Paul Graham and his "no asshole" rule (Interview) | Hacker News Reader

Paul Graham and his "no asshole" rule (Interview)

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154 pointszeedotme71 comments

It's actually Bob Sutton's rule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule

For anyone who is interested in interpersonal relationships at work, Bob Sutton is pretty much required reading. I especially enjoy his blog. http://bobsutton.typepad.com/

Incidentally, we don't call it a "no asshole rule." I think what I originally said to Robert was that we try not to accept jerks, and since he'd heard the phrase "no asshole rule" he used that to describe it.

Our criteria aren't the ones listed in this article, either. We're not trying to avoid people who make other people feel bad so much as those who are bogus, or dishonest. That's what we mean by a jerk: someone you can't trust.

Thanks for the clarification.

> someone you can't trust.

Judging who you can trust, especially based on brief, early impressions, is quite a skill. Some have a natural intuition for it, others don't, but like many things I bet that intuition can be deconstructed into a series of learnable techniques. Would you consider writing an essay deconstructing how you and Robert judge who you can trust in business?

He's said in previous interviews that they all just ask Jessica, who is extremely good at judging character, because the rest of them aren't very good.

She must be their Counselor Troy :)

Ah, she's one of the intuitive ones. Some of it is probably due to women being more perceptive to body language and non-verbal communication than men are, on average. I wonder what else there is.

Did I miss something, or was that awkward way the interviewer was interrupting pg real? At one point pg is saying something, and the interviewer interrupts him (while he's explaining) with some unintelligible thing, and pg goes "... <rage face> <swig>"

That is scoble's style. He is friendly, gregarious, abd excitable which makes him great and horrible for interviews. His eagerness is net positive though. Often it makes interviews with more boring people tolerable.

Ah, thanks. I don't know him, and I didn't watch the entire interview, that part just looked too awkward to be serious...

A friend lived in a co-op at Oberlin, which had only one house rule: "don't be an asshole."

That one rule supplanted all the traditional ones for group living: don't leave dirty dishes, don't play obnoxiously loud music late at night, etc.

Like the domestic version of "Don't be evil."

It's also a more succinct variation of Caltech's honor code: "no member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the community."

Wikipedia, now largely as a holdover from its less bureaucratic days, has a fairly similar meta-policy called "don't be a dick": http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick

Did it work for you? I tried many times during school, and it didn't for me. People would appreciate the spirit of the rule, but it would be too subjective to be useful in the most heated situations.

Having read all of his essays I have never heard Paul speak before. Seems like a pure gentleman.

I heard him speak first and then ended up reading all his essays, hearing them in his voice.

Never heard him? Not to derive this into some "list of Paul Graham's speaks", but I really suggest to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7K0vRUKXKc. A good speak, I think.

I've read some of what he's written - I thought he came across as much more "normal" in that video. It improved my opinion of him considerably...

It freaked me out when I found out pg spoke with an American accent. I just assumed he had an English one from his place of birth. D'oh!

Funny, I always thought Paul would speak in received pronunciation... :-)

He also has cute dimples.

In regards to twitter...they should just give pg this guy's twitter account http://twitter.com/paulg

He only used it once, and that was back in 2007. I'm sure the twitter guys would pull some strings to get pg as a user. Especially since they have no problem securing unused accounts "We have a rough guideline of 9 months of non-use."

Other viable alternatives:

http://twitter.com/realpg - only used 2 times a year ago.

I've also registered http://twitter.com/pgyc so you can use that if you want(registered so some asshole doesn't go and hold it hostage). I figure YC is something you'd be known for...and even if you stop doing the whole YC program...it'll still be part of your legacy. And it's a short username.

Why should twitter give anyone's account to anyone else?

Besides, you're assuming because they're not posting publicly that they're not DM'ing or anything else. I'd be pretty peeved if I had registered an account and when I finally decided to make use of it had discovered that it had been removed to give it to some other person of the same name.

Twitter should leave people's accounts alone unless there is a good reason (preferably legal) for interfering with it.

twitter has access to the accounts...I'm sure they check whether or not the guy logged in or DMed within the past 3 years before transferring an account.

Either way, he can have the pgyc one I got...and the other people get to keep their accounts.(although based on their twits...I'd bet that they are the logged in once and test and never used again types.)

I guess the question is - why should someone (non-paying) be able to reserve an account name and not use it for nine months or more and expect to be able to keep the account? It doesn't serve any benefit to the community to have squatted accounts.

>Why should twitter give anyone's account to anyone else?

(Because) it's happened before: http://foreign.peacefmonline.com/entertainment/201007/63667.....

"pg", "paulg", etc. are probably too generic to warrant giving it away, but I think it's okay to deal with nick squatters in most cases.

Just going out on a limb here...maybe pg doesn't want a Twitter account and "no good names available" is just an excuse for folks like Scoble who can't believe he's still a holdout.

It's really true. I ignored Twitter initially because it was described as micro-blogging. As a macro-blogger I assumed it wasn't for me. By the time I realized it was actually a new messaging protocol, all variants of my name were taken.

This sounds like a fixable problem. What would some acceptable variants of your name be? If you email me (avi@twitter.com) I will see what we can do. I'd certainly love to see you on Twitter.

I think the real reason he isn't on twitter is that he prefers writing in essay format (I think the thing about not getting a good username was slightly tongue-in-cheek). When asked about twitter he didn't seem to enthused about it.

write essay -> twit out a bit.ly link -> get retweeted -> more exposure

I don't think pg is too worried about more exposure. I find out that he has a new essay out on HN, and I'd imagine it's the same for a lot of people.

There's a lot of cross-pollination between sites like Twitter, HN, Reddit etc. (the demographic being early-adopter techie crowd) so if a person didn't get the new essay from one of these sources, they'd get it from another. People who aren't likely to frequent any of these sites probably aren't likely to read his essays anyway.

Can't he be content to let his fans tweet it for him, if they want to?

What is the difference between an essay and a blog post?

Essay implies you follow some actual style guide, even if it's unwritten. Blogs require no structure.

That's a fairly snobbish response. So basically an essay is not a blog post because you say so?

To me the difference is the amount of effort one puts in. Originally a blog post, as the name "web log" implies, was something one wrote that day-- a log entry. Whereas essays sometimes take weeks. The distinction has gotten blurred, but insofar as there is a distinction I think that's the root of it.

The style ideas you have for essays almost certainly don't match what Paul Graham sees an essay as. Read http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html for details.

Between one of pg's essays and a typical blog post?

Pg spends weeks writing a typical essay of his (or at least he used to), editing it and getting feedback from colleagues and HN alumni before, whereas a typical blog post is banged out in a couple of hours, with little or no rewriting.

Also, just look a the page of one of his essays versus all the visual clutter on the typical blog post. Maybe superficial you may say, but I don't think so. It speaks volumes about the motives of the author. Maybe the blog writer wants to SEO optimise, promote their business, serve AdSense ads...whereas a pg essay is an extremely refined stream of thought on a specify topic. And his primary motive appears not be to sell you something, but figure stuff out as he writes.

So the difference between an essay and a blog post? Huge differences I think.

Where did that question come from? This is about Twitter, so the more relevant question is "What's the difference between an essay and a tweet?"

I'm not sure how to define that difference without something weak like "essays are longer", but even abstracts are typically expected to have more words than a tweet has characters.

I was asking because the OP wrote "he prefers writing in essay format" which seems to be giving PGs writings some sort of prestige beyond calling it a blog post. Yes, PG has lots of experience and writes well, but I don't see a need to elevate his blog to something more.

On a related note, I've always thought a better title for "How to Win Friends and Influence People" would be, "How not to be an Asshole", or at least, "How to avoid acting like one."

http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/06...

"How to avoid acting like an asshole"

It has a nice ring to it.

relevant part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacbJ72dluU#t=4m18s

So, to save everyone the time, the 'no asshole' rule means they don't accept assholes and has the obvious benefit that there aren't many assholes in the 'alumni'. That's it.

How do they know who is an asshole and who is not?

It's usually rather obvious just by chatting with someone for more than 5 minutes. It's also more obvious to those who aren't themselves assholes... YMMV

We ask Jessica, who has near perfect judgment of character.

Is she available for contract work?

Actually she does often do this for YC-funded startups that are hiring people.

I can see how you could tell that most of the people she told you to hire ended up as non-assholes, but how do you know that the people she tells you not to hire would actually have been assholes?

That's an opportunity cost, and it turns out that the main thing to understand about opportunity costs is that nobody thinks about them the right way (including me, of course).

Does she have some specific criteria, or is it like the infamous Supreme Court definition of pornography? ;-)

for me, it was impressive that he was modest - in noting (a couple of times) that there are exceptions.

http://electricpulp.com/guykawasaki/arse/

This is an interesting rule in the context of Hacker News. Now that it's not really about hacking any more, it seems like the common trait is that everyone is an asshole.

I'd love to see a No Assholes rule on HN. By that I mean if an admin saw a post that was asshole-ish, the poster account would be disabled. It would encourage polite discussion. The current point system mostly encourages point-baiting and groupthink/PC-ness. Internet posting seems to encourage rude behavior, and it's exacerbated when you have a bunch of geek personalities who often lack good social skills.

The problem with that approach is long, drawn out threads filled with phony politeness.

I love how his name tag is partially peeled off. Very casual and some how nice.

the_real_pg is available on twitter, just sayin'... nudge nudge

Paul Graham uses the word 'right' where most people use periods...right?

I am so sorry, but I have to say this because it is what came to my mind when I watched it: Robert 'Scobleizer' Scoble is, most likely, an asshole.

And that's what I can read all over PG's body language throughout the video.

And again, I'm sorry for this mini-rant.

I have to say this because it is what came to my mind when I watched it

You have to say this because it came to mind? Really?

In my very limited interaction with Robert Scoble I have found the opposite to be true. I found him to be open and a good listener.

He sure as hell wasn't at Startup School 2009 -- he was bouncing up and down in his seat during the presentations raring at the bit to be an asshole, and interrupted several in just about the rudest possible way (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=901438).

I think whatever you saw is probably due to the fact that this was a very quick interview done outside in an impromptu way. PG's body language could have meant a million other things.

Scoble's one of the greatest advocates of startups and not just in Silicon Valley, so I'll strongly disagree with the "asshole" description.

I'm a great advocate of startups, but I'm also the first to admit I'm an asshole.

Don't confuse asshole qualities with competence and status. Scoble is one of the most wanted people in SV.

I was a little annoyed when he interrupted Paul with unnecessary laughter a couple times, but that's probably just because I want to hear everything pg has to say.

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