How do you have integrity when you throw your own engineers under the bus?
In fact the latter can lead to exactly the opposite of integrity.
Integrity means the opposite of being two-faced.
In this case, OP's behavior lacked integrity, even though it was likely honest. Although he was at the Yang meeting as a representative of LinkExchange, he advocated in favor of Viaweb. The forcefulness with which he argued ("your guys are wrong") definitely crossed the line into advocacy, not just an off-hand honest opinion. This set up a conflict within himself (his feelings toward Viaweb vs. his own interests and duties to his partners) as well as a conflict within the LinkExchange team.
https://insighttimer.com/consciousleadershipgroup/guided-med...
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/character-strengths-and-lif...
"the standards of integrity involves regarding internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that parties holding within themselves apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter their beliefs."
Not just any kind of whole. Somebody "whole, united, and indivisible" devoted to his own interests for example, doesn't have integrity (even if he's open about it and e.g. is equally and wholy bad to everybody).
Let's stick to the dictionary: "1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles."
The "whole, united, etc" thing is "integrity" in objects (e.g. as in "structural integrity". Not integrity as the moral quality in people.
>Consciously or unconsciously, he was trying to serve three masters: his current company, Yahoo!, and PG's company. That kind of conflict of interest is inconsistent with integrity.
It's the opposite. That kind of conflict of interest is what you want to test someone's integrity.
Someone more strategic or someone which places tactic over integrity would have stayed silent (and neither lose nor verify their integrity). Someone without integrity would have lied against PG's company to promote their own.
Well, I wasn't talking about some hermit fully devoted to his own self without impact on others.
I was talking about someone pursing his own interests ahead of everything else - who would e.g. lie if it benefits him, steel, backstab, and so on.
This man might be an "whole and undivided" jerk, but he lacks integrity - that is, an actual good moral character.
So, "whole and undivided" is not what people mean when they say "this person has integrity". They mean that he is a "man of his word", has honor, is not two-faced, and so on.
There's a saying: you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. I can provide you the resources to show you the meaning of the word, but I'm not going to waste my time in any further back-and-forth. Have a good day.
Dictionary to the rescue: "Integrity: 1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles."
Integrity is having a set of moral principles and evaluating against them honestly. You will see your beauty, warts and all.
It's impossible to calculate the moral implications of the entire world for every decision you make, but taking care of your own is a pretty easy start.
That's a quality a mafia boss might also have (taking care of its own team/employees/famiglia). Doesn't mean they have integrity (heck, it's not even moral - not every quality that results to the good of some people is moral).
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/integrity
Definition of integrity
1 : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : INCORRUPTIBILITY
2 : an unimpaired condition : SOUNDNESS
3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided : COMPLETENESS
Note that (2) and (3) are not about people.
We don't say that someone who is not impaired (in "an unimpaired condition") has "integrity". We call them able and other things.
We don't say that someone who is "complete or undivided" has integrity either (we use the term "complete" for humans, but there it means something like satisfied or fulfilled).
(2) and (3) are not about integrity as in "X has integrity". It's about integrity as a property of things, in usages like "structural integrity", "mechanical Integrity" (the same sense used when we talk about "integrals" and so on).
And you made it sound like I did something nefarious. Talking about integrity (1).
False. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity
> (2) and (3) are not about integrity as in "X has integrity"
False. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity
> And you made it sound like I did something nefarious.
You did. In a discussion about whether a word's meaning was narrow or broad, you argued it was narrow by citing its definition -- but left out every part of its definition that didn't align with your argument.
Idk, maybe the twitter OP told their engineering team they were worse than Viaweb every day via automated, department-wide emails.
Sometimes that means doing stuff to benefit "your own." sometimes that means blowing the whistle on something. It really depends on the context.
You're assuming he knew they were better. Based on all of us (esp. here) not trusting technical interviews to determine engineer quality, I suspect he did not know they were better and was simply trying an off-the-cuff comparison to get Yahoo to acquire both of the companies.
What he really gave was an opinion. It wasn't truth.
I dunno, the Yahoo guy seemed a little sociopathic for doing this. Reminds me of when Paul McCartney told Michael Jackson he wanted to buy The Beetles catalog, only to have MJ go ahead and buy it instead. Douchey to say the least.
>“They are hands down better than us."
Uh, I'm pretty sure he meant what he said, with the second being a solid assertion. He didn't dance around it, he literally meant they were better.