--- title: "For four months I couldn't get the CEO to let one person go" url: "https://www.mikefluff.com/en/blog/team-parasite-20-minutes" locale: "en" author: "Mike Fluff" updated: "2026-01-15" description: "A story about an employee kept on for being diligent, while the team around him slowly burned out. What it cost, and what I now check at the first meeting." tags: - "team" - "leadership" - "parasites" alternates: - locale: "en" url: "https://www.mikefluff.com/en/blog/team-parasite-20-minutes" markdown: "https://www.mikefluff.com/en/blog/team-parasite-20-minutes.md" - locale: "ru" url: "https://www.mikefluff.com/ru/blog/team-parasite-20-minutes" markdown: "https://www.mikefluff.com/ru/blog/team-parasite-20-minutes.md" - locale: "pt" url: "https://www.mikefluff.com/pt/blog/team-parasite-20-minutes" markdown: "https://www.mikefluff.com/pt/blog/team-parasite-20-minutes.md" - locale: "es" url: "https://www.mikefluff.com/es/blog/team-parasite-20-minutes" markdown: "https://www.mikefluff.com/es/blog/team-parasite-20-minutes.md" --- # For four months I couldn't get the CEO to let one person go > **In short:** Let the person go when three or more of seven signals hold for a month and one round of feedback with a two-week deadline changes nothing. The signals include re-asking settled questions, the passive voice, “I agree, but”, meetings that stretch and echoing the manager without substance. Keeping one such employee cost a client three resignations and about three times what an early exit would have. His name wasn't Kirill, but let's say it was. Kirill worked on a team I was consulting at the time, a mid-level product manager. One year at the company. Before that, three years in an adjacent role at a neighbouring business. Kirill came across as the ideal employee. Polite, soft-spoken, smiled. Always knew the agenda. Never interrupted. When asked something, he would nod gently, say "yes, I understand," and begin unpacking the topic — **carefully, with caveats, with clarifications**. It looked like competence. After six months I began to notice something strange about this team. People were tired. Not from workload — the load was average. From **meetings**. Meetings that didn't end. Meetings that always needed to be continued. Meetings where something was "being aligned," but never got fully aligned. I started looking more closely. It turned out that in 80% of those meetings there was **Kirill**. And 80% of the overrun came from Kirill asking follow-up questions. Careful questions. Polite. *"Did you consider Y when discussing X?"* *"I agree, but I have one reservation."* *"Can I clarify one detail?"* It wasn't sabotage. Kirill wasn't doing it on purpose. It was his **default form of being in the world**. When I finally figured this out, I told the CEO: "Kirill needs to go." The CEO said: "Are you kidding. He's so **diligent**." We let him go four months later, when three people from his team had quit — one after another, over six weeks. They all, in the exit interview, said roughly the same thing: **"I can't work in that atmosphere."** By "atmosphere" they meant Kirill, though none of them said his name. After his departure the atmosphere recovered **in three weeks**. Not in six months. Not in a year. Three weeks. That's everything you need to know about the cost of the mistake I couldn't get the CEO to make in time. --- Since then, in every new team I work with as an outsider, I **look for Kirill**. I learned how. Kirill isn't one-per-company — that person exists in any team over five people. Sometimes there are two. They don't shout, sabotage, or steal. They **offload friction onto others**, and so delicately that even the victims can't always articulate what's happening. The good news is that they **don't hide**. They give off signals from day one. The bad news is that you've trained yourself not to see them, because "they're trying hard." --- > **This isn't about 'bad people'** > > A parasite is not a moral diagnosis. It's a **behavioural pattern**. The same > signals can be a temporary reaction to stress — in which case they fade in > a week or two. If they don't fade, if they're stable, if they're **default** > — then it's a pattern. And patterns don't get fixed by "could you maybe > do it a bit differently." --- Seven signals I now track. In the order they usually arrive. **One — questions that have already been answered.** The person asks at the fifth meeting about what was discussed at the four previous ones. Not because they're stupid — because they didn't read, and don't plan to. They're offloading the **retelling work** onto you. This is **symmetric sabotage**: they don't carry the load, you spend ten minutes re-explaining what was already said. **Two — the passive voice.** *"It was decided…"* *"It so happened that…"* *"The task couldn't be completed because…"* The **subject of the action** vanishes. That's not stylistic. It's how you **separate responsibility from a name**. Compare: *"I didn't finish because I got pulled to another task"* — there's an "I." *"It couldn't be finished due to priorities"* — no one's left. Kirill had a memorable one: *"following the discussion, it was decided to postpone."* **Decided by whom?** **Three — "I agree, but…"** Any agreement followed by "but" is disagreement wrapped in diplomacy. Healthy people occasionally do this. A parasite does it **by default**. Nothing moves, because everything is "agreed, but…" **Four — lots of emotion at standup.** Status turns into mini-drama. *"Yesterday was impossible, I barely survived, I'll try today but I'm not sure."* In reality — three commits for the week, zero tickets closed. **Emotion replaces output.** **Five — crisis authorship.** A parasite rarely starts a problem but often **happens to be near when it's discovered**. They sincerely consider this a contribution: *"I noticed that…"*. Noticed, yes. Fixed by whom? Check the commits, if they're an engineer. The CRM, if they're a salesperson. The inbox, if they're a PM. The name of the fixer, as a rule, doesn't match the name of the noticer. **Six — meetings stretch.** A discussion that should have taken fifteen minutes unexpectedly runs to fifty. Why? Because a parasite is **comfortable in the process, not in the result**. They don't want the meeting to end. The next step would be **work**, and work is uncomfortable. **Seven — manager mirroring.** Repeats your phrasing, your vocabulary, your priorities — **without substance**. *"Yes, it matters that we're customer-focused."* Great. **What specifically did you do that was customer-focused this week?** Silence. Or another paraphrase of your own phrase in slightly different words. --- What to do when you've seen the pattern. > **Short algorithm I now apply immediately** > > 1. **Document the pattern in writing** — dates, examples, specifics. Without > this, the conversation turns into "you had a feeling." > 2. **Give feedback once.** Clearly. Without "you're great, but." > 3. **Agree on one concrete change with a deadline** — two weeks, no more. > 4. **If nothing changed, this isn't a misunderstanding.** It's **the person's > decision**. > 5. **Let them go.** No extra contract. No "second chance next quarter." The goal isn't to **save** the parasite. The goal is to **protect the rest of the team**, who do the work and don't complain. --- Every month you tolerate a parasite, you pay in **the loyalty of the non-toxic people**. That's a real currency. You can count it. With Kirill, the cost was three employees who quit. They cost the company roughly six months of productivity each — that's how long it takes to recover after a good mid-level. Plus six salaries to hire and onboard a replacement. I later looked at that number. Keeping Kirill was three times more expensive than firing him at the first signs. And that's just money. In team morale — ten times more. --- Since then I have a simple rule. When I see three or more of the seven signals in an employee, and they **don't go away over a month**, I tell the leader. Not always at once. Sometimes after a week. Sometimes — head-on at the first meeting. Depends on how much we already trust each other. It's an uncomfortable conversation. But it has to happen. Because the next three who quit don't quit **because of** the parasite. They quit **because you tolerate him**. They see it. And they remember. **[Team parasites course](https://www.mikefluff.com/en/parasites-course)** — Seven modules, $19. How to spot them, talk to them, let them go — without guilt or cost. Based on the year I spent learning from my own six-month mistake.