Academic Assholes and the Circle of Niceness (2013)

As an entrepreneur I believe everybody should be an asshole when necessary, and nice when necessary.

What happens is that we have "nice people by default" that can't be assholes even if they want, and assholes that could not be nice even if they want.

For example, I have managed people controlling machines that could squash a person against the wall if you are not careful, or rip your hand or strangulate you(industrial lathes or mills or motors with your own scarf).

I was the manager with less accidents or deaths(none of course) in the company, by far, because every single time I saw someone was doing stupid things that could harm them or someone else I could become an asshole if they don't listen to me the first time I told them.

With an industrial press you need to press two buttons at the same time at the side for the press to go down. If you leave people alone, they will put wood sticks on them so they could be faster and earn more.

People don't want naturally to wear masks or put safety goggles because they believe they are in control, and they are 99.5% percent of the time, but this 0.5% could change your life for bad forever.

When you do what you should most people will consider you an asshole, because they don't see what you can see.

I had several people thank me years after managing them!! and telling me something like: "Thank you for doing X. At the time I though your response was excessive, but now that I have seen what happened to coworker Y(lost a limb, the eye or whatever) I could see how important it was what you tell us to do."

Being nice has its limits, death or important stuff like environmental waste or corruption are some of them.

I have seen nice people not denounce corruption when they saw it because of fear of facing the corrupt. Yes men that always smile.

Academia is particularly political. I've worked in industry and seen a lot of politics there too, but in academia the problem is much worse. I think that this article is just examining one consequence of the politics in academia, which is that people sometimes come across as assholes. The article doesn't get to the root cause of the problem.

For a while now, I've been trying to understand why there is so much political behaviour in academia, as I really don't like it and I'm not interested in participating. Recently, I found the answer perfectly summarised in this essay by Ben Horowitz:

http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_co...

Ben also explains how to solve this problem, and I couldn't agree more.

This essay is included in his book, "The Hard Thing about Hard Things," which gets a lot of mentions on here and is definitely worth a read.

I couldn't help but think, although the article is focused on academia, that doesn't mean these issues don't exist in industry or even other groups of people (families, friend groups, etc). I don't necessarily think the answer is always 'niceness,' although on some level everyone is deserving of respect, in my opinion. However, I also respect myself enough to leave situations that are not healthy for me (sometimes that is easy to do, sometimes not).

I could imagine in academia it could get especially tricky, if one was in a tenured position, working towards an career in academia, several years into a PhD program, etc and essentially facing a decision to possibly lose an opportunity for some academia goal or to continue to work with some dysfunctional person or group until the goal has been met (finishing degree, getting tenure, not giving up a hard-won tenured position). I mean, there are problems in industry too I guess, but the nature of the academia career track seems to make 'just leaving the dysfunctional situation' a much more meaningful decision, that could essentially end one's academic career or reduce its trajectory. If I don't like the dynamics at a company outside academia, it is relatively straightforward to find a new company to work at with minimal consequences (in fact, the move could help my career).

>The budding asshole has learned, perhaps subconsciously, that other people interrupt them less if they use stronger language.

But there should be some underlying reason why stronger language warrants more airtime.

I have another hypothesis why assholes seem smart.

Sometimes I catch some error that people around me spread. But I can't quite articulate it at first. Then it reappears and becomes somekind of norm. At this point I get frustrated.

Then something happens which to me shows how fucked up things have gone. I finally articulate what I felt was wrong. Also all that bottled up frustration surfaces. This is probably when I appear most "smart", because well thought out stuff goes public suddenly. It has actually nothing to do with how smart I actually am. It's just that certain assholiness and talking smart stuff happens at the same time.

Extrapolate and people who are assholes all the time seem inherently smart.

We are herd animals. Teams competing with teams is usually perceived as empowering. Individuals competing with individuals is usually perceived as grueling. Assholes are not the problem, they are a symptom.

I do want to point out in addition to Bob Sutton's research, there's Adam Grant's research he writes about in "Give and Take." One of the main takeaways, yes there are a LOT of jerks at the top, and nice people at the bottom, but there are some really pretty amazingly nice people at the top as well, and a large portion of the book is citing studies as to why certain nice people are doormats, and certain nice people can make it past all the "takers." Bob Sutton and Adam Grant's work complement each other nicely.

Being an asshole isn't that effective. Not as effective as being a scheming, manipulative backstabber.

"If asshole behaviour is a route to power, those who already have positions of power in the hierarchy and are widely acknowledged to be clever, have less reason to use it."

I've noticed this a lot in my academic career. The nicest people to talk to at computer architecture conferences are usually those with Eckert-Mauchly awards.

I truly don't understand this article, or the comments on it:

Jerks step on, belittle or otherwise sabotage their academic colleagues. The most common method is by criticising their opinions in public, at a conference or in a seminar and by trash talking them in private.

Criticizing their opinions in public? How is this being a "jerk"? This is what academia is supposed to be all about - you publish, others criticize, you repair or you accept that you were wrong. That's how we approach truth. Trash talking in private might be jerky behavior, though given the prior statement the author might just mean "I think XXX's theory is incorrect because of [reason]" rather than "XXX has sex with goats, plagiarizes his students and forges all his data".

Most theories are just wrong. The point of academia is not to be a polite mutual admiration society providing easy and stable work for people who loved college, it's to get closer to truth.

The comments provide better examples of jerky behavior. For example, a female professor called the "IR Hulk" was privately supportive of someone's work, but then she publicly ambushed them with criticisms she presumably did not share in private.

I also don't even know what to make of comments like this: Academia in general is very hostile to forms of communalization and cooperation and champions the rational individual (read: male)... The issue of favoring those who provide valid rational criticism is "indeed feminist one"? Can someone steelman this for me?

It seems fairly obvious that this problem is not exclusive to the academic world by any stretch.

I think the asshole behavior as expressed by the author (i.e. rude, dismissive, passive aggressive or even outright hostile behavior) is not the source of the benefits but are often seen together.

"Assholes" don't care what other people think and they don't seek validation from them. As a corollary they don't tone down their opinions nor do they mind confrontation. Since they express their opinions with confidence, they seem smarter.

Assholes can take advantage of people, since most people want to please others to some degree. There are also people who don't try please people, but don't engage in the anti-social behavior assholes do. It's not the Nice vs the Assholes.

In my opinion too much niceness can be a hindrance. Taking delicate care that you express your opinions in a way that doesn't upset or offend anybody is great for that warm good-feel between everybody but doesn't pave the way for real progress. People should learn to take harsh critique and not let it affect them too much personally. Likewise they should learn to give straight-up, even harsh critique.

In the kernel development environment this is known as the Linus factor.

Original with 300+ comments: http://thesiswhisperer.com/2013/02/13/academic-assholes/