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Comment by forrestthewoods | Hacker News Reader

The #1 way to not get hired is to be a dick. The brilliant asshole is the most toxic person you can have on your team. Don’t be an asshole.

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Exactly this. No amount of cred, smarts, and genius that ends with "and I'm a bit of dick" will save you from my automatic red-line veto when hiring. I'm far from alone in this.

> will save you from my automatic red-line veto when hiring

You're literally a power tripping dick hiding behind "I'm not letting other dicks in" facade.

You've got it backwards friend

umm, linus torvalds, richard stallman, elon musk to name a few

None of those people ever applied for a job at Big Corp where one of the most important aspects is to be able to work well with other people and tactfully navigate the social structure of the company.

being a dick has not hindered there prospects. id argue dickheads are more prevalent in tech due to the prevalence of autism

Not everyone is a great fit for big companies. Not everyone is a great fit for startups. Not everyone is great at being a small business owner. And not everyone is great at being a regular employee.

Point is that Linus would be fucking miserable and ineffective at a generic BigTech co. He’d hate every second of it. And that’s ok!

Nobody is saying it hinders their prospects in general. They're just saying that "being a dick" is incompatible with a specific kind of job: one that requires collaborative and cooperative work with other people and navigating the social hierarchy of a company.

In my experience, it's the nice people that get fired and the assholes that get promoted. It's not exactly a secret that silicon valley is full of arrogant assholes.

Founders of a lot of companies also tend to be dicks. But seems to do alright. Seems to be a double standard there

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