Shame you rarely get to choose your team.

I prefer a bad apple than bad milk.

So, should you just commit seppuku if you are a bad apple?

The sub-prime tummyache was caused by too many good apples.
Anyway that study is hardly exhaustive, typical sociological pseudo science crap.

Isn't this something which is always know for all teams, groups et al that 'A group can walk only as fast as the slower member' or 'A chain is as strong as the weakest link'. So here you have reinstated it as "A team is as good as the worst apple in it"

Well, I was elated to see you had posted again :) in just one day, but tell you this was not as interesting as normally your posts are. I mean.. "Tell me something I don't know!"

btw I loved the statement - "If you can't tell who the bad apple is in your group, it might be you"

A bad apple comes from a good apple being left to simply rot, being bruised and again left to rot. Bad or lack of good leadership turns good apples into bad apples. But human beings are not as apples. Good leadership, inspiring leadership can turn most 'bad apples' into 'good apples'.

The most frightening scenario is that most of the people who are in leadership roles are themselves 'bad apples'.

Do you think this just a scenario?

Each time I was thinking about talking to my team lead about bad apple I used to work with, I realized that complaining about team member makes me bad apple as well.
Thanks God, he left for better job, making this job also better

Hey Now Jeff,

The bad apple described as a slacker, that is a good one.

Get rid of the bad apple you are either a good apple or bad apple. I enjoy working people in the 20%

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001002.html

Coding Horror Fan,
Catto

So the teams were 4 people each, and those with 1 bad apple performed 30-40% worse. Is that really so surprising? You'd expect them to perform at least 25% worse with 1/4 of the people actively trying to ruin things. And how accurate could the measurements have been anyway?

Of course I haven't actually read the paper, so perhaps there is something in there that that would totally shut down my argument. If someone who has read the paper can point that out, I'd appreciate it.

In the meantime, I'll continue to assume that this is yet another quasi-scientific study that looked hard for a marginal and somewhat subjective effect in a small sample size and, SURPRISE SURPRISE, found it.

I remember this meeting of a social group back when I was in University (looong ago!): They had invited a Brazilian member of the Landless Workers Movement. The girl explained how they tried to get back their land from the local all powerful landlords. And how hard it was. But how peaceful they wanted to keep anyway. And everybody in the room agreed that the movement was right and good and every other good feeling you may want.

Then a stupid agressive old guy entered and shouted that "In my time, (World War 2), we would have taken guns and kicked this morons ass! You are stupid and will get only what you diserve if you're not ready to fight: nothing!". The guy was obviously not constructive, the typical bad apple example.

But! Without being aware of it, he raised questions in a couple other people and the conversation eventually uncovered several negative side effects of the actions explained by the girl.

Conclusion is that without that bad apple, we wouldn't have used our brains. I still hate the guy: He was rude and totally unconstructive. But the fact is that his presence helped the group improve its reflexions.

@MacBet, j_random_hacker: *cough* Depressive pessimist *cough*

Jeff, try to get the name right. I think it's "Will Felps" but you use three names: Wil, Felps and Phelps. Two out of three seem to be wrong... http://www.google.com/search?q=will+felps

Anyway, something's awfully wrong with your theory. You suggest we get rid of the bad apples, right? And there's always a bad apple, right (you suggest that if you don't know who it is, then it is probably you) ? So that means that you always have to kick someone from the team, until, eventually, you remain alone and there can be only one bad apple: you. So, you kick yourself and you're left with an empty "team."

I'm sure there are cases when there are no bad apples in the team! In my team, everybody struggles to get the best work done, each person is an optimist and I don't recall hearing nor saying anything like "it can't be done" or "this is bad" or "i know better."

Your article's logic is deeply flawed... You usually write excellent stuff, but I doubt you thought very well about this one.

1. The Depressive Pessimist will complain that the task that they're doing isn't enjoyable, and make statements doubting the group's ability to succeed.
2. The Jerk will say that other people's ideas are not adequate, but will offer no alternatives himself. He'll say "you guys need to listen to the expert: me."
3. The Slacker will say "whatever", and "I really don't care."
---

Yup. I qualify on all of these. Where do I sign up?

This experiment cannot be fully objective: in real life bad apples are not always "hired bad apples", doing the bad apple whatever it happens and whatever the group does.
"Genuine" bad apples will be affected by the group dynamics as well as other members, and in some cases, under the right circumstances, the bad apple effect can be contained.
"Saboteur" bad apples, individuals paid to sabotate a project, on the other side, will just try to maximize the detrimental effects of their behaviour, with far worse effect on the group.

Put in other words, a genuine bad apple can be "resolved" removing what causes him/her to do the bad apple, if it is possible; otherwise, remove the apple
But when the group faces true behavioural saboteurs, it is a whole different thing nothing less than the removal of the saboteur can fix.

You may also want to take a look at this article:
http://www.codesqueeze.com/destroying-teams-one-broken-window-at-a-time/

Although I find the study a bit fishy, I thought this was common knowledge. In college we often did team efforts. Often if one person emited his "I don't give a crap" attitude, this would spread to the other team members like wildfire.

A way to detect a leader from a person that has a leader's position is to see how he/she can either change that attitude of this person, or in the worst case isolate that person.

In my life I have only met one such person and it's amazing what he could squeeze out of a group and how every time his team would have much-above average results. Even if this team's members were different people time and time again.

Our final project group last year had a guy that the study refers to as a 'jerk'. Someone that would complain that things wouldn't work and that ideas were bad. Not once did he propose an alternative. I'm telling you, I was dragged down at times by this guy as were others in our team. Luckily, our self appointed project manager was actually very good with people and pulled us back up - very motivating.

It had absolutely no effect on the jerk though. He continued to be a jerk.

"Oh, you want to do it that way? Ok..." *rolls eyes and looks away*
I'm not an angry/aggressive person, but I wanted to smack him in the head!

Care must be taken between the two extremes, groupthink at one end and futile iconoclasm at the other. There really genuinely *are* a ton of bad ideas in execution that will only rightfully provoke much criticism, as there a ton of bad ideas to be executed which are liable to provoke the kind of reaction from a reasonable person as would be expected from bad apple one or three.

I think the core differentiating factor is that critical people at least step up and volunteer alternatives, and refrain from ad hominem. There's nothing wrong with direct and realistic criticism as long as it isn't just a tactic for negative psychological manipulation. And for the other two types, they need to pick their projects better, the problem is, we all gotta eat in the end and a lot of the time it does indeed mean being stuck on ridiculous projects because that's where the money is right at that moment.

Keep your options open and your head down in that situation. Why dress yourself up as a neat little scapegoat to take the blame for the failure of the project you're almost sure is due any month now? Better to at least salvage what you can from the experience and come out the defeated but valiant hero.

Of course, if you are the bad apple, then getting rid of yourself can mean getting rid of the negative behaviours, as opposed to commiting ritual suicide. :p

In my opinion, the study highlights the effect of a good leader rather than a "bad apple".

If there is no good leader, the bad apple automatically becomes the most prominent (because he is the one expressing opinions, whatever they may be, the most) and by default the identity of the group and rest of the group tend to follow him.

So the study shows that groups tend to emulate the person with most influence.

Sort of a lead by example situation? And I agree, this illustrates the absence of good leadership as well (and to be honest lack of good leadership creates bad apples).

I've been a pretty rotten pessimist/slacker apple for a few months, and I haven't been able to kill my team's optimism.

Assuming linear contribution and a generally neutral approach to a group, 30-40% decline is exactly what I'd expect to see from the inclusion of a strong negative. The bad apple's 25%, plus the increased effect of someone being willing to have a strong opinion, adds up quite nicely.

By linear contribution, I mean that all else being equal, a group's work is the sum of its individual efforts: everyone contributes 25%.

By a neutral approach, I mean that in general, people are willing to let the Strong Talkers make decisions. Reducing conflict and a general sense of humility are strong disincentives towards having a strong opinion--people, quite wisely, bow to the group's opinion by reducing the strength of their own.

So of course there was reduced productivity.

This has mostly been said by Rahul before me. Ah well.

Should we interpret the last paragraph as an indication that you'll be leaving the SO team? ;) It sounded so ominous.

I agree with Nabeshin & Rahul - if the bad-apple was the one with the dominance, then they were the defacto leader, and an actor being paid to act in a certain way isn't going to be so susceptible to dynamics which would otherwise change their behaviour, therefor their behaviour could easily dominate the group.

So the question is, do bad apples in the wild dominate the group in this same way? A kind of subversive leadership role.

My previous boss was the bad apple in the company, but to him, it looked like it was me...

"The Depressive Pessimist will complain that the task that they're doing isn't enjoyable, and make statements doubting the group's ability to succeed."

It wasn't enjoyable because it was always bound to end in failure. He would ask constantly if it was enjoyable. I think he was trying to get us to lie to spare his feelings, thinking that if we said it enough, we would start to believe it. I'm not a spare-the-feelings kinda guy when it's designed to mask incompetence, let alone when it's designed to set me up as a fall guy for it. Take it on the chin or improve yourself.

Doubting our ability to succeed wasn't pessimism, it was experience. We managed one job on time and on budget, ever, and only then because it was something he couldn't interfere in. Productivity shot up by about 50% or so whenever he took holiday (we measured). I had to make statements doubting our ability to succeed because the boss was running around telling clients "no problem, we'll have that done by the end of the week" when it was a fortnight's work and we had other jobs to do in the meantime. Allowing him to do that unchecked would make it worse.

"The Jerk will say that other people's ideas are not adequate, but will offer no alternatives himself. He'll say 'you guys need to listen to the expert: me.'"

Again, I said this often, but I was right. He'd want us to take every quick-and-dirty option he ever came across, and expect elegant behaviour from the code. His ideas weren't adequate. He did need to listen to me, and I was the expert. I did offer alternatives, but as they were always involved more time and expense, I'm sure they were as good as no alternative in his eyes. He certainly never took any notice.

"The Slacker will say 'whatever', and 'I really don't care.'"

Two years of the above, working huge overtime for little pay, slowly getting worse as the business failed with him at the helm, constantly taking the wrap for his incompetence, and you'd be pretty jaded too. All I wanted to do was get stuck into my work and keep it going - he made it absolutely impossible, had no idea he was doing so, and then wanted to have Friday hour-long meetings for the sole purpose of being able to say "proactive" a lot. I really didn't care for pointless bullshit, but especially so when there was a week's worth of work to do before Monday.

So, who was the bad apple? If you have someone who you think is a bad apple, how do you know that it's not a perception forced by circumstance? What if he's right?

I'm out of there now (working with a great team for employers who absolutely rock!), and lo and behold - I am no longer pessimistic, I'm surrounded by ideas that I don't need to shoot down as inadequate, I care a lot and am valued as an employee. It ain't rocket science.

i don't know how exhaustive that study was, but from what i heard of group dynamics: every group needs certain roles to be filled.

Meaning given enough time people in a group fall into certain roles simply because no one else is playing that role.
So, what i'm saying is: if you fire one bad apple, i'm sure someone else will start to act like it sooner or later.

And my statements certainly wouldn't qualify for Wikipedia as i can't base any of them on facts or studies.

Here I was thinking the problem would be lemons!

Another bad apple post.
Here we go.
Why don't you just accept that you are not management material?

In the interest of not taking anyone’s word for anything, I’ve been trying to read the original paper. But as the site is blocked at work I can only read it on my phone, which isn’t very easy for a pdf. Therefore, I apologize in advance if I’ve missed something. But it does seem to me that the three types of bad apples described in this post are somewhat simplified.

In particular, what Jeff terms “The Jerk”, and is called “interpersonal deviant” in the report, is defined in this post as someone who criticizes other’s ideas, and says “you guys need to listen to the expert: me” quote in the paper. But in the paper this type is defined as someone who doesn’t understand workplace behavior, for example by making fun of people, making hurtful comments, swearing etc. Nothing in the definition about claiming to be an expert.

I’d be interested where the Jerk quote comes from, as I wouldn’t like to think that Jeff was deliberately tilting the definition to support his previous post.

Anyone else have a problem with taking the findings from a study about college students and applying them as one broad stroke to all other group interactions in life? My experiences of people and groups in college and in my career have been dramatically different.

I would revise the first sentence to read:
"A recent episode of This American Life interviewed Wil Felps, a professor who conducted a sociological experiment demonstrating the surprisingly powerful effect of bad apples on college students."

Here is a good apple:
http://www.amazon.com/Code-Quality-Perspective-Effective-Development/dp/0321166078/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235134702&sr=8-1

I think the strongest point is to put numbers (although of dubious validity) on this.
Repeating what was already commented on: in a group of 4 people, if one person is _actively_ trying to sabotage the group's efforts you'd pretty much _expect_ about a 30% decrease in "performance" (how would you measure it?).
It's pretty obvious when you think about it. But people don't usually think about it, and so perhaps they don't realize how much a "bad apple" can effect a team.

That said, I have some serious reservation about the study _as presented here_:
My biggest objection is that the experiment only deals with very short term goals, and temporary teams with virtually no previous cohesion.
Say we repeated this experiment for a more representative time (lets say 3 months), and a long term goal. Who's to say that the team wouldn't overcome this small obstacle and perform almost as well as other teams?
Perhaps we would find conclusion is that "bad apples" only delay the time it takes the team to really form and cooperate?
Perhaps long term teams with pessimistic, argumentative people (hey, like me!) actually perform BETTER, because there is always someone that can ask the hard questions, and prevent overt optimism?

The second objection is that the actor person actively sabotaged the team's effort. After all, his/her goal was to prevent the team from performing their tasks, instead of accomplishing said task.
This situation is quite unlike most real world teams. Sometimes people are bad team players, but they seldom do it on purpose, and they are still out to achieve the task at hand.

To some up, the experiment (as described!) has little to no bearing on software development.

Can't really add much to this. The research is incredibly interesting, to say the least.

And guess what? Politicians do this shit to us ALL THE TIME. You badmouth everything to get at the person in power--worst XXXX ever, XXXX crisis, XXXXgate, etc.

I've always thought these assholes had a greater effect on whatever XXXX was. Watch for politicians talking down the economy for political reasons. They're worsening it and screwing us all over just by badmouthing for their own benefit.

(Note there are no D's or R's in this comment; if you feel the need to respond please keep it that way)

Hey Now Catto,

How I look forward to your comments; always informative and relevant.

Coding Horror Fan,
BA

"He had this amazing diplomatic ability to diffuse the conflict"

... I hope not, else it's HIM that's the bad apple!

I expect you meant he had an ability to defuse the conflict, i.e. disarm and pacify it - rather than spread it out in all directions!

I was glad to get to the end of the article and read the positive affect of good leadership - the *real* point to take away from the article. The need for good leadership has been my mantra in software development for over 20 years.

It's been my experience, that we constantly fight a battle to win over team members to the goal of the team(s). Yes, I've had self-motivated team members, and they are like a cool breeze in the early morning sunrise. But I've rarely come across "bad apples" who are "bad apples" through and through. As the article mentions, we can all fall into one of the "bad apple" characteristics at one time or another. The team leader needs to become aware of these symptoms (and their affects), develop the ability to detect them early, learn how to deal with them effectively, and stay consistently vigilant with team morale.

While I agree that getting rid of "bad apples" is possibly the easiest approach, I'd argue that it isn't necessarily the best leadership approach.

As Dr. John Maxwell says, "Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less."

Winning a "bad apple" back into the team has far greater positive impact than just removing a thorn in the team's side.

Is it Phelps or Felps? Ah yes, we who see the trees for the forest.

It's like questioning are you evil? Every human has possibility under certain circumstances to be evil, I think the same holds true for being a bad apple...
But sure there's some people who are worse a lot more often...
You should look into reading something about corporate culture. When you come into a new company you should get the company culture to blend in, that's the point. If everybody are slackers and you are a hig-achiever then you will not blend in, and therefore you've become the bad apple.

Personally, I'm getting pretty sick and tired of the whole "bad apple" theory.

Sure, it's true, 100% true even, but 90% of the time it's just used, or rather, abused, as an excuse to blame and consequently get rid of the people that dare to critize the status quo. A disfunctional that doesn't complain is still a disfunctional team.

"The sub-prime tummyache was caused by too many good apples.
Anyway that study is hardly exhaustive, typical sociological pseudo science crap."

Do I smell a republican dittohead?

This was a very interesting read and makes a lot of sense.

I was struck by how similar these "Bad Apple" strategies are to the 1944 U.S. Office of Strategic Services 'Simple Sabotage Field Manual'

(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of per­ sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.
(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and considera­tion.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of com­munications, minutes, resolutions.
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reason­able” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris­ diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

Here's the link to the article on boing boing about it:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/11/sabotage-manual-from.html

I agree with mark above: This study, consisting of groups of four college students, isn't necessarily representative of all people in all environments.

Does this really surprise anyone? You see this almost every day in professional sports. When someone is becoming the "bad apple", the team tries to get rid of them. It seems like the teams with the best chemistry and least amount of problems are the ones with the most success.

non-violent communication: <a href="http://www.cnvc.org">http://www.cnvc.org</a>

I was the lead for a team with a bad apple like this. Always complaining that it was too difficult and that no one would ever train him adequately. (Thing is...none of us got training of the type he wanted...we had to go out and find the answers we needed.) His constant bellyaching and griping eventually spread to several members of the team. (I'm obviously not the talented leader described in this article.) When my boss said I had to choose someone to leave our team, I jumped at the chance to get rid of this guy...even though there were less experienced folks on the team. Soon, we were getting more done with less people.

This reminds me of the most recent 60 minutes podcast. In it, they discuss a mortgage salesman at a huge mortgage bank who went to all his superiors and executives trying to inform them about the bad mortgages they were all making.

He was of course fired, as a "bad apple", when he threatened to warn Wachovia of the bank's terrible loans when Wachovia made overtures to acquire the bank.

Of course, after Wachovia acquired the bank for some $23 billion, they ended up losing more than $30 billion, being acquired on a fire sale, and then the resulting bank needed billions of bailout dollars to continue to exist.

So my point is, in certain environments where the team's approach is so terrible and backwards, you can hardly blame the bad apples for trying. Granted, acting like a "bad apple", even in a terrible environment, is never going to fix anything. In that case, your choices are either to run away, or try to fix things in a more subtle way. Both are impossible choices.

And fixing $30 billion in bad loans is probably impossible no matter what you do.

I've always assumed this was true. All members of a team, contribute positively and negatively. Strength in either direction carries more influence (not everyone is equal).

More importantly, the contribution of a team, any team, is a combination of their efforts, which means that it is intrinsically a compromise. People have long known that 'design by committee' generally produces lackluster designs. The only way around this is to allow one (and only one) visionary to control everything. The big problem of course, is that that amps up the risk considerably as well.

This is a huge problem with many of the newer Software methodologies. They advocate that everyone should have their say, that the design should 'always' be from a committee. The results of this approach are well-known.

Paul.

Rob Conery was right. You quote what others say and write one sentence with your own conclusion. Dude and you make money by readers reading this crap.

"@MacBet, j_random_hacker: *cough* Depressive pessimist *cough*"

life isn't all high fives

@Joe

Jeff thanks you for your visit and ad revenue - Way to show him!

I don't think that a 45 minute exercise does anything to prove or disprove group dynamics.

I'd agree with Hartmut, that first 45 minutes is forcing a small group of people to try and quickly learn to get along, which I doubt would meet with much success (Jerry Springer Show anyone?)

Often you'll learn how to work with people that annoy you, or don't perform the way you would like. That sort of knowledge comes with time. I'd be willing to bet that with more time and a larger group the impact of the "bad apple" would much more limited.

Want an example of this, see also wikipedia. And there's no way to throw them out.

Uh, conventional knowledge says that "a chain (group) is only as strong as its weakest link"...

"If you can't tell who the bad apple is in your group, it might be you."

Does every group have a bad apple? I mean, is the "worst person" necessarily a bad apple, or do they have to meet some threshold of crappiness?

What if the entire group is the same?

How can this be discussed without sounding like a bad apple? Clever topic.

On the flip side, my brother once mentioned a leadership book about group think: how groups of smart people make dumb decisions.

@TM: You just kick one at a time, until you only got one left.

This is the worst post ever.

While listening to that TAL episode, I realized that I had often been "the jerk" in a small way: I would say sarcastic things that I thought were funny (and didn't intend to be mean) and that other people laughed at, but the other people probably really didn't think it was funny.

That is an easy behavior to change, and I think it does make a big difference.

I'm glad to find one techie who listens non-tech podcast(s) (I normally get weird looks when I mention non-technical podcasts around my tech friends). BTW, if you liked this episode of the show, you may enjoy other episodes, too, like these ones: http://alekdavis.wordpress.com/2008/05/26/best-of-this-american-life-podcasts/

So what this post is really trying to say, "A bad apple spoils the whole barrelful"?

My grandmother was right, and she didn't even have a blog.

yeah, whatever..
:)

I must confess to being the Jerk. But I'm working on it! :)

If more people were like Al Bundy - group dynamics would be solved (and maybe less software problems). He's a real american hero with real good sound values.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Bundy

I know for a fact that this is true. I've dealt with "bad apples" myself, and have also seen groups affected by them. They really do bring the whole group down. It's strange to watch other members of the group take on the same personality, almost as if they just want to be on the same level. And then everyone tends to focus on the worst member and not the actual goals of the group.

Hi my name is Norm.

I am an 80%'er
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001002.html

I am unreachable
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000856.html

And I am a bad Apple
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001227.html

Now how do I change my ways?

This phenomenon is so very real. The other night we were playing a card game, and this new person said "I hate you" to people every time she had some small reverse in luck during the game. Other newer people took on this destructive habit, too. It takes 6 positives to make up for 1 negative, and that only works in some cases, not all. She spewed out about a dozen negatives. Pretty soon we weren't having a very good time at all. It occurred to me that if she continues coming to visit the group, we won't even be able to play that game any more, and we've been enjoying it for at least 4 years, always finding opportunities to feel good and say "thanks" to each other with smiles. She changed the dynamics of the entire game for everyone into a pile of toxic sludge.

Too much apple talking makes me feel hungry. I'm going to lunch right now.

RE: Norm
Live in three non-English-speaking countries for the next two years, then try this career again.

This post scratched an itch, so I started a thread here you might like to read/contribute-to

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=525336

You are right in that slacking and jerking isn't nice.

But if someone has negative comments but no positive ones, so what? You should have the answers to the negative comments, if the "bad apple" doesn't. Also the negative ideas are comments or questions. You cannot move forward if someone tells you that there is a wall ahead even if you get rid of the commenter.

I think many become bad apples if the rest of the group doesn't listen to the person. If someone has a good idea, but the rest of the group rejects the idea because of some random reason, the idealist starts to feel that he isn't appreciated as part of the group.

This is all common sense.

In a business, if you have a bad apple, you need to get rid of them. Quickly.

Conventional business wisdom.

I thought Rahul's comment was so brilliantly simple and insightful, that I had to compliment it.

@MacBet: The sub-prime tummyache was caused by too many good apples.

For those who complain about this comment, my first response, which follows MacBet, is that without the Bad Apple, it's just easier and faster for the group to do something Incredibly Stupid. In the world of CodingHorror, I offer up: xml, ejb, COBOL, SOA, etc. The wisdom of the group is often the admiration of the Emperor's New Clothes. Y'all remember that.

Jeff,
help draw the fine line between bad apple and constructive contrarian?
Differing points of view are valuable, but they sometimes sound pessimistic.

Guidance always appreciated...

I think this study also showed the existence of a "good apple" effect.

I agree with @Bill that this seems somewhat obvious. If someone is being negative in a group environment, the natural and expected result is for the rest of the members of that group to put up their guard against the negativity / criticism. The effect that is decreased mental flexibility, which results in a decrease in creativity and productivity.

I think perhaps the author has drawn a somewhat improper conclusion. Actors must, by definition, have the ability to project a great deal of self-confidence (basically, persistence). You've mixed them in groups with Students, who, by nature, should be very open-minded (or they won't be able to learn).

Additionally, the actors have a degree of foreknowledge. Basically, you've hired people to TRY to influence the status-quo of the group. Obviously, when you look hard enough for one conclusion, you will invariably find it.

Try this again with real students, real slackers, real jerks, and real WINNERS. I think that you'll find the real conclusion is that the most confident has the most profound effect on a group's dynamic. I know that if I were put in a group with Jack Welsh, I would have a fire under my ass to perform my best. Similarly, if I had a homeless man in my group, I wouldn't be nearly as motivated to perform as strongly, because I don't have the added incentive of making a possibly profitable association with them. (This conclusion is based on the assumption that confident people are more valuable as associates)

It's all about the inherent value of the situation. The more you have to gain, and the more you have fairly assessed those gains, the more you will be motivated by them.

@Matt (myself)

1) Apologies for my vulgarity, I hope I haven't offended anyone.
2) When I said "I think the author has...", I am referring to Wil Felps, not the author of this article.

At first I thought that this was spot on, as I have certainly experienced this myself - one bad apple in the team spending half of every meeting whining about everything and such.

But Rahuls summary actually feels even more correct, as I have certainly seen the opposite as well. One very positive person, a very good apple if you will, can also affect a group. It doesn't even have to be the leader, just any member of the team that spreads energy.

It seems though that at least within IT, there is a tendency towards the jerk personality to some extent. Cynicism, dismissive one-liners, and an inherent sense of always knowing a better way to proceed than whatever has already been agreed upon - I see this a lot more often than I see the real positive can-do, let's-go guys.

This American Life is the bomb. There is tons of good stuff there. Keep listening Jeff.

If you dip them apples in candy first, they radiate more, they become sweeter, and they stay perkier longer.

The only problem is, it makes other people want to bite them too.

Jesus was kind of a guy who didn't fit in his society. There in Palestina he was the bad apple? Are you the companys bad apple (= Messias)?

Actually, it's quite obvious that bad apples do affect the group and the outcome. Perpetual bad apples know this, it is their form of control.

Face facts with your posts Mr Jeff,

1. What you keep writing about is repetitive. I can never see anyone really getting into your blog for too long. You only write whatever it is that gets your ads clicked on.

2. You ideas are rubbish. You keep going on about great management techniques. But your techniques seem to call everyone bad apples or not good enough. You should spend more time reading about real life examples than just churning out the same recycled drivel time and time again.

3. Where are you really going with this blog. Do you have a point to make? I don't think anyone commenting on your blog really cares what you have to say as it completely lacks any substance. I am really surprised you didn't quote yourself from a previous post, you sure as hell link to some useless stuff you wrote previously.

Read my name before replying to the above.

But seriously;
You keep saying get rid of the bad apple, why don't you learn some management techniques (or even some diplomacy) and get on with whatever it is you have to do.

I've worked in a few offices where I have seen what you call "bad apples". After sitting down and asking them what can be done to make things better (this is called empowerment), I found it is very easy to bring them around and make them productive.

Continually labeling people in the way you do does nothing to bring them into what is going on. What you are doing only serves to isolate people further. And then you can get your power trip by calling someone (quite obviously someone where you now work) a "BAD APPLE".

You are not helping anyone Jeff. Not yourself, not your workplace and certainly not the "bad apple". Maybe, just maybe it's the geeky jerk who sees everything and everyone in black and white.

@ThreeTypes
"I've worked in a few offices where I have seen what you call "bad apples". After sitting down and asking them what can be done to make things better (this is called empowerment), I found it is very easy to bring them around and make them productive."

So in other words, you got rid of the bad apples. Like Jeff suggested.

What, did you assume the only way was to fire them? What gave you that idea?

The point is to not let a bad apple drag your team down. In real life, bad apples can (often) be converted to good ones, but you can't let it lie, you have to take action!

@all the bad apples on this blog
Seriously, what's with all the hate here recently? Jeff is a pretty average geek and he has been successful doing something that anyone reading this blog could have done as well. Yeah?

Boo-hoo! Get over it! Jeff did it, you sure as hell didn't! You can choose to be jealous and grumpy or you can choose to be inspired and do something yourselves. Even if you just go create a personal Jeff hater's blog, it would be more constructive than attacking him here.

OK, having listened to a bit of the podcast it seems the "Jerk" does indeed say "you guys need to listen to the expert: me.", bu tthis is only mentioned in the appendix, and that isn't included in the PDF linked to in this post. So I'm sorry I doubted Jeff's accuracy.

However, I'm not sure how relevant this study is to computing projects. A 45 minute business meeting is very different to a long term project.

I've been reading for a while, never commented. It's my "go-to" blog when I need some inspiration. Anyway, bad apples. I'm an employer, and I've found the negative effect of bad apples to be profound. It's affected not only my company's performance, but even my own personal outlook on life. Getting rid of that person is usually the only solution.

Recently, though, we had a previously good person that was having a really hard time and really irking my partner (who's also my wife). I forced us to stick it out. I confronted the employee a few times. We were patient. We worked through it. Now the bad apple is a better apple than before, from a work perspective.

I guess what I'm saying is that good apples sometimes become bad apples. But their not always unrecoverable. It will take patience, but sometimes you can overcome and end up with a different, but still good apple. A tasty Asian pear, for example. Well, you get it...

So what do the bad apples do?

What if you've got a whole bushel of bad ones? ;-)

Speaking of bad apples, Jeff, stackoverflow seems to be getting overrun by a troll.

Hey I just hooked up with http://www.PinMoney.info and already have made money, $30, from the signup and the payout was great. Within 2 weeks I had the cash. It was worth every bit of my time. Just thought I would pass it along.

Cheers
Dave ~_~

Managers hate "bad apples" because they contradict the official BS line "we're great, the project is humming along nicely, live your lives for The Company".

Especially when times are stressful, someone who states loudly what everyone around are thinking (i.e. "we're in deep s..t"), can have a very positive effect on the workplace atmosphere.

Of course there is also the little matter ... we aren't smarter collectively or in teams than individually. Teams can have a wider knowledge than any single team member has, but they cannot have better knowledge.

Everybody who's seen a demonstration, or any group of people react as a group knows this. The more people, the more stupid a team becomes. Huge teams are, first and foremost, hugely dumb.

Of course, in practice this translates to a team performing significantly worse than any individual team member would on his own.

The only way to make functioning team is to have strictly disparate responsabilities : don't have 4 coders/domain experts/analysts. Don't have 2 coders. Have a single coder, a single analyst, a single domain expert and a single tester in a team.

America is built on the strength, and especially the smarts, of individuals. Soviet russia was built on the smarts of teams.

"Soviet russia was built on the smarts of teams."

That's a myth. Take Russian aircraft designers, for example.

I learned similar techniques in Leadership class to what the study's Good Leader used.

This American Life! It's one of my favorite shows. Here in Washington it's on KPLU every Sunday at 12:00, so I'm waiting for it to come on (in 10 minutes) while I bake some bacon and code :)

"The sub-prime tummyache was caused by too many good apples.
Anyway that study is hardly exhaustive, typical sociological pseudo science crap."

@MacBet:

Are you trying to say that you don't want to consider the possibility
that you're a bad apple?

I've seen this happen, I've felt this happen. I've even felt myself becoming a depressive pessimist simply by being in the company of one.

What happens when the bad apple is actually the right one though? I'm talking specifically about the "jerk" persona. I've worked on a lot of "teams" that were just a bunch of hacks trying to pretend that they were capable of being professional software developers. I was the voice of reason who actually wanted to do things the RIGHT way, but it could have been construed as being the "jerk" persona.

What do you in a case like this, when the "jerk" is actually right and the rest of the team are stupid?

If the jerk is the right one there are 2 options :

1) he is the boss and he micro-manages. This will go horribly wrong unless he really is right, and capable. And, while this is better in America than elsewhere, I've yet to meet the first decent-level manager with any real (exact-science at least) degree. In the rest of the world, there are no managers that have decent credentials either as tradesmen or academics. Political science, MBA just don't cut it.
2) he does what he's told and walks away with a paycheck out of a project that falls apart

(and there's obviously option 3, getting fired)

You can prevent the bad-apples from infecting others. That's called a strongly hierarchical organization. If done right, it can be as capable as the person at the top. If that's a very capable guy, that's great. If not, well ...

You cannot prevent bad-apples from infecting others in an equal setting, any more than you can protect people on a marketplace from suicide terror.

What's with all the "Bad Apple" stuff lately? This is like the second or third recent post about this. Others here have alluded this: don't we all learn this cliche jibber jabber about "bad apples" when we're seven years old or something like that? Isn't this one of the most famous cliches ever?

What exactly is the story here? Some rather suspect study essentially confirms the "conventional wisdom" and this is supposed to be surprising? Not sure I see the point here. Aren't there a million cliches about this, some already mentioned, like "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link" and all that. I don't know about all this "sub-prime" mumbo jumbo but @Macbet as one thing, this study is typical sociological pseudo science. Sociologist make so many wide claims based on so little evidence and their research programs are so weak. Karl Popper showed how Freud's psychoanalysis was unfalsifiable pseudo science and most of this kind "research" has the same problems. Don't get me started on this nonsense about the "The Three Personaility Types for This" and "Eleven Personality Types for That" stuff.

In reality, people and group dynamics are much much more complicated than is revealed by this sort of stuff. Probably, the issue is far too important to be left to the sociologists.

Anyway, this is far too simplistic. I don't think all these cliches should be used to actually analyze real problems. While a chain may be as strong as its weakest link, a group is not necessarily so. There are characteristics of groups that are not translatable to chains of links and barrels of apples. The only places where it might make sense to apply the chain analogy is where there is a group that must perform some function (probably this would need to be a rather discrete function) and the role of any member in the group (or set) is *equivalent* (in the mathematical sense), such as in the case of a chain (perhaps the two ending links are somewhat different, I haven't bothered to think this through all the way, after all it is a cliche). However, this is not the case in most "groups." In reality, militaries are not as strong as the weakest soldier, sports teams do not perform only as well as the weakest player, and so on and so forth. Actually, it becomes very strange to equate what it means to be a "strong" military or sports team with what it means to be a "strong" soldier or player; there is just a difference in what it means. In a chain, all that it means to be "strong" is that all links are "Strong." As for barrels of apples, it becomes even more complicated. You have to really pay attention to what you mean by "strong," "weak," "good," and "bad."

You might say, "well it's just an analogy so we aren't trying to arrive at a perfect 1-1 translation." However, then I question how useful it is to even use such an analogy or cliche at all.

The nice thing about a scientific and logical way of thinking is that it frees you from the shackles of thinking in terms of cliches and analogies in order so that to you can begin to understand a thing precisely.

We don't need cliches to muddy things up anymore than they already are. We certainly don't need pseudo-studies that purport of offer "surprising" results by concluding that they have *confirmed* cliches. That is one of the silliest things I've heard in a long time.

I was on a team with 2 types of the bad apples. The amount of negativity that can be caused is tremendous and can result in bad team morale and low productivity.

@Wayne

Part of being "right" is to get the rest of the team along with you.

If all ways to make the sheep understand your clever masterplan fail, eventually you have to give up complaining about it and try to make the best of whatever plan you can agree on.

Otherwise you are just being a jerk, even if you happen to be right.

I also highly recommend Joel's essay "how to get things done when you are just a grunt" (something like that) as an answer to this. He suggests creating a "bubble of excellence" around yourself.

The team won't bother with source control? Install it locally and use it yourself. Nobody talks to the users? YOU talk to the users. Nobody writes specs? YOU write specs. No documentation? Write it! And so on.

Where is management in all of this?

Isn't it the role of management to manage the team?

If you have bad apples on the team who influence the team, then it isn't the fault of the bad apple or the team, but the manager who should be directing activity and if possible motivation.

Sorry Jeff, but the last bunch of posts are really loosing me. Ever since you left your last job the posts seem to be less and less about IT.

How about focusing on IT issues? Code, how to code, and problems with code. You know.... code!

i am very much taken aback to see and read about this article . i deeply thank you for bringing this article to the blog land and to eyes of people .

I work at a respectable company in a team , and i am sure to feel the above is true from my experiences .

The bad apple at my team is at a higher grade position and uses various techniques in order to make his decisions come alive (back stage politics) .

He normally uses his group , to discourage people , at public . comments on disadvantages and bad designs people have authored or performed in public . challenges that what they have implemented at work is false and way to failure in public and that only his method works . Literally smashes anyone who speaks against him .

But his methods do , work and thus destroys a person's self esteem . we really begin to think and doubt if we are below him . we also begin to become a pessimist and lose our high hopes .

Wish me luck in fighting against him .

How can having a bad apple in the team not affect the average?

As a web-url-grammatical thing, your sentence

"This apparently led Will to his next research project: can a group leader change the dynamics and performance of a group by __going around and asking questions__, soliciting everyone's opinions, and making sure everyone is heard?"

Links to your own 'Are you an Expert?' post when clearly the reader is expecting that you're linking to something referencing Will's next research project, and not linking to your anti-expert post which is totally offtopic to Will's next project.

It's almost like quoting yourself, and we all know how much we like people who quote themselves.

Coding Horror is always a good starting point for a sweet little discussion. Thanks!

what about trying to turn the bad apple good? where is compassion in this story? and why are you peddling these studies that have so many unknowns and look as if it is skewed to support a certain view!!

And that is the worst management study I have come across and your solution is probably the most autocratic!!

"Even if it's you." Punchlines are very effective.
well, Master Jeff cannot resist the temptation, too ;-)
:-D :-D

It's interesting to examine the opposite of the bad apple effect, i.e. the good apple effect. Having a good apple on your team will dramatically change your team's dynamic as well. It basically mirror the effect of an bad apple but positively. If you have a team member that's extremely motivated, hardworking, passionate, and/or helpful, you'll find that these positive behaviors / characteristics tend to spread across the team as well.

What's more interesting is when you have both a bad apple and a good apple on your team. In my experience, the bad apple will pretty much ruin the team chemistry. And it will become the lowest common denominator over time. After all, I guess it's much easier to be negative than positive.

And this is a suprise? I think this is closely related to conformity studies in psychology and they are never as black and white as the majority of good apples win out, quite the opposite the minority tend the sway the group majority.

Plus, bad apples exist, maybe some work should be done into understanding their reasons instead of saying - "Get rid of the bad apple".

Also, why does the bad apple exist? - you can get rid of them by the cartload, but that doesn't acknowledge the fact that underneath their issues may be a team member whose contribution could actually be worth something.

Plus the idea of good and bad apples tend to be great for the high and mighty, but the whole concept is a crappy idea. Potentially elitist and certainly prejudice.

And thus the motification of the human race started: when everyone realized just how convenient it were if every team could have a mediator to solve potential conflicts. Unfortunately, human mediators do breed, so in the end *they* and not the whites turned into the dominant caste (good point: no warriors!).

"Consider your own behavior on your own team -- are you slipping into any of these negative bad apple behavior patterns, even in a small way? "

No! Because I'm perfect and you're not.

So...? A team of four workers out-performed a team of three workers and a decoy?

Perhaps I'd need to read the full text of the study to understand why this is significant.

There's nothing wrong with constructive criticism. Other research shows that teams with "depressive pessimists" are more productive and end up with higher quality products precisely because there's someone keeping them honest all the time. Slackers, sure, jerks, kick them out, but you lost me at "pessimists".

@Console

> Part of being "right" is to get the rest of the team along with you.
> If all ways to make the sheep understand your clever
> masterplan fail, eventually you have to give up complaining
> about it and try to make the best of whatever plan you can agree on.
> Otherwise you are just being a jerk, even if you happen to be right.

So, basically you are saying, that the results (failing or succeeding) do not count ("..even if you happen to be right"), but only that the team agrees?
By what definition is the critizizing the jerk, and not all the others the pessimists, then?

In my opinion, this whole "bad apple" stuff gets dangerously close to witch hunts, if the criteria to distinguish between beeing a jerk and beeing critical are left open.
To say that even the facts (beeing right) do not matter for labeling someone is just shocking to me.

> He suggests creating a "bubble of excellence" around yourself.

Now for a practical example. Am i a pessimist, a jerk, or a slacker because, or do i just critizize honestly and try to save time?

Consider this:

> The team won't bother with source control? Install it
> locally and use it yourself.

what for? the gain of source control is mainly centralization (how often do you ever used it for backup recovery or forensics?), so you gain very little, because you still have to merge the other coders code manually, and you get the overhead of managing the other coders code.

> Nobody writes specs? YOU write specs.

what for? the point of specs is that they are followed and that you can resort to them argumentatively. Specs without authority aren't specs, just documentation, which follows:

> No documentation? Write it!

what for, if noone reads it, and worse, noone updates it (remember, wrong documentation is worse than no documentation)?
after all, it costs your time, where do you win time?

Please note: "what for" sounds very pessimistic, but it is the most important question for evaluating an action: can you justify the costs for the outcome?

For a company i worked in (i left because exactly these things pissed me of. luckyly i could.), i can say right from by heart: the costs are bigger, and people who are below such basics as source code control or testing do not see more than a waste of time in your actions. Worse even, they use it as proof that your methods don't work.

In a way, this critizisms are even constructive: they offer the alternative of NOT wasting time. It is sad, but sometimes the best you can do is not shooting yourself in the foot.

So back to the bad apple question. Am i a bad apple? Maybe. I dont know. I hope not, i fear i could be.
But, honestly, noone else seems to know either. Just beeing the first who cries "bad apple" is not enough.

So, please, lets all just try to make informatics a science again and debate about facts we can prove and stop becoming those pointy haired bosses.

@keppla, you're arguing cross purposes. Your experience in a team that was already toxic and not open to better methodologies doesn't in fact have anything to do with how a bad apple can reduce the effectiveness of a good team.

If you already have a bad team, well that's your problem. Sounds like you did the only thing possible and got out of there.

(Not directed to @keppla)
What's funny is that most of the responses this blog appear to be one of those know-it-all jerks. People who have no experience at this sort of thing, but are able to make sweeping condemnations on a subject they know nothing of. Pricks.

(general comment)
To be statistically relevant, the 3+bad apple team would have to perform significantly worse than 75% of a good 4 person team. 75% would be the best-case productivity of a good team with 1 ineffective non-poisonous teammate.

e.g.
4-person effective = 120 products
4-person, 1 ineffective = 90 products
4-person, 1 bad apple = 60 products

I'm sure the author realizes this (it was a Masters Thesis) and I'm looking forward to reading the paper instead of just making comments about something I never heard of until 5 minutes ago.

@offtopic
> Your experience in a team that was already toxic and not
> open to better methodologies doesn't in fact have anything
> to do with how a bad apple can reduce the effectiveness of
> a good team.

The main point there was not that their team was toxic (it feels good bitching about my former employes, though ;) ), but to give an exaple of criticism, so one can demonstrate a "algorithm" to
determine if i am a bad, or a good but critical apple ("Now for a practical example. Am i a pessimist [...]? ").

In my opinion, to say "a good team can be destroyed by bad members" is worthless if the sole definition of a bad member is "someone who destroys the team". So, if one cannot provide a better algorithm, the suggestion to "ged rid" of bad apples is useless in the best case (because it is not better than pulling matches), and dangerous at worst, because it has the potential to kill chances of improvement.

I agree with this post. Had few personal experience. One was very touching in the sense there was a personal conflict more of a ego clash and there was shouting which few people over heard.I esculated it ot higher up, and he resolved the conflit in a manner which was good for both the parties involved and now things are fine, so far so good. I have seen a few bad apples in our company, they are the slacker kind and also they have a bad influnce on people becuase of their management styles. Some times unfortunately, the bad apple can be your own team lead, or team manager. In our case what we observed is that a bad apple from one team interacting with another team can have a bad effect too.

@Keppla
"So, basically you are saying, that the results (failing or succeeding) do not count ("..even if you happen to be right"), but only that the team agrees?"

No, I don't say that. What I am saying is that sometimes you don't need to have a perfect solution in order to succeed. It is better to reach a decision that lets the team move forward than to waste a lot of hours arguing technicalities. So you stop arguing, for the team's sake.

In the very rare case where 1) a team of professionals are total idiots who are going to fail totally unless they listen to you and 2) they refuse to listen to you, then you should still stop arguing and just quit. For your own sake.

The examples I gave were just examples from Joels article but I still want to respond:

Source control: You use source control because it is effortless and it will save your ass one day. It takes no time at all.

Specs: You write specs because you yourself will want to know what it is you are supposed to do, verify it and make sure it makes sense before you go ahead. You also want to verify your code against it later. You can also show a spec to the PHB and ask him "is this what the program should do?" and be sure that the pogram is doing just that.

Documentation: You write documentation so that the users know how to use your program, saving you from tons of support calls and also giving the impression that the application is being maintained by someone who cares.

The trick is to stay positive and do the best you can, instead of finding reasons or excuses to NOT do the best you can.

The difference between pessimistic slacker and honest critisism is that the honest critisism will offer an alternative action, not just empty opposition. "Let's do this other thing!" instead of "What for?"

With this in mind, the answer to

"Am i a pessimist, a jerk, or a slacker because, or do i just critizize honestly and try to save time?"

based on the examples you gave, is in my opinion: Pessimistic slacker.

Another interesting situation is when the good apples are a basket of idiots. Trying to maintain a brave face knowing the ship is sinking doesn't inspire people who don't want to patch the leak--thus, failure (or lack of success) can also be attributed to not enough bad apple to push people over the edge into proactivity.

Can you imagine team situations where the jerk/pessimist/slacker causes so much friction, the remaining members become determined to prove him/her wrong? Negativity can also paradoxically be galvanizing, the proverbial "boot to the ass"

I think I speak for everyone else in the comments, as well as everyone that has read this article, in saying that I am glad that I am not the bad apple and I have many ideas and thoughts on all the teams that I've been on that have had bad apples that were not me.

Get the rid of bad apples and you are ready to quit business. Your last employee will be 20 year old student living with his mom.

> @Keppla
> "So, basically you are saying, that the results (failing or succeeding) do not count ("..even if you happen to be right"), but only that the team agrees?"
> No, I don't say that. What I am saying is that sometimes you don't need to have a perfect solution in order to succeed.
> It is better to reach a decision that lets the team move forward than to waste a lot of hours arguing technicalities. So you stop arguing, for the team's sake.

Neither me nor Wayne said anything about how much arguing there was. In my case, from my side, mostly very little. I see no reason to fight for something which is not my opinion
but a widley accepted fact*, moreso if there are no counterarguments, just denying.
I have no problem following the teams way if it moves forward, but often enough, bad decisions are not bad because they move the project forward to slowly, but move it backwards.
It is as easy to destroy a project by moving fast enough in the wrong direction as it is by not moving at all.

> In the very rare case where 1) a team of professionals are total idiots who are going to fail totally unless they listen to you
> and 2) they refuse to listen to you, then you should still stop arguing and just quit. For your own sake.

no, that is the scary thing. they do not have to be complete idiots. in fact, they each had very strong abilities. But the team as a whole (not just the IT, btw) was
misguided, because they lived in their own little "team world".
Thats why i am so oppsed to the "kick the bad apple"-approach: because i have seen how easy perception is fooled in a group.

> The examples I gave were just examples from Joels article but I still want to respond:
> Source control: You use source control because it is effortless and it will save your ass one day. It takes no time at all.

You underestimate the "second best approach". It's not that the ones who wont use SC will use all their data in a big crash one day, because they archive them manually.
Sure, its a waste of time, but you do not stop _their_ use of time by _your_ source control.
thats why i say that it saves no time: not as in a whiny "it makes no sense, sniff", but as in "the amount of time saved is -7 minutes per week".
It doesnt hurt, but its mainly for the ego.

> Specs: You write specs because you yourself will want to know what it is you are supposed to do, verify it and make sure it makes sense before you go ahead.
> You also want to verify your code against it later.
> You can also show a spec to the PHB and ask him "is this what the program should do?" and be sure that the pogram is doing just that.

To make notes of what to do and having a basic plan before is not what i would call "writing specs". Anyone does that.
I would only call it specs if they get some authority, and it makes sense to archive them, even if the authority is just the "yes, thats what it should do" from the stakeholder.
If the answer is either "i already told you what it should do" or something like a cointoss (go in a second time and you might get a different answer) it degrades to notes.
And when pulled out to explain a behaviour, it was seen as blaming or bad excuse, which gets you even more the "bad apple" look.
So effectivly, it did more harm than use.

> Documentation: You write documentation so that the users know how to use your program, saving you from tons of support calls
> and also giving the impression that the application is being maintained by someone who cares.

Your doumentation work has ultimately to pay of in higher user satisfaction and less work via support.
If you do not have the authority to pass it to the customers, this is not given. It even assumes, that you do not get in troubles for doing work not assigned to you.

Please note, except for the SC-thing i speak out of experience, i did not shun this approach in the first place. It just proved to not work, if you are really a grunt.

> The trick is to stay positive and do the best you can, instead of finding reasons or excuses to NOT do the best you can.

it is irrelevant if you do your best, if your best if its still not enough, the world doesnt care if its you who is doing it.
The result is what counts, so check if it can be done good enough.

no, the trick is to do what can be done, and if some solutions are impossible, search for alternate solutions ways to solve the problem, instead of trying yourself to death. Think outside the box.

The solution to the problems with my old work was not "giving the best" but "giving nothing at all anymore", as in quitting.
As a "pessimist", i do enough questioning so that i can rephrase the question "how to get things done as a grunt" is wrong, and the first bullet point of the answer to the
real question "how to get things done" is "fight beeing a grunt".

> The difference between pessimistic slacker and honest critisism is that the honest critisism will offer an alternative action, not just empty opposition.

So, (a little bit ironic) if someone suggests shooting each teammember in the foot, you should suggest the small finger instead,
because if you just oppose to shooting anything, you are beeing pessimistic?

> "Let's do this other thing!" instead of "What for?"

Remeber that "this other thing" has to gain enough money on the long run to pay the time you work on it.
So, if you do not ask "what for", you never face the sometimes cruel answer "for to less gain". Just in the end one big "our main customer jumped. we're broke".
Again: "what for" is a constructive question (if it can be answered, you got the solution), just one noone seems to like.

> based on the examples you gave, is in my opinion: [you are a] Pessimistic slacker.

i got used to the label pessimist (even if it turns out that mostly i was a realist), but what makes you think that i am a slacker?

If we're at labeling, i give you the label "kill the messenger". But relax, it's an comfortable label. Much more comfortable than the "messenger" label ;)

*) as in "a Project consisting of hundred of files of 500+ lines of legacy-PHP, without a separation between model/controller/view, with many behaviour-redundant objects
needs refactoring." Or as in "There is no way to let the system display the correct invoices if they are provided wrong by the deliverers"

**) again, nothing i inventend myself. even in this blog there is a post about it

i think some of you are going way offtopic on this one. You're either making arguments on long tangents or defending criticism you've received in the past (or perceived) and justifying it because you were acting like a jerk or something but you were right (of course).

And 'jerk' is just a label here. Read the article or listen to the interview. These labels are specific personalities that were observed in another study. The author then used those results as the basis for his own experiment - namely trying to measure if the perceived effect in the original study was a valid conclusion to draw from the original data.

You can objectively determine a 'jerk' 'slacker' or 'pessimist' and I think they should be fired. Sometimes people are not normally that way, but they're in the wrong environment and they need to boot to change direction.

The flip side is if the toxic person stays, the good people leave.

@Keppla

"The trick is to do what can be done, and if some solutions are impossible, search for alternate solutions ways to solve the problem,"

This is what I am saying. So we agree. I think "bad apples" stop at "impossible" and don't come up with alternative solutions. Or they themselves come up with impossible solutions and refuse to do anything else, which is the same thing.

We are attacking straw-men here really. I am not suggesting that any manner of idiocy should go unopposed in the name of democracy.
I am pretty sure you are not claiming that everyone who refuses to follow the team rules is a hero either.

But in my experience, the lone genius in a flock of idiots is as common as a flying pig, and the jerk who is too full of himself to accept any other opinion than his own is as common as bacon.

I didn't really call you a slacker, you wanted an assessment based on an example. Based on that example I am sure we are dealing with a slacker. The examples were things that any professional developer should be doing already, not things that should be debated. "Widely accepted facts", if you like. So a "what for" here is a slacker response, IMHO.

That "nobody else does it" is also a typical slacker excuse. You should do it yourself anyway even if nobody even notices, because it is the efficient, professional, correct way to do your work. Which is Joels point. Read the entire thing, it's very insightful.

Your explanations for why one should not use SC, not write specs, not write documentation are just...weird. How can you believe any of that and still function as a developer?
You sure worked in a strange, dysfunctional place if what you say is really based on your experiences. I don't think you should carry it with you now that you have quit, most places are not like that.

@Keppla I don't think you are relaxed. It appears you worked with a very slack team, or at least your position in the team degenerated into 'ignore Bob and stick him in the corner' syndrome. You sound bitter still despite protests otherwise. Sorry you had to suffer, but there are better teams out there.

Something to consider: Sometimes there's that person who always wants xyz infrastructure upfront, because without xyz we'll never finish and it'll never be any good. Teams often get tired of 'Bob's and his new flavor of xyz's every week and someone going in and ruining perfectly good code or process, etc.

Now I'm not saying you're wrong - let's not go through that again - but perhaps it's the way you approach a problem.

You're in a team so work as a team. What I mean by that is not to use the holier-than-thou attitude or i-told-you-so aloofness, but to show cost/benefit and slowly introduce change. Show that the change is being progressive and not just ramming things down your coworkers throats. Show that there is real value, and if you can't show the real value, then maybe there isn't any.

While I agree as professionals we should ask questions and dig into details and ponder the different outcomes. But we should also not suffer from analysis paralysis, and we should also, once a decision's been made, stick with the decision. Treat all decisions as a team decision.

During the decision making be active. Look at multiple sides of the problem. Dissect things. Once the decision's been made, whether you like it or not, embrace it. As you say, sometimes you need to let things blow up (hopefully only in dev) before people will notice. This is human nature. Get used to it.

'Hey Phil, what do you think of X? I was thinking X could do Y and Z and that would make it easier. Mind if I try?'

But see all that doesn't have anything to do with coding. It's everything to do with working in a team.

This article amazed me.... because in base of my experience I can confirm that it's simply TRUE !!! Imagine if you have on your team both
the 'Depressive Pessimist' and the 'The Jerk'... it's devastating!!!

You know of course that the bad apples never realize they are the bad apples.

Instead it's always everyone else's fault so when you say get rid of the bad apples you're assuming everyone is in agreement on who that is.

"The sub-prime tummyache was caused by too many good apples.
Anyway that study is hardly exhaustive, typical sociological pseudo science crap. "

Well we know who the bad apple is in this bunch.

I am skeptical about group think in general. Well, there is informatin sharing and the division of labor which are beneficiary to the work process. The influence of the bad apple is what I would more appropriate call realist apple, mainly "what are we doing here?" and "Is the group's decision necessarily or even in most cases the most wise decision or depends the truth of a proposition not on the number of people supporting it but on a more objective measure?"
While I do not doubt the outcome of the experiment in terms of what has been tried to be shown, I remain skeptical about team work in general which is simply a compromise, based on limited time, to come up with a working solution which is mostly pragmatically valid, but not optimal.

"There's tons of research, going back decades, demonstrating that people conform to group values and norms.

But Will found the opposite."

This reminds me a bit of people saying there's no global warming as it's been a cold summer in their town. Rejecting tons of research on the basis of one study is hardly scientific.

I would argue that a 45 minute task is nowhere near the time needed to develop true group working. I remember I once had to work with a real pessimist. Initially I would be reluctant to be the one to argue against them, not wanting to rock the boat, but after a while (ie a few meetings) their attitude became tedious and myself and other team members became more confident in contradicting her. It probably even helped cement the team.

Of course, then you have one team member who doesn't work well with the others, which is a bad thing, but not as destructive to the whole team as this study would imply.

Jeff, your conclusion that "the worst team member is the best predictor of how any team performs" cannot be extrapolated from this study. The study was about the style of *behavior* that the bad apple exhibited, not that one of them had lesser skills.

What you are saying is that any dev team that has a junior member on it is only as good as the junior member. Nonsense.

I don't believe this study holds water, as this is contradicted by the earlier and much more famous study (M. Jackson, J. Jackson, T. Jackson, J. Jackson, M. Jackson) entitled "One Bad Apple Don't Spoil the Whole Bunch, Girl".

Case closed.

But then again, I'm a depressively pessimistic, slacker jerk...

And what about the "golden" apple or something, what's the influence of a very talented lider??

Not much coding going on, since everyone seems to be here reading this stupid crap. And, yes, you bad apples do damage. I was working when I received this crap in my work email. Unfortunately, I must reveiw (and action) all emails presented me. So, the effect was that a colleague dragged me from work to review this crap.

Avoid being a bad apple by getting back to work. Or, do us a favor, stay home and out of the way. We'll send your checks to you and you are allowed to meet and conference amongst yourselves. But, whatever you do, don't come to or call the office, ever, ever. Luv Ya. Peace.

Looks very interesting. Thanks for sharing..
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After reading some of these replies, unless they’re all meant to be ironic, I’m thinking maybe you should add that to your blag.

Of course, then you have one team member who doesn't work well with the others, which is a bad thing, but not as destructive to the whole team as this study would imply.

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