Posted on 11/11/2025 11:10:45 AM PST by nickcarraway
There’s also to consider pareto’s law. You get 90% of the functionality done in 10% of the time, the remaining 10% takes 90% of the time. Sometimes it’s 80/20.
We had a guy at my last contract whoever really thought was a superhero cuz he got so much done but he’d get the 10% work done and leave the 90% error checking and unit testing and code coverage and Etc. to whoever came after him.
And since he wasn’t experienced doing all that necessary stuff he didn’t understand the mistakes he was making with the easy part.
I just fired them.
“We had smart managers”
That’s what it comes down to. Taking excuses is out of control for some. Oh. And in my profession they take no excuses from the good workers and the bad workers rule. They get away with everything
Got one in my office
Billing and collection specialist
* Consumate liar who cannot summarize why Customers refuse to pay their Bills
* Customers call me begging for an invoice and statement
* Over $1,000,000 over 180 days past due, we are a $5,000,000 Company
* Daily crapshoot, will she report to work, or not
* Skips her Tuesday and Friday update meetings>plans and achievements to get Accounts Receivable under control
* Disappears and does not log paid time off, HR could not give a flying fadoo.
* I could go on and on
“This person would fit right in with the highly paid meteorologists”
Motivation is the answer. Before the battle of the bulge, the Germans needed cloud and fog cover as they had no air cover. They had meteorologists who had to be precise as to when would be the foggiest. My guess is they had motivation because being wrong would have been deadly, to them.
These types seem to get promoted and the problem becomes permanent
Almost an example of the peter principle.
Pareto’s law is everywhere.
Whenever some CEO thinks he is going to get ahead of the game by firing the bottom 10% I just shake my head. Chaos usually ensues.
A lot of the time you find that the busy people are just procrastinators. The people sitting idle jump on work immediately, they don’t save it up until it overwhelms them.
Also, a lot of the idle people are just really good at getting things done with less time and effort than anyone else.
There certainly are a lot of freeloaders, but I have absolutely no faith in the average corporate manager to accurately gauge the situation.
A DEI problem.
Bkmk
the social butterfly always makes their way thru life wooing their peers... those first 5 on every guest list... that guy/gal who bs’s their way and everyone is sitting on the edges of their seats in awe... that guy who does about 40% of what you do every day but always manages to keep the job while you get the pink slip when the work load is over....
happens everywhere and their is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. if you got young kids, teach them to communicate if you can. if you got ability/talent and a becoming gift to gab, well you got the world by the ass... if not, then its a hard way to go... I know... I live it...
“ He was always attending conferences and meetings, you’d see his (usually bland) opinions on emails, he was always well-dressed, and he would flit in-and-out of the offices. He didn’t have customers that we knew of, he didn’t work in operations or implementation as far as we could tell. He was always on various “work teams,” but If he disappeared immediately, it would affect no one else’s job whatsoever. ”
That was a real life Kramer…
Ah, there is the rub!
Abreviated history: lowly company/battalion grade officer after undergrad STEM. PhD to academia to Sr. Staff Sci and fellow of world’s largest biomed device company, then my own startup.
When explaining to newbies or trying to make a point I’ve resorted to a 2x2 matrix. Competent/Incompetent one axis; Nice/Asshole on the other.
The molst dangerous, and most useless, are those in the quadrant ‘Nice/Incompetent’.
😂
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