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Comment by karmajunkie | Hacker News Reader

The toxic worker is often the 10x worker. Its not enough to be good at what you do. You have to be someone other people can work with.

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I've seen several cases that looked like this superficially, but never a case where it turned out to be true when more closely investigated. Every single time, it has turned out that the "10x worker" who "writes all the important things and knows everything" has been doing essentially nothing for a very long time. Every single time, the primary features of these people have been:

* They have an opinion on every subject, and express one in every discussion ("leadership")

* For any proposed task, they can give a list of plausible-sounding reasons why it should not be done ("technical expertise")

* Nobody challenges them because doing anything that sounds even a little bit like a challenge results in you getting shouted at ("respected by their peers")

Words in parentheses are what management sees.

Every time I have seen a case where these people have persisted, it has been because a clique of them back each other up and the rest of the people in the company are essentially docile. Every competent engineer who finds themselves in this scenario then discovers that they are (a) outnumbered, and (b) able to find a better job somewhere else, so that's what happens.

Thank you.

I'm going to disagree here, based on personal experience.

I've not met a single individual whose contributions were so amazing to make up for their toxic personality. Most all of the toxic people I've worked with have had poor productivity, precisely as a function of their toxicity.

Fractional (1/10) workers, at best.

10x workers, to me, are by definition non-toxic.

I mean, its totally fair that that's your experience. But I personally know at least three individuals who fit the archetype of the "10x(-ish) developer" and all of whom have toxic personalities I'd never work with. They may be able to code from scratch in a couple weeks what another team would take months to do, but in terms of the organization they are a loss, because no one can work with them.

Certainly, there are developers who fit the mold of what you're talking about. I'm not suggesting that all toxic developers are 10xers. But the ones to really fear hiring are the ones who produce lots of code while they corrode your organization.

> in terms of the organization they are a loss

If that's true, then they are not "10x developers". Being super-productive, but only by yourself in a vacuum, is next to useless to any company with more than 1 employee.

If you're a 5-10 person startup, don't you want to have the person who can write version 1.0 of your product by himself in a couple of weeks? Then, when you start having customers, have a bigger team and redo things cleanly.

There's another important fallacy.

From the viewpoint of a 10x worker, the /10 worker is toxic.

From the viewpoint of a /10 worker, the 10x worker is toxic.

Not if that person is toxic and awful to work with. I don't care if he's 10X, 20X or 100X (Not that I even believe in the myth of the "10X developer").

One reason the 10x is a myth.

10x in this context usually refers strictly to their programming ability. I've certainly known people I'd consider 10x programmers, who I'd never hire without a specific difficult task that doesn't require collaboration.

I can relate to this. I once worked with two very smart people, extremely brilliant and could do amazing things. The only problem is they fought, were ill mannered and chased away every single person who every worked in the team. The manager was powerless because both of them had connections in the higher management and got anything they wanted.

The net result was there was never a stable team to get anything significant done. The project never did release anything. Needless to say they blamed everybody else apart from themselves. The last I heard, they did two more projects and met the same fate.

Those weren't 10x people, they were /10 people who were good at tricking other people into thinking they were 10x.

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