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Comment by aaronetz | Hacker News Reader

I am very much against feigned surprise, but this just a symptom of the underlying personality. Ban one thing - and the personality will find other ways to manifest itself. It's better, in my opinion, to just have an unspoken rule like "respect your coworkers" and make sure to help arrogant people improve their social skills (sometimes those people don't even realize that their behavior is causing grief to others).

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I think sometimes correcting the symptom leads the person to realize that they are doing that and correct the problem. It's easy to behave like a jerk without realizing it and a lot of people who come off as arrogant don't imagine themselves as being so. If you tell them to respect their coworkers, it doesn't have the same impact because it not actionable (they already imagine themselves as being respectful).

That's why banning specific toxic behaviors work, it encourages introspection for people whose bad behavior is unintentional.

I think the tone of how you address such a "ban" is incredibly important in encouraging that introspection. Ban is a pretty harsh word; it makes it seem like there's some kind of punishment or consequence should you feign surprise. Instead of "banning" different kinds of interaction, they could simply encourage their students to take those instances as an opportunity to help someone improve personally.

Instead of turning it into a negative thing, you could make it a positive. Like, instead of feigning surprise to shame someone for their lack of knowledge, take the opportunity to teach someone something valuable, if they'd like to learn about it. Encouraging people to think this way and help others is going to be more positive than a negative like a ban, and thus probably be more effective towards positive change.

The ban also removes some of the reward for this behavior. Some of the people are doing it to make themselves look superior and the target inferior. With the ban, they can instantly be pulled up short ("Hey! We don't do that here at Hacker School.") thus instantly removing some of the superiority they thought they had gained.

Total agreement. I see a lack of mentorship and emotional support in many businesses. In my ideal world, superiors would take an interest in their subordinates and try to help them with problems personal as well as professional. If the business focused not so much on productivity, and more on making their employees happy and healthy, the more productive they would be! (That's basically the underlying theory of Emotional Intelligence, which should be required reading for just about anyone in a corporation)

What does one do when that person has a rank that exceeds correction? (Other than up and leave)

Say a cofounder who is the classic combination of huge ego and low competency. When addressed about being respectful, a typical response is, "but I don't respect them."

in my opinion, nothing. it's not that bad if you think about what else could be happening.

They may have suffered major emotional abuse from a parent and won't be able to correct those flaws easily.

It's been demonstrated that unspoken rules do not get followed, and generic maxims like "respect your co-workers" don't work.

As a recent example, see the Noisebridge debacle over having to actually add rules.

Then you ban the new toxic behavior when it manifests. People who are truly toxic to their core will either leave or suffer quietly when they realize that they can't act like an ass and get away with it. Some people will be more introspective and change their behavior once it's been pointed out to them that their behavior is harmful to the community.

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