[aleeds]

It is important to recontextuilize harassers. They are typically parasites on the organization, destroying others by stealing their work and eliminating others from the work force.

Undoubtedly he came off as clever, but being a harasser means that his achievements were outweighed by the benefits.

[post-it]

It's dangerous to say

"he's a harasser => he must be a parasite on the organization"

because then you end up with

"he's provably an excellent worker and hugely productive => he can't be a harasser, you're mistaken/lying"

Some people are really smart and productive and a credit to their profession and also awful to women and/or minorities, and you'd never know if you didn't witness/experience it.

[gdy]

"Some people are really smart and productive and a credit to their profession and also awful to women and/or minorities"

But if they are awful only to white straight males, they are ok?

[post-it]

No

[xiphias2]

Recontextualizing harassment as stealing someone's work is not just inaccurate, it's degrading to harassment victims and not accepting that somebody can be a bad person in some situations (on offsite when he's drunk) and be an amazing engineer at the same time when he's sober at the workplace.

Harassment is harassment, stealing someone's work is stealing someone's work, let's keep changing the meaning of words to politicians.

[PhasmaFelis]

I think it's a big mistake to assume that if someone is toxic, they must also be stupid/incompetent/generally useless, all evidence to the contrary. If nothing else, it will make you consistently underestimate some pretty dangerous people. It's important to know your enemy, especially their strengths.

[taskforcegemini]

they aren't necessarily more or less competent, just don't mind also stealing credits from others to boost their ego, value, bank account or whatever