Lifers and politicians

I’m sure you have encountered plenty of toxic people at work. Let’s look at some of the most dangerous kinds: lifers, and politicians.

Toxic employees come in all shapes and sorts. Some are relatively innocuous, while others can kill a company if not addressed. The more obvious it is that somebody is toxic at work, the less dangerous they usually are.

Today I’m going to focus on 2 specific types of toxic employees: lifers, and politicians.

Both can be very dangerous and problematic, especially when they manage to rise near the top in an organization. Also, both can be found in any company, and in any age band.

Their behaviour and motivations are very different though.

Lifers

Lifers stopped learning a long time ago, stopped caring, and became part of the furniture in their company. The status quo is comfortable to them, and so they’ll defend it from any attempt to change things.

Typically, somebody becomes a lifer in a company where mediocrity is tolerated but mistakes carry social or career danger. With no incentives to learn, and no options, fossilizing is inevitable.

They usually end up convincing themselves that the little they know is the only acceptable state, and that everything else is wrong/idealistic/academic/impossible.

Like zombies, they’re only dangerous when in numbers.

When they are prevalent in a company:

• There’s a lot of attrition among new-joiners. People smash the interview and enthusiastically join only to get depressed and leave within a few months.
• Nothing changes ever, except for how things are called. You see a bunch of system admins becoming an “SRE team”, then a “DevOps team”, and a “Platform Engineering team”, without any change whatsoever.
• Companies fall behind in terms of technologies, stuck using Java 8, archaic frameworks, and vintage data formats.

Clues

• Saying there’s no reason to ever deviate from their current tools and processes. NoSQL, event-driven architecture, Cloud, streaming, reactive programming, mob programming, trunk-based development, all fantasy.
• Not reading, watching videos, or working on side projects.
• Claiming that things other companies use successfully would never work in their company.
• Discrediting new joiners by saying they have no experience running the company systems in production.

Scorecard

• Self-awareness: low (they can’t cope with the idea that they’re obsolete, even if deep down they suspect it)
• Competence: very low (stopped learning a long time ago, stopped caring as well)
• Maliciousness: low - (mostly defending the image they have of themselves)

Politicians

Politicians worm their way in and up organizations through intentional deception. They’re usually quick to identify people who are receptive to their games, and then spend most of their time manipulating them to improve their own status and power.

These people know what they’re doing, and deliberately discredit people, steal recognition, cast blame, undermine others, lie, and bribe.

When they join a company:

• The best people leave, as they typically become victims and get ousted, or they have options and decide they had enough.
• Big projects start failing, only for the politicians to deflect the responsibility towards the people they like the least.
• More employees start becoming politicians, as the successes of these toxic people incentivize bad behaviour in others.

Clues

• Continuously saying they’re not political.
• Kissing up and kicking down.
• Having back-to-back calendars and spending most days in meetings they create themselves.
• Spending more time with their managers than with their peers.
• Posturing by asking or saying meaningless things that sound reasonable:
  • Do you have any data to sustain this?
  • Do we have the agency to make this decision?
  • We need more accountability and ownership.
  • We need to collaborate more.
  • We need Scrum/Kanban/ShapeUp/SAFe/LESS.
  • We need more diversity.
  • We need commitments/deadlines/estimates/velocity.
• Hiring tons of unnecessary people with their area of control.

Scorecard

• Self-awareness: very high (they know themselves and their game)
• Competence: very low (gave up on the idea of achieving things through competence)
• Maliciousness: very high - (willing to harm others and their company to get ahead)