The 8 Most Dangerous People To Have On Your Team

There are great hires, and there are bad hires. While the benefits of great hires are well-known, the dangers of bad hires are a lot less obvious.

Great hires are your bedrock — the foundation on top of which everything else will be built.

For young companies, great early hires can make all the difference between a successful first year and a total flop.

Team members with intelligence, experience, and drive have the potential to assume leadership roles, manage and grow critical processes, and help define a company culture conducive to lasting success and productivity. I’ve seen this firsthand both while building my own startup, and right now as the Head of Studio at Glu Mobile.

Bad hires, on the other hand, are toxic icebergs.

And they’re important to address and classify because they pose a lot more risk than first meets the eye. Usually, this is because bad hires have some good qualities that can mask their fatal flaws.

In my experience, I’ve found you can break those bad hires into two general groups:

1. High-skill Dangerous — which means they have the skill or expertise, but are lacking in another area.
2. Low-skill Dangerous — which means their lack of skill or experience itself can be detrimental.

But those two groups can, in fact, be broken down even further.

Here are the 8 most dangerous types of employees you can bring on, along with how to manage them in case you recognize one toxifying your own team.

HIGH-SKILL DANGEROUS

The Buzzword Junkie

• The strengths: The Buzzword Junkie is someone with promise who’s up-to-date on all the newest trends. They’re communicative and vocal, and they take initiative.
• The weaknesses: The problem, however, is they’re enamored by — and will insist upon investing in — shiny things, like the hottest new programming language or framework, even when it doesn’t really make sense to do so. In turn, they lose motivation when forced to do or try something that’s less sexy, but tried and true.
• Why he or she is dangerous: Because the Buzzword Junkie is intelligent and articulate, they’ll be able to rally others behind controversial decisions bearing significant costs and risks that lack a justifiable benefit. But even more worryingly, they’ll routinely focus on what’s best for or most exciting to them personally, as opposed to what’s best for the company.
• How to manage around them: Don’t let this type of person single-handedly make important architecture decisions. Include them in your decision-making processes, and glean from them what valuable insight you can, but don’t rely on them solely. And make the cost/benefit elements of your decision-making process as transparent as possible, so as to get everyone else aligned in thinking from a lens of: what’s best for the company? As opposed to: what sounds the best?

Industry Vet With No Hustle

• The strengths: The Industry Vet With No Hustle looks great on paper. They’ve held respectable positions at reputable companies in your space, and they understand the work they need to do.
• The weaknesses: But unfortunately, they lack hustle and are typically used to a slower pace of work with a lot of structure — not to mention a high salary with lots of perks and little personal accountability.
• Why he or she is dangerous: This hire can quickly poison your culture, as they’ll contort the company’s definition of “work.” Startups need to hustle and beat the competition by being fast and scrappy — this hire encourages the opposite. They’ll depress morale and decrease performance of players around them.
• How to manage around them: It’s critical that you have this hire working in the right role. Perhaps, for example, they’re a valuable individual contributor, but fail as a manager. Take note of that. Moreover, from the get-go, make sure that you’re upfront during the interview process about what you expect from them — namely, hustle, grit, and energy.

The Ball Hog

• The strengths: The Ball Hog, more so than the Industry Vet, is a strong individual contributor. They may be a domain expert and possess unique skills, making them difficult to replace.
• The weaknesses: But at the same time, they’re bad at collaboration, and they believe they’re special and deserving of exceptions to rules that others have to follow. They like drama and attention, and they respond poorly to constructive feedback.
• Why he or she is dangerous: There are times when this person will save the day and deliver something huge for the team, but there will also be times when he or she will make some members on the team want to quit by being uncontrollable, boisterous, or needy.
• How to manage around them: Be careful about giving this person managerial authority. In fact, assign them to an experienced manager who knows how to mitigate flare-ups. Implement a system of checks and balances ensuring this person has a structured way to collaborate with others as well as receive and implement feedback.

Lazy Einstein

• The strengths: The Lazy Einstein is intelligent and can crank out a lot of work in a small amount of time… when inspired.
• The weaknesses: And that’s the problem. They’re inconsistent and prone to spiraling into lasting lows. Then, in feeling guilty about being lazy, they sometimes externalize that guilt and blame others for their own problems, which is toxic.
• Why he or she is dangerous: It’s difficult to measure this person’s performance because it’s so consistently inconsistent. During “peaks” they’ll set a high bar, but unfortunately they’ll proceed, eventually, to let the team down — often at some critical junction when they’re needed. They’re, in short, unreliable.
• How to manage around them: Be very careful about hiring this type of person in general. Managing an intelligent yet lazy person is inherently difficult, because both you and the Lazy Einstein will be constantly disappointed by their results. Moreover, they risk demotivating everyone else on your team.

LOW-SKILL DANGEROUS

Overconfident Ignoramus

• The strengths: The Overconfident Ignoramus is skilled at convincing others that he or she is smart and savvy in a specific domain.
• The weaknesses: In reality, however, they’re probably just skilled at convincing themselves they’re an expert even though they aren’t (psychologists call this the Dunning-Kruger effect). They don’t live up to the hype, and deliver consistently subpar results.
• Why he or she is dangerous: Make no mistake: this person is very dangerous because they can convince you to walk off a tall cliff with them. The consequences of their subpar deliverables can be detrimental and long lasting. Others on the team will need to divert a lot of their own time to fix these mistakes. Also, be prepared for discussions with the Ignoramus to get heated and drain management time.
• How to manage around them: In short, don’t hire this person. Train yourself to see through their veneer of confidence. Look out for overconfident claims and projections, and prod harder during the interview.

Inexperienced Academic

• The strengths: This is a person who’s academically very smart and well-versed in theory…
• The weaknesses: But they lack the skills or expertise to apply their theoretical knowledge in real-world scenarios.
• Why he or she is dangerous: The Inexperienced Academic often slips through the cracks in the interview process because they talk a good game, but in the end, they almost always underperform, wasting time, money, and critical management resources.
• How to manage around them: Make sure there is somebody with real-life experience coaching them or mentoring their progression so they can be held accountable to learn the ropes. Perhaps they really are just inexperienced. Set clear learning and growth milestones for them. If they prove incapable of learning those ropes, though, let them go.

Perpetual Self-Doubter

• The strengths: The Perpetual Self-Doubter might be academically smart, eager to learn, and enthusiastic about the work…
• The weaknesses: But they don’t know how to take initiative. They ask too many questions and second-guess their own intuition constantly, which means they can’t do anything without double-confirming with a manager.
• Why he or she is dangerous: Simply put, this person wastes a lot of management time.
• How to manage around them: If you’re going to invest in the Perpetual Self-Doubter, make sure you have a mentor or structured training process in place. Because this simply isn’t feasible for many small companies, it may be best to let this person work elsewhere before joining your team.

Literal Translator

• The strengths: The Literal Translator is highly skilled at following directions… and just about nothing else.
• The weaknesses: They lack creativity and intuition. They’re the type of person who won’t put a pause button on a “play music” screen unless you tell them to.
• Why he or she is dangerous: This person requires even more management time to manage than the Perpetual Self-Doubter.
• How to manage around them: Don’t hire them. Period.

At the end of the day, you will make at least a few hiring mistakes.

And when you do, perhaps you’ll notice that those dangerous hires resemble one of the characters depicted above. They likely will.

But even if they don’t, what’s important is you recognize their toxic behaviors, and take steps to address them.

That starts with awareness.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +365,945 people.

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