What a toxic little website. Do not follow the advise here. Do not label your co-workers. Trust them, listen to them. If you see them exhibit traits you perceive as negative (and fall into these crude buckets) - talk to them, and give them feedback. Chances are, they will appreciate it, and your working relationship will improve.
That was my thinking when I started reading it. The site is missing an archetype: The Zebra, a developer who sees everyone around them in black and white terms and focuses on calling out problems for all to see rather than fixing them as quickly and gently as possible.
Ah, anyway, I was hoping to find a little disclaimer somewhere saying not to take this exercise too seriously.
Have you actually experienced working with co-workers who exhibit all the symptoms of sociopaths/narcissists? They will take your trust and good intentions and do whatever they can to take advantage of it. Most people are worthy of trust. But the 3% that aren’t are toxic/dangerous in ways you will only realise after the damage is done. So assume the best but don’t be naive.
While this is true, you do yourself no favors by remaining there and "surviving" the dysfunctional work environment. As the old canard goes, your best option is to either "change your job, or change your job."
And I think beyond that, the answer is to try to work hard to change your life circumstances (where you live, how much effort you put into your network, what skills you develop, how often you switch jobs) so that if you do want to make lateral moves within roughly the same role, it's straightforward. This heavily de-risks the possibility of getting stuck with people who aren't great. It might be common, but it's /not/ every team, it's /not/ every company. The labor market is still very favorable for technologists. Using the market momentum to find your way into a healthy team environment at a company with a healthy culture is highly advised!
Yep I completely agree. My point wasn’t that you shouldn’t get away from the situation. My point was that believing you can change/improve all people is naive and potentially dangerous.
This coaching fallacy is actually quite toxic in my experience... many/most people in the workplace don't want to change, and they don't want constructive criticism.
Every ineffective manager that I've ever known thinks that they can coach people into being more productive, better team members... but in the end those managers simply pat themselves on the back while the employee goes on causing headaches for the rest of the team.
That’s a dangerous generalization imo. There are absolutely organizations that value folks who are receptive to constructive criticism and who are willing to keep an open mind about all sorts of things. These companies screen carefully for characteristics that align with that culture and I can say from experience that it produces a much better working environment.
I do a lot of mentoring and coaching. Very roughly, 60% of people respond well, 30% struggle but have some improvement, and 10% don't respond at all. I really do think 90% of people benefit and change at least somewhat from coaching.
However, there is also a correalation between how difficult/toxic a team member is and how well they respond to coaching. At this point I think if a truly difficult team member responded to coaching, they probably would have stopped being difficult earlier in their career, because someone else would have told them to knock it off.
The only thing I've seen work there is being embedded into a culture that uniformally corrects the problematic behavior, and even that is a crapshoot.
However, that doesn't change my experience that most people do want to get better and do respond to help.
