Assholes: A Probing Examination
nomachetejuggling.com
nomachetejuggling.com
The definition posted of an asshole casts a very wide net making discussion difficult.
Diversity is important and it isn't just about sex and skin color. People act differently, people have different priorities, confidence varies, life situations outside of work alters behavior as do medical conditions and treatments. Different cultures even in this country value vastly different behaviors.
Not everyone is perfect just how they are but everyone doesn't have to act the same way to be acceptable.
Labeling, setting up dichotomies, and othering people can be a much more toxic behavior than being an "asshole".
People with Asperger's or otherwise on the autism spectrum can be huge "assholes" by the definitions here. Does autism make you unemployable?
Behavior issues in the workplace and out are much more nuanced than this.
It is good to be pushed out of your comfort zone in both needing to develop thicker skin AND showing empathy to others' sensibilities but within bounds.
Sorting people into bins: assholes and victims, is problematic.
When it comes down to it, not everyone must work well together. Just like there is a wide diversity of people's dispositions there can be a wide variety of team dispositions. Not fitting into a particular group doesn't have to make a 'wrong' person, it can just mean the best fit is somewhere else. Become a big enough organization and it is something you will have to face.
It's my understanding that on average it's harder to get a job and some kind of jobs look out of reach.
Also, is the population ratio of Asperger/autism such that the definition of asshole should be reworded ?
Autism is easy to point at to make one think the response to "assholes" should be thought through more carefully. There are many others, not always as easy.
Yet, I am not ready to believe every asshole I met were undiagnosed people with autism or Asperger though.
It's way over 1:100 or even 1:30.
Also, I believe assholes have a different set of intentions than people with autism or Asperger but don't quote me on that.
I had a client who told me once he could head butt me without feeling bad about it, his doctor explained to him he was schizophrenic and that was why (yeah, right, I know). He was an asshole.
Also, I header years later he ended up shot in the head and his body was found in the forest.
Even so, one of my older bestie (whose mom was schizophrenic) told me schizophrenic people can be asshole too if they wish and play the game, beyond what could usually comes with the symptoms.
All of this is juste anecdotes though.
> Autism is easy to point at to make one think the response to "assholes" should be thought through more carefully. There are many others, not always as easy.
I believe that whether people are assholes because they are assholes or autism/asp. (and I don't believe every autistic person or asperger is automatically an asshole, quite the contrary) it's up the the other side to find the resilience/methods to deal with it in a respectful way (respect for oneself and the other). Don't put fire on it, whatever the origin.
This undermines the very concept of "law and order". There "must" be restrictions on behaviour if it is intrusive, offensive, inflamatory, indecent etc. I think it is okay to have an enforced "code of conduct" to prevent assholery.
1) Laws are supposed to be precise. If there was a law against "stirring shit and troublemaking" as the OP suggests, it would be applied mostly against those who are out of favor.
2) Laws presume that the accused person is innocent and give them a say in defense. Good luck with that if you're accused of a code of conduct violation.
e.g.
> To prove a breach of the peace, the most important things to prove are that someone was alarmed, annoyed or disturbed by the incident.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_the_peace
[edit]
These are probably bad laws, but are common enough.
Here we are getting work done and this asshole starts making a federal case out of someone wearing shorts on a Thursday?
This is true of anything subjective. There are people (intentional assholes in this article) who absolutely _are_ assholes because it gives them pleasure - their ego or otherwise gains something from hurting others. Everyone in a company knows who they without needing to go through a labelling process. Ultimately it's a problem for leaders in a company, those that should be caring about the culture, to remove such people.
Paul Graham described this long ago here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacbJ72dluU (starts at 4m20s) - a leader in YCombinator he makes the judgement calls.
I had the "good fortune" of having an internship years ago with a tyrant. This person loved publicly shaming the interns, among a whole bunch of other toxic behaviour, continual needling etc. etc. Their life was a mess, marriage falling apart and alcoholic but beating up the interns was this person's way of boosting their ego up again. They were also a master of ducking and deflecting any possible blame.
Being on the receiving end of this for a year, I was so upset and frustrated that I vowed never to let it happen to me again.
After trying various strategies I found the most effective solution is very simple: get a group of people laugh at the asshole, ideally as a direct response to bullying from them in a group setting. Typically you only need to pull that off once and they will leave you alone from that point on - most bullys are cowards in the face of real resistance. Actually you don't even need to be funny - you just need to do something that can't missed by the group or the bully and creates awkwardness, e.g. a loud, slow clap in response to their comment then if they quiz you on it, you just say "Just giving you a round of applause"
I could write a lot more on this, and much of it would be easy to misinterpret in today's PC culture so I won't but, in essence: don't fall into a victim mindset - stand up for yourself.
Also it places the burden of effort on the target of the abuse vs. addressing the problem at its source, swiftly and quickly.
But anyway what I'm saying is a nuanced argument and comment threads are bad places for that. You already judged it "childish stuff" and I'm sure others think the same so I'll leave it there.
-- from the second section of the article.
I guess the essence of what I got from it, was if someone is attacking you, you want to observe how they’re doing it and what you think is driving them to do it. The idea I got from the Book of Five Rings is that for any type of attack there is a response that can stop the attack in a single strike. That response varies depending on the attack. But that’s how I came to group laughter being the “strike” that will usually stop the intentional asshole / office bully type.
And yes that may sound like childish, school playground stuff but often the reason someone behaves badly in an office hs it’s roots in their childhood
> ...the most effective solution is very simple...
These people have intrinsic deep-seated personality defects.
Sure, personality changes do occur in life but they take A LONG TIME, and barring trauma, aren't precipitated by any single event, especially something as as simple as people creating humiliation in a workplace. In other words, you can't "change" an assh*le or force them to curb their personality to the point where it's not noticeable.
You either grow a thick skin, avoid them, force them out, or what most orgs do, nothing-- just wait for their behavior/value ratio to cross a line that precipitates expulsion from the group.
In my experience, once you've spent a few hundred hours having physically larger people literally choke you at full intensity and practicing how to stay calm and methodically turn the tables, very little in the workplace impacts your calm.
There is no ambiguity these people create toxic workplace.
There is no ambiguity in a harrasment situation.
Those "smart assholes" with Asperger I know can be very nice people if being nice is rewarded. But it requires a conscious effort on their side (and fair feedback from those around them). If being an asshole is tolerated, they take the easy route of not caring.
> It is good to be pushed out of your comfort zone in both needing to develop thicker skin AND showing empathy to others' sensibilities but within bounds.
Maybe. But in my experience, most of the "victims" usually don't speak up. It is those with an already much thicker skin, the ones that don't shy away from a confrontation, who bring up the topic.
EDIT: I overall object to the label of "asshole". Insulting people with toxic behavior is toxic in itself.
The diversity crowds achievement was to give corporations more power. If I were belong to a minority, I wouldn't dislike the diversity crowd, I would hate them with unrequited passion.
There is a difference between equality and equity. There is also a conflict between equity and freedom. But these are discussion that will never again surface in the next 10 years, because of the diversity crowd.
The straw-man I describe are giant assholes in my opinion. And I wouldn't want to have anything to do with them. Because they are also toxic.
edit: Further more, I think people defining an allegedly large and epidemic group of people as untenable, are probably assholes. Unbelievable...
Your asking for diversity of behavior, but you seem to expect everyone to respond like they had your experiences and background.
A better way to run the argument would be to address the substance of raxxorrax's argument here, for example by pointing out any specific problem with the way he imagines what minorities feel. Instead, you doubted his ability to imagine it, despite you don't know him at all.
This is just an ad hominem attack.
I pointed out that he is complaining about the "diversity crowd" and at the time asking for us to embrace his diversity. I'm not sure how that's Ad Hominum? Furthermore, the parent comment states, "If I were belong to a minority", which implies he is not a minority. (leaving aside and grammatical issues)
> Premise 1: Person A makes claim X
> Premise 2: There is something objectionable about person A
> Conclusion: Therefore, claim X is false
raxxorrax made a claim on what he would feel if he was a minority (probably implying that this is how some of the minorities might feel right now, I'm not sure if this was part of his point). My understanding is that you objected to his claim by saying that he can't imagine what minorities think because he isn't a minority.
[1]: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_hominem
---
A couple of times I had similar arguments with my friends, when I said something about how I think minorities should think or act, and my friend would say that I can't understand minorities, because I'm not one. My friends had a reason to think I'm not a minority, because I'm a white male living in a country where my ethnicity is prevalent (> 80% of the population).
The thing they didn't know is that I grew up in a different place, where my ethnicity was a minority, and I went to a high school where > 90% percent of kids were of different ethnicity and religion. And this all happened in a provincial town in Central Asia, where people don't care much about diversity and tolerance, especially if they are your teenager classmates in a boys-only high school. So I think in some points of my life I did experience certain stress and discomfort because of being a minority, although right now I don't feel myself being a victim or anything of that sort.
This is why I got triggered by your first comment, and made that remark about ad hominem. Because of its resemblance to a situation I was in a few times. And actually, for me it isn't such a big deal to start a new argument about whether it's an instance of ad hominem or not.
I truly felt like the "you're not a minority" part of my comment was incidental. My larger point was that in asking people to accept an opinion that is outside the mainstream, or to consider how different your upbringing was, you're asking people to respect a diversity of opinions.
I tried to point out the a big part of the diversity movement is recognizing these diversities, which often come with different genders or different ethnicity.
Maybe I did a poor job of communicating this.
It sounds like you have made a decision to not examine the cases where you have been an asshole and make serious efforts to improve. And a smart organization might decide to get rid of someone like you.
I would much rather get a tersely worded group email (ooo) than have to do someone else's job for them.
Let's be frank. The #1 asshole thing not mentioned here is (shouting and swearing alert) NOT DOING YOUR FUCKING JOB. This is an immense source of frustration for other people, whether because they have to do the person's job for them, or because the person's failure to do their job creates disasters.
In many of the situations I've seen (or, frankly, participated in) where someone is behaving somewhat like an asshole, the root of the situation is that (a) someone isn't doing their actual job in a remotely competent way, (b) that someone isn't doing anything to fix that situation and (c) management doesn't know or care.
Indeed, there are many ways to hurt, belittle and generally make someone feel bad or unwelcome without being blamable for anything.
Not really. I've worked with several assholes. They were all extremely assertive, and usually also very competent (but I've found also the utterly incompetent ones). The problem is that even if they're right 95% of the time, the 5% of the times they're wrong they force everybody along the wrong path, because their purpose as work is not to get stuff done right, but to assert their status. So talking them out of a bad idea is impossible, and they tend to favour solutions that serve more the purpose of demonstrating their skill than to get good results.
(As an aside, since assholery is widespread in software engineering, it is legitimate to wonder how much of the so called "best practices" floating around are just exercises in one-upping each other in a status game- "hey, you write your tests first, but you should really write them first in this obscure DSL that is being promoted by the creator of ... ")
This is in my opinion way worse than being an asshole who does his/her job well.
>I’m specifically addressing the epidemic of smart assholes that are actually good at their jobs, at least on paper.
There are plenty of smart arseholes, who can do their job well (if they wanted) but prefer to be an arsehole. I'm reminded of the Sociopath layer in the Gervais Principle.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
If you think that it's always easy to identify and remove some asshole that's not doing their job, well, you're either not very experienced or you've had the good luck to only be in places with way more functional management than some of the places I've been in.
One additional problem that I have with this: I feel like the asshole in this situation.
I recall one instance where one of my coworkers was teaching the interns how to do things. When I was working on the code, unit tests failed totally. After spending hours figuring out what had happened, it turns out that the two interns hadn't run the unit tests locally before pushing. And then I had to round up the person teaching the interns as well as the interns and figure out what they had done and what had they had been taught about running tests.
Luckily people tend to learn from their mistakes, so hopefully the end result is that the interns remember the importance of testing with the expense that I look like an asshole.
The chain of events was really the combination of mistakes from the interns (since apparently one of them had been running tests, but with some misguided ideas), from the person training them and the management for thinking we should hire a bunch of interns at the same time and offload their training on couple of people. You can obviously form your opinions on how much of the blame is on which party.
>Publicly calling out and blaming others
> the article in question called it an asshole thing to do [publicly calling out and blaming others]
On the other hand, someone could very well have the exact same situation and make it into a-hole incident by shaming the interns and making them reconsider even being there.
Sure, it sometimes happens that someone feels so entitled that they can justify loafing and pretend-work, that's definitely a-hole behavior, but those other explanations are far more common.
Never attribute to incompetence that which is obviously malice.
I've been infected by this before. Never again. (I prefer to slap up so I ended up getting shown the door.)
Before we go through a hiring round with my team nowadays, I like us to review what I've seen approvingly referred to over on Metafilter as The Baboon Article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/science/no-time-for-bulli...
> Dr. Sapolsky has no idea how long the good times will last. ''I confess I'm rooting for the troop to stay like this forever, but I worry about how vulnerable they may be,'' he said. ''All it would take is two or three jerky adolescent males entering at the same time to tilt the balance and destroy the culture.''
Never underestimate the ability of one or two jerky adolescent males to massively fuck everything up!
Oh dear.
What does "slap up" mean?
> Slapping down people of lower status in the company hierarchy.
This would be the other direction.
Register to vote!
I agree that assholery has a tendency to spread, and the mechanism in my observation is as follows: You can start out NOT being an asshole. When there is an asshole for you to deal with, you'll realize "All of my interactions with this person end up with this person dominating me." But you don't like being dominated because that's natural (psychological reactance), and bad for your career. So next time you interact with that person you know you have to act on the principle of "dominate or be dominated", i.e. the asshole-principle. Soon enough it becomes a habit, and you may inadvertently behave towards non-assholes as an asshole as well, making you an asshole.
Another interesting corollary of this definition of asshole is this: If you perceive a lot of assholes around you, maybe YOU are the asshole.
It also explains why you find more assholes as you go up the corporate ladder: Being higher up means you get more opportunity for exhibiting domineering behaviour without repercussions (namely towards your subordinates).
Your definition is complementary to the author's. You are talking about relational motivation, the author about the feelings that are evoked in the person being dominated.
So…..
Once you have successfully labelled someone, you should actively fight any tendency towards empathy with them. Don’t bother worrying about whether their behaviour was intentional. Just kick them out. It’s for their own good.
At this point, I’m labelling the author an asshole.
That's not what the article said. It said that first you make clear to them their behavior is unacceptable, and if that doesn't work then get after them every time the exhibit asshole behavior, and only if that doesn't work after months of effort, then fire them.
One thing I realize as I read this is that, I’ve definitely engaged in certain ‘asshole behaviors’ at times. It’s been a long challenge to become more socially skilled and handle pressure/emotions better, but a lot of bad habits linger, I think.
The worst habit of which is definitely complaining about coworkers to other coworkers. Not in a hateful or personal way, but sometimes when I get frustrated by something someone does, I vent to someone unrelated instead of confronting the other person.
Another terrible habit that I had in the past was a tendency to respond while still fuming, which never ends well; usually it ends in both sides of an argument escalating while others grab the popcorn.
I hope I make enough effort to not be the kind of asshole that needs to be flushed out of an org, but similarly hopefully it’s not just me that is imperfect at the art of not being an asshole.
Right there with you and I'm the asshole who wrote this post. I know I have a tendency to want to strike back when I feel struck and I also have a tendency to go way overboard, in that "don't throw the first punch but throw the last" kind of way. Honestly I think everyone has asshole behaviors every now and then, a true asshole doesn't know or doesn't care when they act like a prick. The fact that this is something you're consciously aware of and working on I think means you're fine.
One book I might recommend though is 'Nonviolent Communication' by Marshall Rosenberg. It definitely feels a little hippy dippy at times and the skeptical asshole in me occasionally rolls my eyes at it, but I think it's really helped me understand some of my own communication tendencies and given me a lot of tools to help curb my own shit.
Have you come across Fred Kofman, he has this thing he calls Verbal Aikido, check it out here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6N9nvk8bvE - he also has some books that fall loosely in to the hippy dippy category while still valuable in my opinion.
Why is "Don't be a dick" so hard to codify?
All these religions, ethics and philosophical systems, and all this technology, convenience and comforts.. and we still have so much friction in interacting with others of our own species.
The best solution we seem to have found is leaving each other alone.
I've come to believe that true maturity is the realization that everyone is capable of feeling the same things you feel.
But most of us – me included – seem to have "Single Player Syndrome" where we feel that we are the only person capable of feeling what we feel, and everyone else is an NPC with diluted senses and processing capabilities.
So:
1.) Not everyone reads history books 2.) We die 3.) Social stats reset at birth, pray you have parents who treat you and other people well
The only permanent solution is an evolution of our species where the asshole gene is gone or a collective hive mind
For example, we no longer throw virgins into volcanoes.
On the other hand there are also regressions with pockets of civilization reverting to outdated practices here and there, even now.
- "Don't be a dick" doesn't offer any advantage for one's genome transmission, meaning any genetic base to being a dick will get transmitted no problem.
- Being a dick propagates, while not being one doesn't, meaning the society has a whole becomes "dick-ish by default" (much like entropy, with dick-iness) unless this is actively acted on.
- Religions, culture, nations, companies... actively encourage people to being dicks to everybody not in their group, to preserve and expand the group, meaning we're actively trained to being dicks by our social environment
- Our brains default to "everyone is an enemy unless proven otherwise" , meaning people will tend to be dicks by default.
- Not being a dick makes one socially vulnerable, so it's only achievable in very safe contexts and not by default
No, when you get a royal a--hole into a large organization, I really don't have much hope for average managers with typical business training to do anything but watch.
Sadly, it often doesn't work like that. Frequently, people just feel like "Damn, I'm good!" and give zero credit to the person who was good to them.
Separately, I’m quite shocked reading this HN thread seeing people defending the behaviour the article describes. I suddenly feel like I don’t really know the tech industry at all!
Slang for "asshole" in Spanish is "capullo" or "gilipollas". Originally, these words described a dumb,candid,innocent person, but nowadays they are used to refer to "smart assholes".
"listillo" is another word for "smart asshole" that I like. Literally, it means "little smart person". Diminutive of the word "listo" (smart)
"enterao" is yet another word for "smart asshole". It is a contraction of "enterado", a person that knows about everything.
Sorry for the interlude.
(*) By the OP standard, I am an asshole.
Because after all, assholes are popping up in the news constantly.
1. Benign lack of social skills (terse emails etc.). These people are not a major problem in my experience, and are sometimes even under-appreciated because they don't (successfully at least) sell themselves or play politics. They don't really have bad intentions and can often improve their behavior.
2. Narcissism (belittling others, must always be right, etc.) This is a _huge_ problem that in severe cases can destroy an organization. Such people are basically incurable because this is a deep seated psychological problem (really a personality disorder) and nothing a manager can fix. You must get rid of such people at all costs.
I agree that firing assholes improves a company's morale and environment, but sadly there is little evidence that it actually help a company's business.
Again this is mostly anecdotal, from what I've seen teams do when the Resident Jerk was fired or left. I've never in my 20 years as a professional software developer seen a single person leave a team and then see the team immediately fall to pieces because that person really was the critical lynchpin that people thought. I've seen lots of people stick around far, far too long because folks (management usually) were WORRIED that's what was going to happen, but it never actually seems to.
Isn't it a matter of management though? Assholes can be productive to a company if you have a good manager doing damage control and sinking time into firewalling the asshole.
Given the prevalence of this disease and the abundance of managers, it seems like a good way to increase the hiring pool of a company.
As a manager, you want to contain an asshole just enough so that coworkers do not leave, also enough so that the asshole feels they have to make up for their social behavior with additional skill and hard work (which is not hard, they are often competitive).
I believe (and that's the reason why I don't want to employ people) that the optimal point for a business is when you maintain your employees on the edge of quitting. Assholes create stress and competition, an environment where projects often strive and individuals wither.
All the ethical managers or business starters I have known have been replaced by more assholish versions. This could be anecdotal evidence of course, but I think that assholes are better suited for a corporate world of greed and competition.
However, I think it is way too simple to be useful. People who are happy and relatively less stressed are way more productive on average. (Yerkes - Dodson Law applies here)
Con: none for the company
Eventually the person got managed out (not fired, just isolated from the teams) and upper management thought the team would just eventually thrive after some short loss of productivity, but that never happened: the poor performers were put in front of the customer who commissioned the project (role that was usually handled by the jerk, who was highly competent at that due to their technical brilliance and assertive personality even with the customer), and after a few round trips the customer smelled the incompetency and literally said “we’re going to quit this project, we feel like there’s no technical direction lately”. Massive loss for the company, in the 7 figures. It almost caused the company to fail due to that being the largest customer at that phase.
In those cases, the jerk did an amazing job at keeping a very productive technical communication with the customer, and keep the high performers on track towards what really needed to be done in those projects.
Maybe the root issue lies with our societies putting business above ethics. "As long as you're making money, everything's fine, until you piss off someone with more money than you."
The reason I say this is that most companies that we consider "successful" are in my experience mostly being assholes to their customers. Since a company doesn't have an independent personality of its own, I imagine that such behavior must come from the people at the top of the food chain at those places, or at least the people very high in that chain.
Nullifying a circle of tit-for-tat takes a lot of energy, and stable blood sugar. Too much short carbs in prefab food is causing all of us all kinds of damage.
You give people a safe environment in which they feel free to voice what they really think without fearing repercussions, and there you go.
[1] http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-11-13/brilliant-jerks.htmlhttp://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-11-13/brilliant-jerks....
Saves one second per person, that's like a whole man-day across all the readers.
In practice: I see lots of assholes in management up to the director level, and the CEO doesn't do anything because they just hired their friends. Then, people just leave. Nobody cares because the issue of "tech assholes" is trendy these days.
I have a very assertive personality, which has done wonders for my career despite my average technical competency. Managers love to hear from me because I have (and have been told so) good communication skills, specifically the ability to quickly summarize pros and cons of solutions, while keeping extreme fairness in my technical judgements. On top of this, my “fearless” (asshole?) personality makes me treat everyone in the hierarchy (including VPs and upper management) as peers, and I have no problem arguing with them if I feel I have a reasonable technical issue I care about and diverging opinions from theirs.
Most of my brilliant coworkers, much more technically talented than me, tend to be more introvert and never “pick an argument with management”, which also means they never get the visibility I get, which results in public praises, financial incentives, and interesting work. I wonder if they perceive me as asshole.
They WOULD NOT LET GO their solution to a problem. If the team agreed on another approach, every planning meeting or conversation for the next month got derailed to rehash why this persons' idea was the best, and why we should change our decision. If we held to the original decision, this person would call team meetings with PO and PM 'to help resolve the issue'.
This person didn't badger juniors. On the contrary, this person would have side conversations with the most junior devs to get them 'onside', then come to the senior devs with "the rest of us have been talking and we think the way forward is X".
Caused a lot of divisiveness on our team before getting fired.
Similar to your experience: I had a colleague who was extremely negative. Everything was horrible, every manager was stupid. Nothing was done right, ever. We never worked on the right project and if we did we never did it the right way, according to him.
I think he just valued his role as a contrarian: if everyone else was wrong all the time it meant he was always right, that he knew better and more than the rest of us.
I used to tell him if he hated things that he should suggest better ways of doing things to management or, if all else fails, find a new role or new company that would make him happier.
But he never did, he just liked complaining and/or making others miserable. But he didn't walk around with a sign that said "asshole" -- he could be polite and friendly and well-adjusted during the normal course of a work day.
Then what do you do? Do you engage the person and argue with them? Ignore them and hope the problem goes away? We all know toxic coworkers exist, the question is how to change their behavior or deal with them effectively.
I am surprised by this sentence:
> Formalizing social skills as part of the job description can help with this.
This kind of thing leads to a subtle but most damaging form of management assholery, whereby employees are "invited" to participate in social gatherings at expensive places, and are frowned upon if they don't participate.
And you can set up processes to limit harm from untrained or malicious people. For some reason this doesn't seem to be widely done when it comes to internal "asshole" behavior.
Lots of companies require code reviews before software gets deployed or require two signatures on a company check. But they'll have freeform meetings where anyone can speak next if they manage to grab the "floor" and won't maintain records to prevent someone from claiming undue credit for an accomplishment.
I've seen people fired when they didn't listen. The improvement to the rest of the company greatly exceeded the loss from that individual. It is a big factor in psychological safety.
It could be one of those fake it 'til you make it deals. Someone is an asshole internally still but puts on a veneer of nonassholeishness because they are operating in an environment where it's not tolerated, and over time kind of mellow out. At the time of writing this comment, there's only one comment on my post and it's from someone who says s/he indeed was an asshole and it took this kind of incessant badgering to figure it out.
I still want to minimize that bad karma but just letting people be bad at their job with no consequences doesn't seem good either.
I try not to be an asshole, myself, and do try to avoid contact with them, where possible; but we don't always have the luxury of being able to pick those with whom we must interact.
In my experience, I have found that I have a great deal more control over the nature of my interactions than you would expect. If I am dealing with an asshole, I can rather quickly figure out what kinds of things are likely to exacerbate their issues, and avoid those behaviors. Doesn't let them off the hook, but helps me to exert a bit of control over our relationship.
He too talked about the "asshole effect" that causes companies to fall apart. Hire one asshole, and everybody eventually turns into an asshole. Results: the company is only nice guys, and it feels so good. Sure we occasionally hire the asshole. But they're rooted out fairly quickly.
How to keep assholes at bay:
1. Stay small: Bringing the right people in is more important that shipping that project faster. Fast growing companies all get the asshole disease and then have to cut their arms off.
2. Have a lot of people interview: I had 18 interviews for my job. The company had 25 people.
Regarding c) - 18 interviews, each taking at least 30 minutes (screening would be 15 on average but other would make up for it), that's roughly 9 full hours of my very own time, if not more.
The sooner we realize people's character isn't a binary good or bad and that we are all the victims of our own insecurities, the better we'll be off. Alternatively we can like your employer create policies which keeps us in our own bubble thinking that we're the good guys (this is when we're also runny risk of actually becoming what we set out to destroy).
Would you hire someone who you know is an open racist, just because he can be converted?
ofc not, I think some people are just terrible and no amount of good will is going to integrate them anywhere. But my point is that a strong team can absorb some people that don't seem 100% fitting on the first impression. From my personal experience many people I got on fine with initially afterward turned out to be terrible team players and turned out to be wolf in sheep clothing (and no amount of screening could have prevented that). Others were questionable but given a chance ended up holding everything together when it mattered.
IMO there is no silver bullet against weeding out toxic individuals and there is likewise no guarantee that with a binary approach by putting people into the good/bad camp some won't be thrown under the bus.
Also the most creative teams I worked with were often totally crazy mix where it's natural egos rub against another. Reading the post all my alarm bells ring. The author would be labeled under my definition of toxic, yet I'd still give him an interview knowing that he'd be surrounded by people more mature than him and potentially 15-20 years older. He wouldn't stand a chance in a group where he was the most senior from a knowledge or age pov.
Secondly, this: >Really, you can’t afford to keep assholes around - it’s better to have a hole in your team than an asshole.
That may not always be true. It may actually be better to have an asshole than a teamhole, particularly if project delivery is dependent on the asshole. It may be unpleasant but unavoidable - at least temporarily. It may also be a financial issue and financial issues affect shareholders, and shareholders can be assholes. You win some, you lose some.
The closing section made it all worth while. Probably the best 3 paragraphs I've read all year.
But firing an "unintentional asshole" over their lack of social skills seems like an easy way to be on the receiving end of lawsuit, particularly if terminated employee has a medical condition that explains the behavior in whole or in part. Firing someone with autism over their lack of social skills could land you in deep shit.
<3
(Sure is great how HN shows me this wonderful comment on top because it happened to be posted 9 minutes before I loaded the comments)
"Here’s a simple test: if someone walks away from another person feeling bad about themselves, they were probably interacting with an asshole."
I'll tell you that eg as manager there is no way that some of your conversations won't end with the other person feeling somewhat bad about themselves. You have to fire people. You have to explain that some behavior was clearly wrong. Sometimes you need to explain that despite best efforts the person is just simply not developing quickly enough professionally. That hurts, however you put it (you can do it carefully, sure). Hey, you will need to explain assholes that they're doing the wrong thing. Are you sure you can do this without making them feel bad about themselves?
Just be very careful with labeling people. It's usually not a great strategy, especially if you use terms like asshole. Try to be emphatic, understanding. Labeling people is one way of being an asshole.
Some of them are unconditionally valid of course but the list includes questionable ones.
* Publicly calling out and blaming others
What if they actually are to blame or deserve to be called out? Putting it on the never list is a bad idea but it should probably be a last or N to last resort.
* Stirring shit and troublemaking
That is dangerously ambiguous as terms to include both in terms of what qualifies as stirring shit. If it is actually trying to rile people up fine but that exact phrase could be used for anyone who goes against the grain. Trying to stop bad practices which /will/ lead to literal disaster because "we have always done it that way" or reporting misconduct can also be called the exact same thing.
Related cluster * Ignoring people trying to contribute * Dismissing the opinions and ideas of others without discussion * Undermining someone’s confidence for asking questions
There is one major problem with this sub-block. It never stops to ask if the "victim" is themselves massively wrong and doesn't get the hint that they are themselves negative in productivity and not even getting any learning out of it. To be frank the case where they aren't ignorant or even inept but an outright idiot who doesn't take a hint.
Like saying insisting the company should make their next car run on water and doesn't listen to why that is thermodynamically impossible (it would actually run on whatever substance it reacts with). While there are values to considering alternative approaches and departure from conventional wisdom willful ignorance isn't equal to actual expertise no matter how "polite" it may be to treat as such.
This may be where the you are never the asshole perception really creeps in - despite all of the talk about two way communications and feelings of others that the other party may be in the wrong and not "the asshole". It can look like every reference to the others is really just obfuscated grammar for myself to make the writer sound less self centered and like they have more support than theh really do.
There are better and worse ways to deal with that person, but after a while, most merely human people will do things on this list rather than (for the nth time) gently explain that said junior needs to "pull their head in".
In my experience, this has never produced any positive result for the companies I worked for.
I don't mean people don't make mistakes, I mean that the punishment strategy of blaming them don't seem to me to have any positive effect when used. Then again, I'm not very experienced, so have you (or anyone else defending this) had any positive experience with that ? (on either end of the interaction)
Well, you see, most of the readers aren't the management. The management will read this article thinking they're saints and half of their subordinates are assholes. And most of them are, under the author's definition. So you can see how regular employees might be put off by an article like this.
Number 3 in the list:
Tersely worded group e-mails that make people feel uncomfortable
So literally not true.
And a lot of the other items are only slightly less literal.
I need a dash of these, but I will hate anybody using it all the time.
This, this, this needs to be done by this time.
If not, this will happen.
'probing assholes'
'asshole examination'
'sniffing out assholes'
I hope it was intentional.
It would've been a punnier article if the subject was different... Or if the author wasn't wrong about half of the things (my subjective opinion).
There is help. There is hope!
- Encouraging people to try any technology they want in an important, tight-deadline project
- Telling people there's "No wrong way" to do things
- Spending tons of time mentoring people who show little/no-motivation and low rate-of-learning
- Refusing to perform a root-cause-analysis because it might seem to indirectly indicate blame
- Inviting unknowledgeable people who talk to much to meetings above their station for "inclusion"
- Not correcting the spread of misinformation
1. arrogance 2. cynicism
its not always the case that the above 2 make an a*e in most cases not but sometimes yes without having the extreme qualities described in article.
Values are good; they can rally a team. Feedback is good. What's missing is that feedback is never a two way street; there is always part of the company which is effectively immune from critique, by virtue of their position and rank. And this is where the psychopaths gather.
Bullshit happens. Senior executives frequently re-write the corporate narrative to justify developments. Sometimes this is for the greater good, other times it merely pads their own situation. Nobody is incorruptible - when you have people, you have bad actors.
Now lets look at how this is communicated.
As a society, we're pretty good at dealing with getting screwed over by assholes. The interactions are mercifully short - most assholes have learned to give the bad news and get offstage as quickly as possible. Some beer is consumed, some words are said, and life goes on.
Most importantly: the recipient of the "dick move" is able to process and recognize it for what it is, a self centered pile of shit inflicted by their superiors.
There is minimal lasting damage.
Now these fuckers.... would use values to rationalize all significant events. From the bully pulpit of their role in HR and senior leadership. With licence to lie, omit, and otherwise distort facts to support their narrative. While the employee was bound by an "integrity policy" and a "code of conduct" that required "professionalism". Not that these are bad things, but when one side can lie - and the other cannot call them on it... you're going to have a bad day.
So basically - all of these "discussions" devolve into a fucked up version of a therapy session where the other person really doesn't have your best interests at heart. Where you are directly questioned and attacked on your values and the degree to which they align with whatever your inquisitor currently wants. And all of this deranged feedback is carefully calibrated to operate at a very personal level - there's nothing wrong with us, all of this is a function of your personal deficiencies.
I survived. Got a great job offer from an ex-boss. And left.
My kids and wife commented a month later: "Wow, Dad finally started smiling again". Yeah. That bad. Literally fucked with my own perceptions of my self-worth.
A lesser person would have been driven into therapy.
This is not how a workplace should operate.
Careful there.
> Insulting or degrading individuals or groups
Every boss in my country does this from time to time. -1
> Joking and teasing to belittle others
My British colleagues do that, but otherwise it's rare. +1
> Tersely worded group e-mails that make people feel uncomfortable
I do that. -1
> Slapping down people of lower status in the company hierarchy
Everybody in my country seems to do that, I rarely found any exceptions. (I'm a foreigner and where I come from this is frowned upon.) -1
> Eyerolling, sighing, or otherwise negative body language while others are speaking
Every boss in my country does that, even the nice ones! -1
> Ignoring people trying to contribute
Every boss does that if they don't want contributions at a time. -1
> Interrupting people who aren’t done talking
Extremely common. -1
> Touching or invading personal space
Normal for all people in my country. It's in Southern Europe. -1
> Threatening or intimidating confrontations
Many bosses do that where I live. I only dream of beating up annoying colleagues. -1
> Publicly calling out and blaming others
Habitually done in my country of residence, unless by "others" you mean a boss, then it's not done at all. -1
> Undermining someone’s confidence for asking questions
That one is rare. Especially the psychopathic narcissist are always happy to answer questions. +1
> Gossiping about coworkers to other coworkers
Everybody I've ever met in Academia has done that. -1
> Cliquey behavior and exclusion
Everybody does that in every country and on every conference I've ever been. -1
> Taking credit for the ideas or work of others
Our bosses love to do that. Some of them want their name to appear on books they never even read, let alone written. -1
> Stirring shit and troublemaking
Sounds what I do when somebody really annoys me or is totally incompetent or just a plain asshole. -1
> Singling people out for uncommon traits they have
Yep, everybody does that. We had a guy using unreadable powerpoint colors all the time, wearing bizarre ties in an environment where nobody wears ties, and generally suffering from Asperger so much that he sat down on the farthest table from everyone else to have lunch at international conferences. I liked him, but he was singled out for his behaviour. -1
> Dismissing the opinions and ideas of others without discussion
Everybody does that in our institute. X is dismissive of Y's work, Y is dismissive of Z's work, and so on, until the full circle is reached. -1
Thinking about it, we could be a whole institute of assholes according to these criteria.
That being said, I personally prefer to work together with a competent asshole rather than with an incompetent nice guy. I'm fine with an arrogant colleague if he has a reason for being arrogant, if there is something behind it. (Admittedly, these people tend to be the least arrogant, but there are exceptions.)
Nice incompetent fools in higher positions, on the other hand, infuriate me more than anything else.
That's why what I advocate for instead is to genuinely build a culture where asshole behavior isn't tolerated, and then warn candidates that you've successfully done this and take it seriously. Self-aware assholes will just bullshit through these kinds of questions, but if you can truly impart how seriously you take this sort of thing to them, they'll weed themselves out of your process.