Most people don’t understand how bad “average” is.
It’s true that a bad hire has a large impact. But people assume this means the folks like you’re describing. When not taking money into account I view those types of people as net neutral.
A good litmus is to answer the question “would the team be any better off if we replaced them with no one”, and usually the answer is “no” or at least close to it.
Factoring money in does change things. Especially for smaller companies. But even then people overestimate what “bad” means when they cite the massive impact of a bad hire
Yup - there are actually net negative contributors that simply removing would cause in an increase in team output.
Whether it be rate of damage to codebase, manual interventions in prod, hurting morale, time suck in meetings/idle chitchat, causing drama with stakeholders that needs to be triaged, etc.
They are rare, but they happen, and the process of onboarding, feedback, giving a chance, documenting, and off boarding can take a year.
It’s true that a bad hire has a large impact. But people assume this means the folks like you’re describing. When not taking money into account I view those types of people as net neutral.
A good litmus is to answer the question “would the team be any better off if we replaced them with no one”, and usually the answer is “no” or at least close to it.
Factoring money in does change things. Especially for smaller companies. But even then people overestimate what “bad” means when they cite the massive impact of a bad hire