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Comment by kurtosis | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of people who do great work who are complete assholes in person. They didn't get to be great at what they do by being polite or tolerant of crappy work. If they think that you are mediocre or are doing low-quality work they won't hesitate to let you know this. At first, this left me humiliated and angry. Other people lost their motivation and quit. Now I actually respect not having every criticism sugar-coated in a thick shell of polite double-talk. I'm so used to asshole behavior it doesn't really bother me anymore. I regard this to be a strength. If it doesn't kill you... I just hope it hasn't made me into too much of an asshole.

As for haggling over payment? Well in the real world you're going to have to be tough in negotiations demand what you want and follow-up to get it. This is probably the least excusable asshole behaviour of those mentioned.

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I don't regard that type of behavior as a strength at all.

There are also lots of people who do great work that are not complete assholes in person. They have the same intolerance for crappy work and same ability to give feedback as assholes, but are able to do it in a way that doesn't leave the other party feeling humiliated and angry.

It's not hard to be direct and explicit about what you want without being an asshole. It's just that the assholes don't bother. That's why they're assholes. :)

Okay maybe we mean different things - when I talk to people who complain that a boss or coworker is treating them like an asshole, when I ask for more details I find that by "asshole behavior" they just mean that they are being direct and explicit in their criticism. Hell, I've spoken with people who think that any critical comment is asshole behavior. I don't see how it's possible to be direct and explicit in criticism without offending some people. I've gotten called out on bad work before and it's painful, but without this feedback it's difficult to improve.

A good friend of mine thinks that their advisor is an asshole because if they aren't there on the weekend running their experiment their advisor will come in and do it. Now I agree that this is borderline jerk behavior / micromanagement, but what do you do if you hire someone that doesn't work to your standards? Leave the machines idle?

It feels like we're talking about two different things in your two posts. In the first, I thought you were saying "people have been assholes to me before but I learned to deal with it because they were giving me feedback that I ultimately appreciated even though they left me feeling angry and humiliated."

My point above was that being able to give constructive criticism is a strength, but giving people feedback that makes them feel "angry and humiliated" is not. There are lots of people that give feedback and do it in a constructive way without being an asshole, and it's not that hard to do.

Your second post above seems to be more about people who can't take criticism regardless of how it's given and your friend's boss, the micro-manager.

I certainly agree that you can't always be direct and constructive without offending some people. Some people are just not ready to to hear what they need to hear, and in some cases the criticism might be unjustified.

In either case, you're better off giving your feedback in a way that doesn't belittle the other person. The other person may not agree with what you are telling them, but at least you haven't added insult to injury by humiliating them in the process.

I at least try to follow the rule that you should never criticise people in front of others. I've met people who seem to be able to criticise others without humiliating them and there seem to be at least two principles

(1) do it in private

(2) convince people that they thought of whatever you were criticising them about

So... how long have you been at Apple?

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