, and it was not excellent for my productivity), or perhaps they are not completely motivated for their job. In the case of the latter, couldn't one argue that it's actually the manager's responsibility?

  Real world examples with anecdotes or statistics - rather than a somewhat clumsy metaphor for heroin addiction- would have made the argument more convincing.

• by Areading314 on 10/23/17, 7:54 PM

  This article and whoever wrote it just ... sucks

• by sevensor on 10/23/17, 7:56 PM

  Any properly functioning bureaucracy institutes performance improvement plans so that there will be a paper trail for firings. Indeed any not-entirely-dysfunctional bureaucracy has this. Also, being on a performance improvement plan means they want to fire you. Sometimes this doesn't happen -- I know a guy who was subsequently elevated to middle management after having been on a PIP as a junior employee, but it delayed his advancement by at least 5 years.

  Edit: typo

• by rrggrr on 10/23/17, 8:09 PM

  TLDR: businesses depend on their employees, including their weak hires. Have enough weak hires (or a few key bad hires) and you can't function with or without them. The article misses the real exposure most businesses face in this regard... good employees who become weak over time. The dependency crisis this creates is very real, especially in small businesses without the resources to rehabilitate and retrain struggling employees.

• by pdimitar on 10/23/17, 8:45 PM

  Archive.ORG link since the article seems to be gone:

  https://web.archive.org/web/20171023190221/http://blog.erikd...

• by tentakull on 10/23/17, 8:00 PM

  Lol what a dork. Flippant comment aside, I can see this guy sitting in the shower trying to divine a relevant metaphor for such a dumb opinion - and coming up with the least relevant but most offensive option. That combined with the confidence to sit down and write that out takes talent.

• by athenot on 10/23/17, 7:56 PM

  I get the point of not hanging on to mediocrity but I don't think the term "losers" is what's most appropriate here. It's too reductionist.

• by bb88 on 10/23/17, 8:03 PM

  I've seen losers in management too. Usually they're too wound up in spinning their own positives to upper management than actually managing people.

• by curtisblaine on 10/24/17, 2:18 PM

  Apart from the heroin comparison, is it only me who thinks that yes, people who are not good at their job should be fired?

• by yowlingcat on 10/23/17, 8:09 PM

  I would call this a poorly written article, but it's not an article. It's someone's half baked thought on a blog, but unfortunately, it reflects an attitude common enough at most tech firms to warrant a comment.

  Employees don't "suck" in isolation. What do you think happens when you try to hire and coach a group of people together to solve a problem? You're building a team. No, you're not building a "band" of "rockstars", you're assembling a highly functional team of professionals. Someone who was hired who's not at the bar of seniority to be functional on the team? Hiring process and manager take responsibility. Someone was hired who wouldn't professionally gel and fit in with the team/organization? Same problem. Someone on the team has concerns and they're not going heard? Someone on the team is not finding the growth opportunities they need? Same problem.

  As a middle manager, it is your job to find the right team members for your specific organization. If you're wasting time whining about how certain organizations are "addicted" to "losers", all you're doing is passing the buck, which by your own admission would make you...a "loser". See how stupid that is? You're not a loser, you're just incompetent.

  Probably the only thing this half baked piece got right is that a dysfunctional organization of a certain size is going to have a much more difficult time ridding itself of that dysfunction than a smaller one -- you can't just fire your way to healthiness in such a situation. But, that's what real crisis leadership is about. It's not impossible, just very rare. You can see why, though -- it's so much easier to place the blame on others (especially your reports) by grading them into adder/subtractor buckets. And of course, when the team, division or organization folds, it's not your fault. Then, you take that toxic attitude with you to the next organization unlucky enough to get saddled with you.

  Looking at the world through the lens of losers/rockstars reflects a childish, simplistic view of how humans work and are motivated. Those who subscribe to it are bound to live through a life full of unnecessary hardship and mediocrity. The competition for talent is fierce, and managers who can't effectively hire, retain and develop talent will stunt the growth of their organization. Obviously, this is not uncommon, and many organizations deteriorate to this level of dysfunction. But, there are plenty that don't. They'll poach your talent, as they should, and you'll be too oblivious to understand why.

  Learn your lessons the easy way, or learn them the hard way.

  PS: Don't even get me started with that egregiously inappropriate heroin analogy. The author should hope that their HR department never finds this blog post, because that would be a PR disaster.