Let me relay a story about people who laugh at and mock other people's work.
My wife used to work as a copy editor at a major newspaper and worked with one of those "laugh at and make rude comments about other people's work" kind of people. The copy editing checks had to be checked by another copy editor before it was allowed to be forwarded to the layout team for placement in the news paper. How the story checkin and checkout system worked was that your submitted checks were anonymous to other team members. So, there was this one guy on copy editing team who openly mocked and call other people's work "stupid" and "idiotic". He could never say the person's name that he was talking about, but since every copy editor was in the same room, you knew he might be talking about your work. Everyone hated the guy and everyone complained about the guy. My wife would say how much everyone just hated working with the guy and he was just one of those people that made the job unpleasant.
Then layoffs came around (Newspaper in the Internet Age). When this guy was laid off, champagne bottle were opened up and people celebrated. You know when someone is bad when there is a "sorry to see you go" bar get together and they are not invited. A strange thing happened though, productivity went up because people felt better about submitting their work for final approval. Less copy editor mistakes, less stress, more learning, more openness and more engaging with other team members happend. Barriers between teams fell and even with layoffs, people felt better.
It turns out that the person who mocks other people's work, make for a crappy work environment. You can be tolerant of failures on technical levels, but failure in personal level should not be tolerated. Be pleasant to work with, or should you should be fired.
hmm, seems a bit harsh. For instance if your guy had done that once and been taken to the side and told "stop, shut up, never do that again, next time you're fired" then (a) the work environment would have improved much faster and (b) he might have never done it again. Firing instantly for one harsh comment/action seems like foolishness, just like keeping a known problem person around forever (as in your story) seems like foolishness.
My wife used to work as a copy editor at a major newspaper and worked with one of those "laugh at and make rude comments about other people's work" kind of people. The copy editing checks had to be checked by another copy editor before it was allowed to be forwarded to the layout team for placement in the news paper. How the story checkin and checkout system worked was that your submitted checks were anonymous to other team members. So, there was this one guy on copy editing team who openly mocked and call other people's work "stupid" and "idiotic". He could never say the person's name that he was talking about, but since every copy editor was in the same room, you knew he might be talking about your work. Everyone hated the guy and everyone complained about the guy. My wife would say how much everyone just hated working with the guy and he was just one of those people that made the job unpleasant.
Then layoffs came around (Newspaper in the Internet Age). When this guy was laid off, champagne bottle were opened up and people celebrated. You know when someone is bad when there is a "sorry to see you go" bar get together and they are not invited. A strange thing happened though, productivity went up because people felt better about submitting their work for final approval. Less copy editor mistakes, less stress, more learning, more openness and more engaging with other team members happend. Barriers between teams fell and even with layoffs, people felt better.
It turns out that the person who mocks other people's work, make for a crappy work environment. You can be tolerant of failures on technical levels, but failure in personal level should not be tolerated. Be pleasant to work with, or should you should be fired.