The article starts off saying it was probably both:
"A company where the president picks dumb products, wastes money, and hires unqualified losers is dysfunctional. A company where the president builds a cult of personality, fires people who criticize him, and hires unqualified friends / relatives is toxic.
After reading The Verge article, it sounds like Telltale suffered from both problems. They were dysfunctional in the traditional sense of making lousy business decisions, but they were also dysfunctional in the more specific sense of being run by one or more jerks."
Maybe Apple managed to survive (thrive!) despite of the jerk, but that doesn't mean one wouldn't bring down a company on a less robust standing that may have otherwise still managed to keep the right trajectory.
"The culture is toxic." : The problems are caused by one or more individuals, who may be insurmountably difficult to fire. Actually firing the offending people is likely to correct the course quickly.
"The culture is rotten." : The problems are caused by dysfunctional processes, which may be insurmountably difficult to amend. Firing people won't help, unless their replacements are an order of magnitude more competent, and empowered to enact changes.
I don't think rotten can be fixed unless toxic is fixed first. In this sense, toxicity is the more immediate problem, in that it prevents detection of deep structural issues and potential repairs from being approached in a timely and constructive way.
He may have not been a complete jerk, or the same type of jerk.
Maybe he only wasn't nice to people but didn't hire his incompetent friends, etc. Maybe he was so good at other stuff that a negative jerk effect was not enough to offset the positive parts.
But my point was that according to the definition given in the article I don't think you can say "the jerk effect" was zero at TT, I think the author made a convincing argument.
"A company where the president picks dumb products, wastes money, and hires unqualified losers is dysfunctional. A company where the president builds a cult of personality, fires people who criticize him, and hires unqualified friends / relatives is toxic.
After reading The Verge article, it sounds like Telltale suffered from both problems. They were dysfunctional in the traditional sense of making lousy business decisions, but they were also dysfunctional in the more specific sense of being run by one or more jerks."
Maybe Apple managed to survive (thrive!) despite of the jerk, but that doesn't mean one wouldn't bring down a company on a less robust standing that may have otherwise still managed to keep the right trajectory.