Ask HN: My coworker doesn't work. Does it make sense for me to say anything?
My coworker has barely worked for over a year now. No joke and no exaggeration. Every single day they seem to find a way to not do anything - either in some excuse or obfuscation. The worst part is that this person is a higher title than me and probably gets paid more than me.
My manager seems to be slightly aware of this but I'm not sure by how much exactly. It's obviously quite frustrating on many different levels. Is there any scenario in which this makes sense for me to mention something to my manager or should I just keep my mouth shut?
119 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadI do understand why you find this frustrating, of course – most people would. But I can't see anything good coming out of you bringing this up – how would you even go about doing that?
Possible bad: gets the other person fired. Puts a target on OPs back.
Point being, this will fester if it isn't addressed. Fairness is important, as are concrete expectations.
The odds of that happening are approximately 0. More likely the "slacker" guy is allowed to get away with it because of nepotism or some other factor, and calling him out with result in negative consequences for the OP. Very, very little good usually comes out of speaking up about stuff like this.
Second, for some people, fairness is important. If OP is one of those people, they may prefer knowing if their employer shares those values. If they don’t, then OP may want to know with certainty so they can work elsewhere.
Even if it's less likely that the manager would side with OP, it doesn't mean "approaches 0", as you stated previously.
Additionally, even if the manager doesn't address it, it could end up being a positive. Instead of "which is more likely", what really matters is the value of the outcome. I'm the kind of person that I would rather know whether my manager cares at all, so even the worst case outcome (getting fired) would be beneficial because I don't want to work with a group of people who can't rely on each other.
Sure, no problem. I tend to roll with the belief that essentially everything posted here is "just somebody's opinion" (with few rare exceptions) and I've grown away from bothering to preface everything with "in my opinion" or "IME" or whatever. I consider that to be assumed.
Best to understand, however, there may be undesirable consequences. You might get them fired, or you might get yourself put in the doghouse b/c this person is the manager's sister in law.
But if there is unfairness in compensation, and it bothers you, address it. You may have quite a bit of leverage if you're holding the productivity line up, but you may shoot yourself (or your colleague) in the foot. My rec would be to focus on the impact of your work compared to your expectations.
Comp should be fair. I would not accept a situation where I feel I'm being treated unfairly.
(Now, if this colleague is not giving you more work, is not in the way of a raise or promo, and is not a bad person... you definitely don't owe the company any "efficiency gains" conversations. Let that person milk the situation, if it doesn't impact you!)
It sounds like you’re frustrated on something of the lines of ‘fairness’. I’d take some time to figure out what you want and what it takes to get that. (Not just I want money), instead things along the lines of (I want to work on a team that is cohesive, I want to be valued[and maybe that is by money], etc)
In my decade of experience I have witnessed people, technical people, who magically manage to just not do anything at all, ever. They jump from initiative to initiative without producing anything, and somehow still manage to get some credit with management.
Paradoxically, I find these people more among “tech lead” and managers roles, where their leverage is much higher and they could be having massive positive impact in the organization. I am acutely aware of how incredibly effective a tech lead or manager can be by providing the right context to a team in need even without directly contributing. Here I am not talking about this profile, I am talking about people who have no freaking clue, they are literally leeches who go from meeting to meeting pretending to make some insightful observation, then leave and repeat. The organization is too messy and they can move “faster than they can shoot them”.
The solution in my experience tends to be to go in small startups that are not run by mentally unstable founders: you’ll get paid less but typically people with zero/negative productivity won’t be found there, there’s not enough bureaucracy to support their façade. They’ll start coming once the headcount surpasses 200 or so.
That's adorable.
Startups do not pay less. I'm bringing in $300k as a developer in Ohio. Individual contributor.
I’m paid $1.2M as IC at a FAANG, not in Bay Area or NYC. To get a similar compensation I would have to get very, very lucky at a growing startup. Instead here I entered through the front door last year and got basically that comp (experienced some mild stock growth so far as a nice bonus).
I will concede the argument that a person might not need that much, but I’d rather milk it until it lasts and get a $300k job when I’ll have no alternatives. I’m actually kind of hoping it will stop so the opportunity cost of doing something else, more interesting, will be less steep to pay :-)
I feel we are going a bit off topic here, but I’ll say that you have to deal with a lot of frustrating situations in these large organizations, so it tends to wear you out. Startups, in my experience, are more fun if you are a person who thrives off being productive. Still to this day, I look fondly at my “early startup employee” phase, I have never been able to be so fulfilled in my professional life ever since, despite my compensation going up 10X+ from those days.
Plus, a lot of people on HN routinely and proudly state how they would never want to work for companies like Meta or Google for ethical reasons, so there’s that too.
My network is literally filled with senior developers who are earning $5M+ a year from the successful IPOs of 2020/2021, most after having been there less than 3 years. Crazy stuff.
From that perspective, a FAANG growing 30% yoy looks like a risk-free rate of return :-)
Most people here disdain stock options as worthless. And I guess for the most part they are with a few happy exceptions.
How early an employee do you have to be to get that kind of return?
There are some interesting numbers here: https://iporegrets.com/
I know several people from AirBnB, Doordash, Snowflake who all joined around 2018 and made bank.
I was an early employee at a smaller startup that is still illiquid and my stock options (fully exercised) are worth $6M. They could still all go to $0.
Just by looking at myself and my immediate network, I wouldn’t say playing the startup game is necessarily like a lottery, the odds are better (but note that I still chose FAANG lately, as mentioned above). YMMV.
Depends on which startups. Making the statement of "Startups do not pay less.", in reference to someone stating their experience to the opposite, comes across a bit, err, stiff.
That's why you name the blockers in your standup.
Having said that, I think the safest advice is to make sure your work is correctly being attributed to yourself (i.e., they aren't taking credit for your work) and advocate for a raise for yourself as you normally would, just with more confidence. Clearly advocate for yourself and the work you are clearly doing and let management put the puzzle pieces together on their own.
I may give a different answer depending on if it’s a casino dev shop or a legit publicly funded research lab...
Example: If you want more money, ask for it. If they refuse, it isn't "because of the money they're wasting on this guy", it's because they don't perceive your value as justifying it. That perception may be right or wrong, but it is what it is.
You're getting paid, you're doing your work (presumably), this other person and their actions (or lack thereof) are really irrelevant to you unless they are somehow having a direct impact on your work. IF they are making commitments to do certain things and then failing to deliver AND that in turn is making you look bad, THEN it might make sense to call this out to management; IF you can document the situation.
More likely, if it is directly impacting you, or your innate desire for "fairness" is piqued that strongly, the thing to do would be to just leave and go work somewhere else with better management.
I have been in situations where it's every individual for themselves, and agree with your advice in those. I also quickly left those roles to find a team that works together to achieve common objectives that are more impactful than I could achieve on my own. Hurt the team, and I am going to say something (first to the IC directly, then to the manager). If the manager doesn't care about making the team better, then they don't care about the same things that I do, and I will move.
Theres a reason that Ted Lasso is such a phenomenon - people want to be on a team where they can trust their teammates and everyone is trying to accomplish a shared goal.
I had a colleague who would do little for months and didn’t mind it. In fact, because he would mind his own business I liked him more than my other colleagues.
I think you should mind your own business, unless for some reason this is your business, ie if you’re the manager.
I had a co-worker at Google who would go fishing in the middle of the day, and that was before the pandemic. Sweet gig.
1. The best way for a manager to tell who is/isn't doing good work is to ask their teammates. If you cover for someone lousy (which may sometimes be the reasonable thing to do, especially if it's a fairly bullshit job) you kind of forfeit the right to complain about being on a lousy team, as bad teammates will eventually drive away good ones.
2. In a lot of places, firing someone takes ages; if you express concerns to this person's manager and they say, "Thanks for the feedback" without asking questions, that's probably what's going on. It's also possible that the person is working through something (divorce? health problem?) and the manager feels like they just need time to get back on track. Either way, once you say, "Hey, I have concerns about Joe, he doesn't seem to get much done," you've done your part.
3. Beware the people saying "Talk to the person directly, not their manager". They may take it as a wake-up call, or they may take it as an attack. I would not do this unless a) you're confident that everyone on the team agrees with you about this person, and b) you feel that you are socially adept enough to deliver the message in a way that will not be counter-productive.
Whatever you do, don't just sit there and take it.
Had a coworker who did work, but the work was actually detrimental to what the team was doing. It would have been better if they did nothing.
I didn't say anything. When I got back from a vacation, I had been moved off the team.
Apparently while I was gone, this guy's main talent, being a jailhouse lawyer, helped him to shift blame on to me when a problem came up that he caused. I wasn't there at the time, and the manager was inexperienced.
Later, the manager apologized, but it was too late by then.
The only thing you should bring up to your manager is if the person is not meeting their commitments in a way that impacts you meeting your own commitments; you do want the responsibility for that to land where it should. Even then, do it in a non-accusatory way.
Beyond that, it's just plain none of your business. You don't know their circumstances; maybe they're genuinely slacking, maybe they have family issues, maybe they're having physical or mental health problems, maybe they're fighting burnout/boreout, etc. I have been in this industry long enough to see quite a few people go through bad patches in their life. Consider that, someday, it might be you struggling to recover and hoping your co-workers will give you the breathing room you need.
You also don't know what, if anything, the manager is doing to address the problem nor are you entitled to. If you want to be in the business of dealing with that kind of issue, become a manager yourself.
It is better to seek reasons why your assessment might be mistaken before posting than to need to be corrected in public.
Not all managers are aware of this.
Everything you say is true, however, I have also witnessed first hand this sort of thing drain a company of talent.
It's only after everyone else leaves and maybe you leave yourself where you start to question whether watching the whole company lose it's talent was worth being polite.
People seem to be misunderstanding, this isn't about being scared to tattle or something. No one is saying keep quiet while someone harms the team...
What they're saying is: Your feedback should be based on harm, not just a gut feeling. I've never seen a team where someone could do 0 work and not create actionable blockages of work that you'd be able to bring up.
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And honestly, part of me is starting to wonder if that's the issue... if you're on a team where someone also on that team (not an individual contributor) can do 0 work and not block anyone and not affect any deliverables, then that sounds like a fundamentally dysfunctional org.
The problem isn't even your manager tolerating them, the role shouldn't exist. That kind of org tends to bleed talent as people realize it's not rarely an isolated issue and they're part of a pretty dysfunctional system.
This happens more frequently and anybody rewarded is automatically assumed to be better regardless of their contributions.
What if someone was embezzling money from the firm? Where do you draw the line?
> You also don't know what, if anything, the manager is doing to address the problem nor are you entitled to. If you want to be in the business of dealing with that kind of issue, become a manager yourself.
Most managers would expect junior team members to speak out. If it's being addressed, the manager will likely tell you that he or she is aware and its being addressed.
Embezzling money.
And no, this is not an opening for some roundabout logic implying slacking off is the same as embezzling wages... you can't come up for a non-harmful explanation for embezzling money: the word literally means "steal or misappropriate".
You can effortlessly do the same for someone slacking, as the comment you replied to did.
> Most managers would expect junior team members to speak out. If it's being addressed, the manager will likely tell you that he or she is aware and its being addressed.
Most managers would expect you to share in terms of how it affects you, not some vague air of "they don't do anything":
So not: "I feel like they always have excuses for doing nothing"
Instead: "I needed X, Y and Z on separate instances from this coworker and was unable to get that"
(Or specific to excuses: "I expected X, didn't get X and they gave excuse Y")
It a good practice to do that anyways since it protects you from potential alienation and/or embarrassment if it turns out your idea of "them doing nothing" is dead wrong.
If I pay someone $100 to come clean my house and they take my money and don't clean my house, its no different than if they came into my house and stole $100. It's legally different, but there's harm being done and I consider it theft. It's not complicated.
In regards to slacking, there's no expectation that someone is working 100% of the time and no reasonable person would expect that someone is working 100% of the time. But a reasonable person would expect that they work some of the time, perhaps a reasonable amount based on the work of their peers.
> Most managers would expect you to share in terms of how it affects you, not some vague air of "they don't do anything":
I've been a manager and worked with lots of managers. I strongly disagree and this is not what I've seen. They want to have more information about efficiency and happiness on the team that they're managing. And they certainly want to know if someone is not working... at all... for over a year...
You can tell them and if they say "don't care", so be it. But a reasonable manager would want to know. I don't know if you've ever been in a managerial role, but I suggest you have a talk with superiors about this hypothetical and get their opinion on it.
The difference is it's your house and the scope of work is completely defined by you. It's not complicated.
- If they don't clean because they're sick, you're the one they tell.
- If they didn't clean because they were busy unclogging the toilet, you're the one who should know.
- If they didn't clean because they're waiting on a mold removal treatment, you're the one who should know.
You rarely have the whole picture in a work environment between HR, layers of supervisors, differing titles with differing scope of work....
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And to the rest of your comment, I'm a tech lead with direct reports. I cannot imagine what kind of manager you have to be dealing with for them to take exception with quality insights such as "I keep getting blocked on X by Y" vs vague claims of "doing nothing and obfuscating".
After all, the end result is strictly better for everyone involved:
- you now have something actionable to bring to the "slacking" coworker, HR, and/or their skip level
- the blocked coworker has now communicated the fact they were blocked and you can work on recovery from that
- you can better establish patterns if this is an intermittent problem...
Sometimes bringing form to intangibles is a big part of your job, but if we're saying someone is literally doing nothing for a year... in any half-functional organization that should result in tangible, actionable blockages.
Oof, so you'd be cool with people on your team not working?
> I cannot imagine what kind of manager you have to be dealing with for them to take exception with quality insights such as "I keep getting blocked on X by Y" vs vague claims of "doing nothing and obfuscating".
I like to work on teams that are effective where things get done. It is incredibly demoralizing working with sub-par team members, not even to mention people that go out of their way to not do work. I wouldn't want to work on such a team and I wouldn't want to manage such a team. It builds a toxic environment. My worst times in my career where was when I was on a team that was not really doing anything and no one was working.
I guess I'm just more communicative. I would want junior people on my team to feel comfortable to bring up any issues or things that they notice. Because I know if you have even one toxic member on your team, one that doesn't pull their weight or put in any effort, it can ruin the whole team and eventually the organization if those people are allowed to stay.
Oof, so you work at places where people have 0 deliverables for a year?
Because on my teams people have deliverables. Is that what's hanging you up? Where I work they'll block things if they're doing 0 work.
If the deliverable is overseen by me I'll do my job and look into why it's not happening, and if the deliverable is due to a team member and never materializes, I'm saying that's something to bubble up.
> I like to work on teams that are effective where things get done.
If you say so... doesn't
> I guess I'm just more communicative.
I'm about effective communication.
If someone misses a single deliverable their first thought (hopefully) isn't going to be "this person has been slacking!". By the time someone has that thought damage is being done.
If instead they bring the deliverable up to me and I know they also missed a deliverable due to someone else... or they tend to miss deliverables related to X feature... or they missed the deliverable because of Y obligation...
Now we can have _effective conversations_.
I can find out if the person needs help learning how to work on X feature.
I can communicate there was a prior obligation so that we're not getting to the "this person is slacking!" conclusion
I can communicate a forming pattern before any one person comes to that conclusion too.
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People should feel comfortable bringing up opinions. I wouldn't berate someone for saying someone else is slacking.
But this is HN and someone is asking for advice: I gave advice that keeps OP from alienating themselves for no reason and still doesn't hurt their manager's ability to be an effective manager.
It's important they don't sandbag their manager to avoid possible embarrassment, but 3 comments deep here I think I've stablished how any competent manager would have as good or better outcomes with this form of feedback...
It is not OP's house though. He is just another employee, so it's none of his business to worry about this. Your argument sounds just like an excuse to morally justify snitching on co-workers.
Guilty. I could easily be this person’s coworker. I do try to make sure I’m not blocking anyone, but overall, I am definitely in a rough patch that I’m slowly fighting through. Not being on my A-game has also led to a modicum of depression. It’s not roses on the other side either if the OP wants put themselves in these shoes.
then they should quit! stealing time, value, money from the company and its fellow employees isn't right. It's shitty behavior and nobody should defend it.
But - the most accurate model for what other people will do is electricity - they will follow the path of least resistance. That's all the "manager" is doing. If you make too many problems, getting rid of you might be easier than dealing with those problems!
I have no idea what people are going through or what they bring to the team or what political crap is at play. If you are not managing people then you are getting paid for your labor, that's it. It is a manager's responsibility to evaluate what value their employees bring. Heck, maybe the lazy guy is there for morale! Lol. And if the manager doesn't care the he has his own manager. Maybe having X number of people in his team is good for politics and budget and so long as the guy isn't a liabilit he is left alone.
Do you want to be responsible for the guy offin'g himself after he quits, gets divorced, maybe wife is dealing with cancer? People are very messy, let people managers manage people and us techies focus our passions.
The only time you should step in is to literally save someone from being actively harmed.
E.g. Hateful comments by some coworker, etc.
Exactly, don't start a culture of surveillance by peers, that's what the KGB or the Stasi did to sow distrust and fear in societies...
If you call them out, it will thread through the company, and will eventually land back on your lap. And you will have to deal with a bunch of scrutiny.
Keep your head down, and call out when this person is blocking you. Other than that, let it slide. It could end up being bad for you if it goes wrong.
maybe also if you feel you can fit some of their tasks into your role and do it better.... (and want that)
If they're failing to deliver things that affect you directly, then bring that up as feedback. Otherwise leave them be - not your circus, not your monkey.
Two stories from my life: A guy tried to get me fired for years because his wife thought I was "cute." I had never met either of these people at the time the harassment started. When I found out what was going on, I was very unkind to him.
The only time I've ever tried to get someone fired-- this individual was only working about 3 hours a day (he was supposedly managing a remote team at night), and then the only thing he was doing was doing was renaming files and namespaces which broke a product that was in production and caused several emergencies. He fancied himself as an Architect and mostly considered himself to be above writing code. So each morning you'd come in and find all the code moved around.
I pulled his commits and their timestamps and was able to prove he simply had never committed anything later than a 3 hours window in the afternoon--and-- that all of his commits for months had just been renaming files, etc. The team he was supposedly managing said they hadn't heard from him in months.
That's not what got him fired though-- he eventually was laid off because he decided to take his team to Hooters for a celebratory dinner-- on the companies money. It took them a few months to get all their ducks in a row, but when there was a round of layoffs he was first on everyone's list to go.