Staying away from bad people
Posted on 2015-03-23 10:52:27 by CScaleTeam
Yesterday I came across a nice article on techcrunch about people who are bad at their job, but somehow manage to go under the radar of HR and Management and have a long career on the back of their colleagues. It made me think about myself, the team and the company I'm part of. It also made me think about a lot of people who work in IT and who, at some point or another during these 10 years I've spent in the industry, have told me stories about that that one guy in the article. I've heard stories like this from people all over Romania and abroad. Probably the most mind blowing stories came from abroad, but that doesn't mean the "local" ones are not worth a big WTF rate.
But in large companies it's OK to have some weaker people in the team as long as the team performs OK and the product comes out OK. For the customers there are no weak people. Everybody is under the average price per resource. It is also recommended to have an HR department at that level to filter out obvious weak people who would break down all your teams. You need a good and expensive HR department to filter out the crazy along with the unprepared.
Thinking back at the beginning of my career I think I was the weak guy. I didn't study programming since high school, nor did I graduate from a faculty normally associated with the software industry like most of my old and current colleagues. Luckily for me I had the experience of programming out of laziness. I did it to get me faster through my college classes, projects and labs. That helped me to catch up when I was given the chance to work in IT. Most probably if the company I started with had an HR department I would be teaching grade school now.
But going back to the subject of the article, today I'm in a much different situation than any of my friends employed by large companies. I don't have anyone dragging the team down. Actually I don't have anyone the company could do without. Everyone is pulling their weight and more. The difference is that in a small company like ours you try to get only the people you can trust and with whom you've worked well in the past. This is where age, experience, responsibility and investing your own money gets you: not overpricing your clients for the sake of an employee number.