I feel your pain because as you say these Lutzes are everywhere but I think you hit the nail on the head when you say, “simply paying the person until they choose to leave and tank some other team’s / company’s productivity is less risky than firing them and potentially having to deal with a lawsuit.” This absolutely is the reason why it’s so hard to get rid of these people.

We’ve managed to get rid of two such Lutzes on our team in the years I’ve been in my current job and on the first occasion it took over six months for the managers to build a sufficient case to just put the Lutz on a Performance Improvement Plan. The hope was that said Lutz would take the hint and jump rather than be pushed and luckily for us that’s exactly what happened and the second occasion was just luck as not long after we started complaining about them the mass layoffs in tech started happening and we got rid of them as part of that (though we sadly also lost some good devs in the process).

Isn’t this your employer’s problem? From your description, it sounds like you’ve collectively isolated Lutz from causing problems for you guys. Has your supervisor asked your opinion?

You are on a team and that team has at least one member that isn’t pulling their weight. The reasons why generally range from a lack of work ethic to a lack of talent.

I think they are pushing the incompetence angle too hard in a way that the author seems to be trying to elevate himself at the expense of others.

If your team hired and retained a guy, that means that team member passed the hiring bar you passed and justified his place in the organization. It’s highly unlikely he started to underperform because he unlearned stuff or suddenly became incompetent. Odds are you’re dealing with a team member that is experiencing mental health issues such as burning out.

If that’s the case, the mere thought that a team member decided to devote his time writing up articles on how to stab team members in the back when they’re at a low point of their life reeks of a toxic work environment.