It was directed inward, too. "That's the dumbest fucking idea I've ever heard," was a common phrase at MS in the 90s.
It's a risky communication strategy, but I wouldn't condemn everyone who uses it.
what kind of person would say that with full vitriolic sincerity to someone they respect? Why say that when you could say, "I strongly disagree for the following reasons..." or something else similarly diplomatic and actually productive?
To: Marc Andreessen
Cc: Mike Homer
From: Ben Horowitz
Subject : Launch— Ben
To: Ben Horowitz
Cc: Mike Homer, Jim Barksdale (CEO), Jim Clark (Chairman)
From: Marc Andreessen
Subject: Re: LaunchNext time do the fucking interview yourself.
Fuck you,
Marc
That kind of bland vocabulary makes one's statements sound like limp static. Corporate dialect is contrived to remove strong (corporate-environment-inappropriate) emotion from your speech. If you're well acquainted with your colleagues, then I'd hope you could express yourself more genuinely. You're probably more relatable than a peppy talking head who never offends anyone.
Emotion is a very powerful signal during discussion. It's a counterpoint to logic; they work together. Rarely does logic by itself win anyone over. Trying to remove "unneeded" (who decides what an unneeded emotion is) emotion is folly. We're not Vulcans.
That is not meritocracy and pretty bad workplace.
Tip-toeing around the issue can make things much worse.
It is much easier to say, "Stop. That's stupid, try again."
Than to try and cherrypick what they've done right, because often times, there isn't anything useful there.
Considering that Gates, Jobs, and Torvalds all have stories where they tell someone what they're doing is stupid, and actually get a decent product out at the end of the day, it doesn't seem like diplomacy is necessary at all.
If you can't say ~why~ it's "stupid," your comment is not useful. And if you do say why it's stupid, those reasons are much more important than the inflammatory adjective "stupid," so just say those instead.
How ironic.