Hacker News Reader

Comment by ratg13 | Hacker News Reader

There is a saying that goes, "the fastest way to demotivate a good employee is to allow them to watch you tolerate a bad one"

Not all managers are aware of this.

Everything you say is true, however, I have also witnessed first hand this sort of thing drain a company of talent.

It's only after everyone else leaves and maybe you leave yourself where you start to question whether watching the whole company lose it's talent was worth being polite.

View on HN

There is a difference between a bad employee who is harmful to the team and one who is not doing anything and is harmless, albeit not adding any value. Good managers get rid of bad employees and try to work out with potentially good employees that happen to have a rough time. Sometimes it doesn't work out and you need to part ways, but sometimes it does. I've seen it more than once a great employee having depression and really struggling. That's when they need the support of their manager the most.

I wish I could upvote you 100. This is exactly the kind of thing I witnessed in real life. It was absolutely sad.

Indeed. I'd never heard the saying but have definitely experienced it first-hand more times than I care to remember.

Been there. literally used to keep a running list of the excuses from a coworker on my team. totally demotivating for the rest of us busting our butts. I was young and didnt call it out. Guess i thought our manager would notice. Maybe they did but they didn't do anything. I didnt stick around.

I have to ask, have your bad employees not resulted in issues for others?

People seem to be misunderstanding, this isn't about being scared to tattle or something. No one is saying keep quiet while someone harms the team...

What they're saying is: Your feedback should be based on harm, not just a gut feeling. I've never seen a team where someone could do 0 work and not create actionable blockages of work that you'd be able to bring up.

And honestly, part of me is starting to wonder if that's the issue... if you're on a team where someone also on that team (not an individual contributor) can do 0 work and not block anyone and not affect any deliverables, then that sounds like a fundamentally dysfunctional org.

The problem isn't even your manager tolerating them, the role shouldn't exist. That kind of org tends to bleed talent as people realize it's not rarely an isolated issue and they're part of a pretty dysfunctional system.

Also "the fastest way to demotivate a good employee is to allow them to watch you reward a bad one"

This happens more frequently and anybody rewarded is automatically assumed to be better regardless of their contributions.

Fact.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com