Last time I worked at a big company, there was lots of dead wood, but one guy in particular was just a massive liability. Nice guy, tried hard, but utterly incompetent, and (I think there is a term for this?) he was unaware / ignorant of how incompetent he was. He would often check in code that would break the build (team of 300 engineers, large telecom system), he would write and run scripts that would bring computing clusters to their knees (this was late 90s, there are probably ways to mitigate that now), he would consume lots of high-quality talent's time with basic questions, etc.
I literally asked my manager if we could pay Leo to sit home and play video games. OF course, as you said, everyone's gotta look busy.
Here's the punchline: I learned a new term (to me, at the time... not sure I've heard it again) from a greybeard/wizard there -- this guy was a genius. He had a very appropriate term for Leo: negative producer.
Last time I worked at a big company, there was lots of dead wood, but one guy in particular was just a massive liability. Nice guy, tried hard, but utterly incompetent, and (I think there is a term for this?) he was unaware / ignorant of how incompetent he was. He would often check in code that would break the build (team of 300 engineers, large telecom system), he would write and run scripts that would bring computing clusters to their knees (this was late 90s, there are probably ways to mitigate that now), he would consume lots of high-quality talent's time with basic questions, etc.
I literally asked my manager if we could pay Leo to sit home and play video games. OF course, as you said, everyone's gotta look busy.
Here's the punchline: I learned a new term (to me, at the time... not sure I've heard it again) from a greybeard/wizard there -- this guy was a genius. He had a very appropriate term for Leo: negative producer.
Bingo!