One of my frustrations is incompetent but nice people, but defined more like: can’t be trusted to not have their work checked but is adept at social games. When your manager, you cannot ‘just do’ anything they ask because it wouldn’t of been thought through, when your colleague, you can’t brainstorm with them or trust anything from them has been done to minimum viable. This requires people to push back, but doing so risks being seen as a jerk, and risks actually becoming a jerk if you one day realise how much of your time is babysitting.
But they play golf with your boss, they make friends with people (instead of working), it’s always someone else’s fault that something went wrong. Which is to say these people form cliques, and they gossip constantly to develop and maintain in and out groups. They play favourites something shocking too, and focus on the weaknesses of people they’re threatened by and point them out constantly. They seem nice, but imo I’ve seen highly competent but direct and mission focused teams be reduced to petty infighting and guarded position jostling in less than a month upon the hiring of just one such person.
Hey, am I, or we, actually talking about autistic traits vs narcissistic traits? Not sure. Wasn’t my intention going in, just wanted to point out that nice people have coping strategies too, and their incompetence might just be that they don’t prioritise trying to be good at their job and find their success in ways I personally find manipulative and toxic far more than someone being directly rude.
To reword the top comment: the incompetent destroy team morale, make good people leave, and paralyse junior employees and those lacking confidence/assertiveness. They may contribute to a friendly environment, but they burden others.
Jerks, as long as they are not so jerky as to be abusive, can at least contribute to a strong team culture by stripping away uncertainty and fluff and make less assertive but competent people want to show up and succeed.
Final reword: the need for jerks increases the more BS is in the system. A system with enough BS will produce jerks out of necessity.
Hey, am I, or we, actually talking about autistic traits vs narcissistic traits? Not sure. Wasn’t my intention going in, just wanted to point out that nice people have coping strategies too, and their incompetence might just be that they don’t prioritise trying to be good at their job and find their success in ways I personally find manipulative and toxic far more than someone being directly rude.
To reword the top comment: the incompetent destroy team morale, make good people leave, and paralyse junior employees and those lacking confidence/assertiveness. They may contribute to a friendly environment, but they burden others. Jerks, as long as they are not so jerky as to be abusive, can at least contribute to a strong team culture by stripping away uncertainty and fluff and make less assertive but competent people want to show up and succeed.
Final reword: the need for jerks increases the more BS is in the system. A system with enough BS will produce jerks out of necessity.