Our “No Asshole” Rule (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Our “No Asshole” Rule (2014)

adventur.es

Ehhh.

I work at a company that has a similar policy. What ends up happening is:

1) Everyone becomes conflict-averse for fear of looking like an asshole, so bad ideas often go unchecked

2) People find other ways to be assholes when they want to be, they're just passive-aggressive about it instead

3) It becomes a conversation-terminating cliche. Want to stifle someone disagreeing with you? Accuse them of phrasing something in a way that might be considered remotely hostile.

I'm not saying it's a bad policy, but I don't think it necessarily solves much. It trades one set of problems for another.

What you really want is a "no assholes whose behavior interferes with business," which doesn't really roll of the tongue quite as nicely I suppose.

Amen. I interviewed with a company that touted a "No Jerks Policy". Both the HR recruiter and the CEO bragged to me about how they have and will fire "jerks" on the spot. I ran far away from that job after the interview.

I agree. I think the lesson I've learned is that selfish people will just use your "values" as political weapons for self-advancement, no matter what the value is, even if it's "selflessness."

This shouldn't be surprising; the idea that a person would fundamentally reshape their whole personality and outlook on life because some dude in an office ("boss") put it on a piece of paper on the wall (made it a "value") seems far-fetched.

That said, it sounds like "politics" falls into their "asshole" category, so perhaps they will find a way. So long as the politicians don't learn to hide their politics...

> Everyone becomes conflict-averse for fear of looking like an asshole, so bad ideas often go unchecked

While assholes are probably necessary for a functional society, in the context of business the No Asshole Rule refers to things like sexually harassing your coworkers. Calling out bad ideas wouldn't qualify.

Why do you need a "no assholes" rule for sexual harassment to be unacceptable? Sexual harassment is unacceptable, regardless of policy.

(does this criticism make me an asshole? What if I added an ad hominim)

I've seen this at two shops now, verbatim (indicating that the phrase is cut-n-pasted from some management self-help book).

In both cases, it translated into, "The assholes who have the most seniority or the ear of executives are 'team players'. The team players who do not have those things are 'assholes'".

It's just a verbal tool and political weapon for bullies to encourage sycophants... and for me is more of a red flag than a recruiting tool at this point.

Yes, precisely. It irks me how this concept is always stated so matter-of-factly, like they just discovered some objective fact of the universe and you're an idiot if you're not on board. "No assholes! Like, duh!"

All I can think is, let me guess: when you get rid of perks and don't promote people that should be promoted, and generally treat employees like cattle, you're not being an asshole. But if someone is not prim and proper about disagreeing with you on some issue they are an asshole.

Also, I had to laugh at this absolute ridiculous gem of a sentence:

> Almost everyone, including jerks, agree that a workplace free from assholes is attractive.

So, is that "jerks" as distinct from "assholes", or... ? The liberal employment of the word "asshole" gives the impression that this is direct, simple talk, that there is no wiggle room here. But the rub is always in who gets to decide who is an asshole and who isn't.

Does this mean that they still hire jerks just not assholes? Also what's the cut off point between jerk and asshole?

> The other test is to meet their significant other. What qualities did they choose in the person with whom has the most influence over them?

Am I the only one bothered by such a request? I wouldn't want to bring my SO, not only because I wouldn't want to mix my private and professional life, but also because it seems incredibly weird to me to have my private relationships being used to judge me.

Weird and creepy.

I agree, and I find this incredibly invasive. I agree the "how they treat wait staff" test, and sharing a meal with someone to give you some idea of what their personality is like has _some_ merit in my experience, but no, you can't meet my SO or invade my personal life.

The fact this is even considered is appalling, let alone publishing a blog post about it.

If you want to see a place that has a toxic culture because it is filled with, well, arseholes - then you need to have a look at Wikipedia.

In fact, if you want to see how bad it can get, then you need to look at something I'm unfortunately responsible for starting - the Wikipedia Administrators' Noticeboard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...

Even worse is the incidents section of that noticeboard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...

It's very, very hard to edit on Wikipedia these days. If you have any mental instability whatsoever, I strongly urge you to avoid editing Wikipedia like the plague. It's very unlikely you'll be able to change the culture, good people with great reputations in the community have tried but the culture is so bad now that it's impossible to fix it as it stands.

>If you have any mental instability whatsoever, I strongly urge you to avoid editing Wikipedia like the plague

Case in point: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikipedia-editor-says-sites...

Well, yes. Quite. Trust me, I suspect that nobody on earth is more aware of that article than I am.

Always remember, to the Emperor, Luke Skywalker was an asshole.

Policies like this have nothing to do with "assholes". They're about control and groupthink.

I don't think that's a standard reading of the movie.

With a passive aggressive policy, how would one expect anything but a bunch of assholes?

Negative rules are always a problem, because there's no consensus about what they mean. What does "playing politics mean"? Or "obnoxious"?

You know what's easier? Have a "treat your colleagues with respect" rule. Define that as "treat others as you would have them treat you".

> "treat your colleagues with respect"

It'd be more respectful to assume that. Writing down basic social and professional skills as rules is patronizing.

FYI, Professor Sutton from Stanford wrote a book about this very same idea: https://www.amazon.com/Asshole-Rule-Civilized-Workplace-Surv...

I didn't know about Sutton's book at the time, but we used the same rule when raising our seed round. We rejected more than one VC firm based on this rule.

It was a good book. It basically showed assholes do a lot of damage and advocated reducing their impact in organizations. The idea doesn't necessarily mean full, passive-aggressive enabling. One can just ban more obvious asshole behavior and enforce a principle of treating people with respect as another commenter said. That combined with respecting people's key differences, often used in passive-aggressive attacks, should reduce the number of serious bullying a lot. Especially if whole organization is onboard.

I can't site anything specific as I gave it away. It was just a good reminder to strategically eliminate assholes (not dissent) if I ran a company.

Ah, I knew it had to come a management book. Whenever you see managers at multiple companies reciting the same phrases in their speeches, it's always a lazy cut-n-paste from a recent self-help book.

There may actually be good material in that book. However, what gets written down by consultants and professors, and what is actually applied in typical practice, are two separate things (e.g. every "agile" methodology book ever).

I'm sure their intentions are good but the approach comes across as facile. What's an asshole?

Instead of saying "no assholes", just list the behaviors that define assholes and just say "don't do these things."

Ironically while reading this I got the distinct impression that the writer was a manipulative asshole.

How did you get that impression?

I don't think he's a manipulative arsehole, but it does seem very aggressive and judgemental to use the term arseholes. Normally it's only arseholes who tend to call other people arseholes, after all :-)

Guilty as charged. :)

Oh, that wasn't aimed at you. :-) When I said "he" I meant the writer of the article!

All this talk of arseholes, very confusing.

Imagine having a team that's exclusively composed of assholes executing your leader's vision. Case study showing the difficulties:

https://youtu.be/wHNB8IHfHdU?t=39s

I disagree. People intuitively know or quickly learn when others are socially trying to cause them harm. Classifying anyone doing that as an asshole is putting a word on a reflexive assessment even non-judgmental people do and understand. They might choose to take it a different direction in how they respond. They know person was being an asshole in that moment.

From there, we could say someone who consistently performs asshole behavior is straight-up an asshole. Whereas, others just act like them on occasion.

Fair comment. Lucky for me I guess, because I can be often be an arsehole.

Not always. I try to give people th benefit of the doubt.

I think I am a good judge of character (I imagine that most people think the same). There are a number of people who I have initially judged as assholes and I decided they are good people after getting to know them better and likewise there are people who I have liked at first and they turned out to be sneaky and manipulative assholes. (There were far more in the second category funnily enough).

It can go that way. Certain behavior, though, is undeniably asshole behavior because harm is the only thing that comes from it. Other behavior, if people clearly don't like it, is also asshole behavior if one unnecessarily continues it. This one can get a grey area when conflicts of people's preferences happen. The asshole variety would be the person who knows something bothers someone, feels no need to do it themselves for their own benefit, and does it anyway for satisfaction of irritating other person. There's usually clues, esp non-verbal, that they're doing it too.

People actually suck at (a) knowing when they are being an asshole, and (b) not interpreting anything that doesn't benefit them as hostile to them. @see Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind, by Kurzban. https://www.amazon.com/Why-Everyone-Else-Hypocrite-Evolution...

Re-read my comment. You're addressing a strawman. I said most can pick up when people are repeatedly causing them harm in social situations. There's grey areas but ask random people you'll get a bunch of common answers.

If you think people only assign the asshole label to someone who does them repeated harm you should try driving in Massachusetts.

I know what you mean. The piece sounded vaguely angry, perhaps part of what stimulated it is

A) Wide use of a strong word ("asshole") sounds angry. It can be funny, but I didn't sense humor.

B) All-or-nothing language

C) Focuses on failures of the past rather (so and so and his wife screwed us over!) than benefits seen from the policy.

Also, just seems like a a marketing/headhunting ploy. :/

[some content]

...

[if you've read this far and are not an asshole, please contact us as we're hiring. [email] [tweet] "We'd love to chat"]

Call me an arsehole if you want, but ugh. ;)

Wait, isn't refusing clients/opportunities/etc. because of "asshole-ness" in its own right also an asshole move? I mean sure you have good intentions, but isn't "no I'm not letting you into my lane cause your an asshole" kind of a hippicritical thing to say?

Why? There are plenty of times I've heard that a client won't pay up or demands things that are way outside of what was agreed to, and people just decide that they aren't who they want to do business with...

Bad customer behavior aways seems to go along with ending up with less money for the job in the end.

Particularly as a freelancer, you only have so many billable hours in a week. You can spend those hours with people you enjoy, and make more money, or with people who make you miserable, and make less money. Pretty obvious choice.

Ya, it all makes sense, not saying it doesn't, I just mean its kind of ironic and an asshole move in-and-of-itself. Sometimes the right thing to do isn't always the nicest.

Time is too precious to do business deals with assholes. When I was freelancer every time I tried to work with assholes I ended up losing money and opportunities with reasonable people. It's really not worth it.

Within a company I am very doubtful. I think it may lead to censorship.

Problem is, most people don't know what a real asshole is.

I mean, seriously. I dated so many people who were angry at me because I was honest and wanted to work on the relationship issues and don't just sweet talk everything.

I find it curious that company so concerned about culture and behaviour is so gratuitous with profanity. Do you really need to swear here? I think if I read this I wouldn't be interested in the company but this whole piece is completely ridiculous anyway.

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