Be Nice Or Leave | Hacker News Reader

Be Nice Or Leave

avc.com

180 pointsdmarinoc102 comments

Neil Gaiman

“You get work however you get work, but keep people keep working in a freelance world (and more and more of todays world is freelance), because their work is good, because they are easy to get along with and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three! Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. People will forgive the lateness of your work if it is good and they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as everyone else if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.”

http://vimeo.com/42372767

A commencement speech so good it is now a slim book http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0062266764/

To be honest, often I found delivering work on time and being easy to get along with trump doing good work to a large degree (particularly being on time). That is to say, if you are easy to get along with and deliver on time, but your work output is nothing special, you can still get by pretty well. But if you are unpredictable or a jerk, your work quality needs to be better than 99% of your peers to get by similarly.

This is a great, straightforward summary of something I always hazily suspected in the back of my mind. Thank you for sharing.

Great link, thanks. I found this venn diagram of the statement here:

http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/25016190500/batsandbones-...

A saying that I heard a long time ago, that really stuck with me (both as a business owner, and from the flipside as a customer):

  You can shear a sheep many times, but you can skin it only once.

If you go in for the kill, and really take advantage of someone in a transaction (i.e, skin the sheep), that will likely signal the end of any (positive) transactions with that person, unless you have a monopoly or other such power. Even if they don't realize what you did at the time, eventually they will, and they will resent it.

But by just shearing the sheep, you are creating a sustainable profit / relationship with someone, that will have the potential to be repeat business.

This works on the customer side, as well - are you the sort of person that grinds away at every contract and transaction, so that the other side makes (almost) nothing? Well, you are walking the line of skinning that sheep...

That's pretty calculating though. Essentially you're saying 'be nice' because there is money in it. But actually people should just be nice even (or maybe especially) if there is no money in it.

That's a pretty narrow interpretation of that statement.

It could also be simple.

If you charge someone so much that they can't sustain their business then you might win but at what price.

v.s If you charge someone what they can afford then they will stay in business longer and then you might end up winning in the long run.

And that's just one possible interpretation :)

That's the 'parasite' model. Don't kill the host :)

But you're right, there are more interpretations possible and not all of those are negative.

The topic post explicitly says that there is money in being nice. So there is more reason to be nice than just being a decent person.

That is not my intent at all, and I certainly don't think of it as calculating. I think you are conflating a quote highlighting a benefit of being nice (or really, the dangerous of being ruthless), with describing the moral reason to be nice.

Naturally character is better highlighted by what you do that has no tangible reward, and done in the dark, where you think no one will see it. And being nice, and compassionate, and charitable are things that should be done because it is the right thing to do, regardless of reward.

The quote is in the same vein as the original article; the general thrust of the article is that being nice pays dividends, which could be interpreted as being calculating as well, I suppose.

But I don't think that is the intent. I think the intent is the same as my comment - to just highlight the benefits and renewable nature inherent in being nice, not saying that is the reason to be nice.

I think it revolves around 'acting nice' vs 'being nice' but the words escape me to articulate the difference any clearer than that.

I think I understand what you are saying, and you are right, it is difficult to find the exact words to express it. But I think you articulated it well. I just wanted to highlight that my intent was not to promote the idea of being artificially nice :)

I think you the word you're looking for is 'sincerity'

I wouldn't think of it that way. Being nice actually adds value to the transaction, for both sides.

It sweetens the deal without actually costing anybody anything. Even if nobody takes home any additional dollar bills when the business is concluded, if everyone is trying to be nice, it may be worth going ahead with it anyway, just to build mutual trust and confidence for some future transaction. Though you can't ever spent it directly, and it is difficult to measure, reputation does have monetary value.

Essentially, it's like having a magical purse of silver coins that is never empty, but you can't ever spend even one of them yourself. You can only give them away to other people. Is it better to hoard those coins to yourself, or to give one to everyone you meet?

Game theory's star child, the prisoner's dilemma, also shows this principle quite nicely.

As long as you plan on never working with that person again it is in your best interest to screw them over. If you plan on working with them indefiniately then the best known strategy is to treat them as they treat you, and to start off on a good foot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

In real life, as opposed to thought experiments, it's hard to tell when, where, and in what circumstances you will meet someone again. I don't think it's ever in your best interest to screw anyone over.

We exist in a web of relationships with membership in overlapping but distinct communities. As entrepreneurs we can be seen as agents of chaos by the status quo but our aim is innovation that leaves society on balance better off.

Of course we have to make a profit for our businesses to continue, but there are other gains that come from entrepreneurship beyond the financial that lead us to invest in our employees education, to invest in our communities and to “leave a little money on the table” when dealing with partners and suppliers in the interest of good will and future relationships.

Business is situated in community and a social context: a good reputation as fair dealer committed to the values of the community, as evidenced by actual kindness and charity will create more value in the long run than treating every transaction as the last one you will ever do with the other party.

Some time ago I was involved in founding a company and two VCs were working together to fund us. They'd come up with a term sheet and we needed to alter some of the parts of it.

So, we sat down with them and the CEO of our company laid things out by running through all the parts that everyone agreed on and framing the discussion as "and there are these two provisions that we don't, so we're really close".

The rest of the discussion was super-smooth because of the way it begun.

This seems more like an example of framing/presentation. Not to say they werent nice people :)

This was one of my key take-aways from Dale Carnegie's classic, 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'. I've seen it mentioned on various reading lists for those wanting to go into the business world too.

Funny thing is, when recommending it to a friend, they mistakenly assumed from the title that it was a book of underhand tactics, which couldn't really be further from the truth. There's a lot to be said for being genuinely nice to others.

I think How to Win Friends is one of those books that you (you being someone in the supermajority of people who isn't naturally gifted at interpersonal relationships) know you should read but you avoid it.

Then one day, you are desperate and you read it and wonder "my God why didn't I read this sooner!"

I've avoided it for so long as it does look like it's either a manipulation guidebook or a social skills for dummies book. Your comment has convinced me to give it a go :)

I think a lot of folks today never get around to reading it because they assume it's old or outdated. (It isn't. Human psychology hasn't changed much since Dale Carnegie's day.) Alternatively, they read something sinister, or else hucksterish into the title. To be fair, the idea of "winning" friends implies a sort of gamesmanship. And the idea of "influencing people" can make one think of manipulation or politics.

The interesting thing about the book is that it can be read in either light: as a Machiavellian guidebook, or as an earnest how-to about the principles of mutual friendship. Carnegie probably intended the book to be the latter, however, and that's the spirit in which I read it. It is very much worth reading. People can do what they will with the information in the book, but I hope they do good with it.

> Funny thing is, when recommending it to a friend, they mistakenly assumed from the title that it was a book of underhand tactics

Most people I've told about this book have the same reaction, to the point where I suspect that Carnegie picked the title on purpose to get 'manipulators' to learn how to actually be good people.

I've been making the same assumption. :) So thanks for mentioning it isn't. I'm happier now to spend money to read it.

Here's the thing about being not nice: you can usually get away with it if you're really exceptional, but if you ever misstep, nobody will want to help you out, and some may gleefully put the screws to you. Just in the last couple of years, a couple of acquaintances that had a reputation for being not nice have stumbled career-wise, and unsurprisingly no one was there to lend a hand. Honestly, I was shocked how little time it took to catch up to them.

That's what I really hope when I think of an employee who screwed me completely over after I gave him a chance and spent a lot of time training him...

But from the last news I've heard being a snake has been very successful for him and he's landed a high position in the new company where he works (taking over the guy who hired him).

I hope one day it all catches to him but I'm not hopeful.. I just wish the world worked like this.

It may be likely that if the world did work like that, he wouldn't be such a snake. People are conditioned to think that stepping on other people to get ahead is the only way to be successful. In that sense, I too wish the world worked like that, because then we would have a lot less snakes.

i know i shouldn't judge with this small amount of info, but still...

you normally aren't paying an employee in training even close to the normal rate in the profession. which is obviously correct, but makes the argument that the employee screwed the employer by leaving after the the training kinda strange.

In that case, he left with some of my customers contracts so that was the screwing over part... The training thing is the fact that I spent a lot of time training him hoping to do great things together and eventually making him a partner of my company.

Anyway, it's a long story....

The last sentence of your comment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZjOk2G80GM#t=77

It is alot like Diplomacy. You want to be honorable/nice until you are playing for the final outcome of your career, then you stop playing nice.

The CEO at one of the places I've worked basically screwed over 80+ people to get his retirement package [sold the company; his equity was worth millions] and they blindly trusted him right up until the day he did it. Those 80 people were laid off shortly after and the jobs were moved some place cheaper and/or into the buying company.

I think the thing is the "dumb ones" stop playing nice before it is the final round of their career and they have years/decades for it to catch up with them.

I hadn't heard of Diplomacy until I read the Grantland article [1] that was posted here yesterday.

"It is alot like Diplomacy. You want to be honorable/nice until you are playing for the final outcome of your career, then you stop playing nice." This sentence correlates exactly with the climax of that article.

  I don’t want to hurt the other players just to get that win, he had always thought. Additionally, by always being a trustworthy ally who plays honorably, Haver had built up a reputation as someone who was good to work with in tournaments. “That’s why it was easy for people on my board to say, ‘He’s not going to stab his ally.’

  “And that’s what allowed me to do it when I did.”

I am, however, hopeful that I would continue to be honorable through the end of my career. That's how you leave a legacy.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913183

I used to play Diplomacy in High School and we all pretty much played that way. ;)

I generally assume that is how people in the real world behave as well and I'm usually right. It is part of why I'll never be a libertarian, when the counterweight is gone the knives come out. Human nature is ugly when they know they can get away with it.

> I am, however, hopeful that I would continue to be honorable through the end of my career. That's how you leave a legacy.

I hope you are too. :) It makes you a good person that you'd choose to do the right thing over self interest when the only thing that stops you from it is you.

I'm not sure I'm that good of a person and I know many people I've met IRL aren't.

Everyone is throwing around "nice" like it is a well-defined term and not a fluff word. Let's try to define it a little better.

In my experience, there are 3 types of "nice". One is where somebody is subservient to you. Another is when a person is polite and tells you what you want to hear. The other is where somebody is honest and can be counted on to do what they promise.

I propose that you cannot be either #1 or #2 and #3.

A subservient doormat may seem great, but don't forget that you are not the only person they will grovel to. They will follow the most dominant person, and you can't count on it being you forever. They are cowards that cannot be trusted.

#2, pulling no punches, is a two-faced liar. They are the primary suspects for back-stabbing. Being "nice" is used as a tool to gain your trust.

#3 can be rude and abrasive. If they are angry with you, they will act angry with you. They will tell you the truth, even if it hurts your feelings.

Being rude and being duplicitous are almost always opposites, but both can be described as being "not nice." If I had a beach house, I'd like people to be the #2 type of nice. My goal there would be to relax, so please don't burst my obliviousness bubble. But when I get back to work I'd rather have my allys be #3.

I believe the conversation is about being like #3, but without being rude and abrasive. It's possible. Being honest and reliable does not excuse rudeness and abrasiveness. In my experience, rudeness and abrasiveness are indicative that the person has not had to/been able to grow up. Perhaps they have extreme talent. Perhaps they have lived a life of extreme focus. Perhaps their moms still look after them. The reason doesn't much matter.

#s 1 and 2 are bullshit.

I would argue that the qualities of "rude" and "abrasive" are similar to "offensive" - They are judgements by the observer, not objective qualities of the observed. What is abrasive to one person might be fine for another. If you are the type of person that gets his panties in a bunch when somebody says something you don't like, maybe you are the one who still needs his mommy?

Indeed, society's norms are something like GAAP, but for interactions. There will certainly be deviations, a population of observers party to those behaviors would agree.

But then there are those behaviors that a majority of observers would classify as 'douche-y' or something synonymous. In that sense they are qualities of the observed. Sometimes it's accidental- we've all done that. Most of us feel a little bad when we realize that we've unintentionally hurt someone's feelings, even if we think we've done it for their own good. Sometimes the person has no idea- missing the social cues that they've said or done something painful to another. These people can't be blamed any more than an albino can be blamed for the color of her skin.

Then there are the assholes, the ones who are smug about their 'directness,' who take some pride in keeping others off balance. Kind of like the big loudmouth at the bar that nobody messes with because they are simply intimidated, these people seem to get some social ego benefit from their behavior. They have no class.

I work with a legitimately talented and hard-working Lead Architect who is not nice.

He's constantly petty, degrading, and passive-aggressive. He'll interpret whatever you say in whichever way allows him to insult you. His "arch reviews" are provided in a way that makes people feel shitty instead of making them smarter. He doesn't create sharable documents or written guidance. He is, in essence, a borderless micro-manager, who shits on the whole damned engineering team.

He's tolerated by the CEO because he shipped the first version of the product quickly, so the CEO thinks he's brilliant.

He's tolerated by the CTO because the CTO doesn't realize that his ego and passive-aggressiveness have both swelled as the company has grown.

He is the reason that many of our best engineers have left. Every single one of his direct reports has transferred or quit in less than 12 months.

He is undermining a great company.

At this point, he better hope that we have a great outcome despite his bullshit, because if he doesn't make enough money to retire, he's fucked. Zero of the engineers (and engineering management) would ever work with him, ever again. It's too lousy of an experience.

And the really sad thing is that if he was just nice about stuff, he'd be one of our best employees. But he has to be a dick about every single little thing. He has to be snarky. He has to be the smartest guy in the room. On all topics.

I spent a long time in the South Florida IT job market. In an area with millions of people and thousands of companies, it never ceased to amaze me how many people in the field knew each other. One of the key factors in job-hunting, then, was your reputation. If you did good work and people liked working with you, there was usually something available. If either of those things wasn't true, life was more difficult. A consulting firm founder down there used to say 'People like working with people they like to work with'. It pays to invest in your friendships and your decency as well as in your technical chops.

I'm not going to lie, this sounds like hell. Places like that make outcasts of anybody who makes the rest "look bad" by "working too hard." It's nice to be valued for your technical skills when you consider the alternative.

Well it is South Florida. I worked with a German software company that for strange reasons opened their US office in Miami. We had a terrible time getting people, although a lot of that was on us. We eventually moved it somewhere else and things were a lot smoother.

I never saw someone become an outcast in the community for working harder or smarter. A given organization might operate like that, but the whole point of a community is that there's more to the world than one organization and one job. I've seen plenty of good people pulled out of bad situations by the community.

"We know that some of the most successful entrepreneurs in tech have been difficult individuals who did what they had to do to get ahead.",

"We know that a lot of investors, VCs included, will do what is required to make a buck.",

"It's conventional wisdom that being nice is a bad idea",

followed by a singular anecdotal data point arguing otherwise. I'd posit that it depends on the actual business domain. Some are cutthroat and being nice is gonna be a world of pain for you. I'm not doing dry flower arrangements myself, so I wouldn't know. But in my domain (games) being nice bit me on my ass as much as being mean (if that's even an antonym to nice) did.

So, in conclusion, it's a perpetual dilemma, not one-size-fit-all.

EDIT:

The whole article is a bit disingenuous imho. Title might as well be paraphrased as "Be nice or I'm gonna be mean".

Another food for thought - etymology of nice is from Latin nescius, meaning ignorant.

I like to think the article means to say: be nice and fair, including to yourself.

I have noticed certain people seem to think 'being nice' equals 'dumb' and 'unexperienced'. Most people are so used to others claiming everything; their time, their concepts, designs,… they think just because you're not an asshole, you're a push-over.

My boss is a former M&A guy, and very very financially focussed but: I have a lot of trust in him, because I know that he will always delegate to "doing the right thing" over a quick buck. That's saved him a lot of money in working with me when it's come to bonus, salary, or work-related negotiations.

This reminds me of the book "Getting to Yes".

If you take a principled stand in negotiations and truly want what is fair, you can separate the issue at hand from the people. In doing so, you can be polite and nice, while not getting steamrolled in negotiation. You can look at negotiations like working together to get to agreement on what is fair and best for both parties, instead of fighting against one another to get as much as you can. It also allows you to say "no" in a non-personal way, because you're only doing what makes sense for your side.

There appear to be a number of anecdotes in the book Hatching Twitter where Fred Wilson is painted as the bad guy. I wonder how much of this was for the book, or how possibly I am misinterpreting it.

I have not read the book myself. I do have a former coworker who was fairly involved in the early days Twitter, who told me the book definitely was a biased account of events. I would not blindly trust it.

"nice guys finish last" and other bs is what drives that culture.

The fact that some of the idols in the tech industry are definitely not nice (and in fact are revered for that) does not help either.

Your reputation is your most hard won capital, spend it wisely.

Being nice is easy. Being good is hard.

What's missing here is that powerful people are almost always transacting on behalf of many others who are not present at the bargaining table. By being nice, they may be trading other people's money for personal goodwill that they get to keep for themselves. This is "being nice" in some ways, but this isn't good for society and may be highly unethical. Would you want government regulators to be nice to the industry people they are regulating because in the long run they benefit from having good relationship with industry leaders? Would you want hedge fund managers who's managing your money to be nice to banks, that is, overpay for services, because fees come out of your pocket while they can monetize the relationship in the future? Would you want college admissions officers to be nice to their friends with college-bound kids? When you're applying for internships, would you want the hiring managers to be nice to all their church friends who may need something to do during the summer?

People in powerful positions being nice to personal acquaintances at the expense of strangers is a huge problem and the root of all corruption. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be nice - being ethical and balancing the interests of all parties involved is an extremely tricky proposition but I'm surprised at the amount of agreement here, because so much of what people complain about around here often comes down to other people being nice to one another at your expense.

Edit: I'm especially surprised that a VC would make such a comment because it's an industry where being nice for the sake of relationship can be highly unethical. You're always working with other people's money and whether as an investor or a board member, you're often responsible for making decisions that benefit people you represent even if it involves some kind of hit to your "nice" reputation. At the top level of management, big decisions are rarely easy and always have winners and losers.

Edit2: As another example, the recent non-poaching deal between SV companies was probably rationalized as "let's be nice to one another" while those that didn't participate were seen as not being nice or being too cutthroat. Niceness between natural competitors can quickly lead to a collusive agreement.

Edit3: I'm not advising any specific course of action, simply noting that the advice as given is far too vague and can often lead to rationalization of highly unethical activities. I'm sure Steve Jobs thought Google trying to recruit Apple employees was "Google screwing over Apple" and the consequent no-poach agreement is partners being nice to one another.

Edit4: Dreamweapon, I didn't downvote you (don't have the power anyway) but regulators work with executives, directors and employees who are people. Regulators have strong incentives to cultivate relationships with people in the industry so that they can transition into the private sector. Likewise, hedge fund managers aren't trying to be nice to the banks - they are being nice to specific salespeople, brokers and bankers because they can expect favors in return. Also favoritism to people you know is being nice to people you know - the gist of what's being advocated here is be nice to people you know, because relationship.

> I'm especially surprised that a VC would make such a comment because it's an industry where being nice for the sake of relationship can be highly unethical.

I think you need to read the rest of this thread, especially the portions noting how one often has to work with people long after any given decision to be nice or not.

But additionally you also assume that being nice somehow shortchanges your ability to advocate or make good decisions, which isn't the case.

Being nice does prevent you from making decisions to screw people over, and if that's what you're referring to then I'm glad VCs are not taking your advice on this.

By your reasoning Amazon are crazy for keeping as low margins as they are. They are leaving money on the table in the belief that as long as they stay somewhat profitable their future earnings will outweigh the short-term benefits from the money grab they certainly could make. They also have the added benefit of being hard to attack this way.

Fred Wilson is making a similar argument. By leaving some money on the table you increase your long term growth potential. People will be more likely to make deals with his funds if they know that he will make them a good deal rather than try to make the best deal for himself. His belief is that that strategy has a better chance of success, as he will get in on more good deals than someone who doesnt.

As long as he is open about that fact I see no problem. If you dont believe that is a good strategy you shouldnt invest with him. If you do, you should, in the same way that you should buy amazon stock if you believe in their strategy.

Running low margins in retail is often more of a really cutthroat business strategy, rather than simply trying to be nice to customers. You can easily run smaller competitors out of business, and increase your volume and overall profits, by making the competition unable to compete.

"Predatory pricing" has the name it has becuase its..not 'nice'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

It is also one of the easiest ways to bankrupt your own business.

Business Admin 101 - Approaches to combat Predatory Pricing.

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/herbert-dow-and-predat...

Predatory pricing is usually subsidized by unrelated but profitable lines of other business--which makes it sustainable (in that context).

Evidence?

Would you want government regulators to be nice to the industry people they are regulating because in the long run they benefit from having good relationship with industry leaders? Would you want hedge fund managers who's managing your money to be nice to banks, that is, overpay for services, because fees come out of your pocket while they can monetize the relationship in the future?

Umm, I think Fred was suggesting that we be nice to other people, not nice to abstract entities such as banks, or companies subject to government regulation. Also, the examples you cite would clearly fall under what Fred means when he says "I am not saying you should be overly generous or nice to a fault."

Would you want college admissions officers to be nice to their friends with college-bound kids?

That's not being "nice", that's favoritism.

EDIT: sentence added in first paragraph.

Downvoter - explain, please.

Abstract corporations are legal persons, but they are fictitious in the sense of relatinoship building. Relationships are only built with actual people, who may or may not have perfectly aligned interests with the legal entities they work for. This is both true in the instant (a VC might have more than one fund he invests from) and over a lifetime/career (that same VC migh work for various wholly distinct legal entities and /or transition between investing and operational roles. Similarly, governments and banks are run by people wearing multiple hats -- take alook at how many legal entities were inside of enron, lehmand, or one of the other TBTF entities just for some perspective. Other large corporations are likewise composites of various fiefdoms and P&Ls and are not at all aligned internally at the personal level.

edit: I didn't downvote you, but its just part of the picture that might expain something.

Banks and other companies are not abstract entities to the people doing the negotiations; they are other negotiators and people like you. Being nice is a good way to improve relations with the other party, but this can often be short-sighted or even self-serving if you aren't taking into account the best interests of other people not present in negotiations; plenty of government representatives play nice with their donors to secure future campaign money, and/or ensure a cushy position with that company after leaving office, for example.

In the specific case of open source software / IT scene, which I believe is in part a "business" a this point since a lot of programmers see it as a way of self promotion (which surely is), and many companies build OSS software even if the way it is created is mostly closed-source-alike, I believe that there is a tension between being nice and be successful. It boils down to the fact popularity among IT folks can be reached in two main ways. 1) Build great stuff. 2) Criticize stuff and set a new trend (either for self-promotion or to move people to your product). "2" is a lot simpler than "1", and "2" is definitely not about being nice, so the result is that the IT community is full of people that are not nice and I think this is not going to change in the long run since there are big gains in not being nice.

Being nice is like the Prisoner's Dilemma. It doesn't pay in the short term, but people who are consistently nice to each other help out in the long run. This is why CEOs that are nasty are actually the exception, though some of their lower level attendants can be jerks. If you aren't trustworthy, you lose access to a lot of people and opportunities.

Possibly related: last week on This Week In Startups, the interview with Yossi Vardi discussed his philosophy of only investing in "nice" people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozcfDoC-srM#t=14m37s

And later that week, during the interview with Gil Penchina, Jason mentions the benefits of being nice, after being screwed over by someone who shut him out of a deal and took advantage of a founder by offering them a term sheet & telling them not to shop it around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flX3NEb5bf0#t=30m49s

(more specific comments here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flX3NEb5bf0#t=37m57s

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it's curious to see so much discussion of "nice" at the moment.

This is especially true for VCs. Since dozen of winners generate 90% of returns you should by all means attract the best companies. This is not apparent in stock market.

Apart from moral side and integrity. Defaulting to not being evil will yield the best return in the long term. You should do it even if your motives are purely selfish.

We also have one of those signs, from when a good friend lived next door to Dr. Bob's workshop (he being the purveyor of those signs). He's an incredible (and incredibly oddball) guy, and a visit to his workshop / junkyard is a great example of the part of New Orleans that most visitors never see.

I think this all is based on a person's comfort level with conflict.

A) I can't sleep at night when I possibly was a jerk.

B)Other's sleep with a smile on their face.

Sometimes the room is full of type A or B and everything is good. 95% of the time the room is full of A + B and A thinks they are jerks and B thinks that A is just stupid.

I've found that the people that seem the nicest are the worst people to do business with. Niceness is often mistaken for not telling the whole truth.

Also, many of those nice people often disappear when the shit hits the fan, because they don't want to be seen bringing bad news. That doesn't fit with the "nice" image they have of themselves.

All things being equal I would rather do business with an honest asshole than a nice person I cannot trust.

Niceness is overrated. Not screwing people over and being "nice" are two very different things.

One of the biggest companies in the world invited us the little guy innovator to demo our new technology. They were down right NASTY and mean.

I say this not because they didn't buy us out, but because we spent our money to fly to the valley to demo our tech only to learn they blocked our tech from working and said things like, you better run the race is on.

They also baited us with money and opportunity if we told them how our tech worked. We took the bait and they kicked us out!

Not sure why they had to be such jerks!?!

It is all about taking the short-term vs. long term approach. Both would work -- but I would prefer the latter.

Focus on short-term, work towards maximize profit/value and capture immediate benefits (without taking into account other's thoughts). If it works that's great, but most likely it won't.

Or focus on long-term - invest in people (your time and resources). No immediate benefits but long-term returns are likely higher.

This reminds me of a piece of advice I heard somewhere, which I keep coming back to – "be someone that people want to work with again".

Sounds very American; like the server in a resteraunt being overly nice, making those of us who aren't used to the wallmart greeter style uncomfortable.

Cut the bull; I would rather people be more honest than be more nice (and if they are trying too hard, it's easy to tell). It's amazing how a bit of bluntness automatically influences me and how much niceness projection makes me sick.

Being nice doesn't mean being dishonest. It means treating people well.

So you and I are in a meeting and you throw out an idea. Would you rather me a) call you a fucking idiot without even thinking through what you said and move on or b) explain why I don't agree with your idea and let you clarify?

Even if the idea had zero merit, it is still in my long term interest to talk it through with you if I want you fully engaged on the team. The idea could be a teaching moment or even lead to an idea that works.

In the end it is not about being overly nice, but being respectful.

That's a ridiculous way to make a point.

Being blunt and calling someone a "fucking idiot" are not the same thing.

You're right that I was projecting my personal experiences. The people who I have worked with who called themselves blunt and honest were the same people who never defended an idea and instead resorted to calling everyone else idiots.

Saying you are blunt is often a way to sound superior or right when being rude to someone. Very few problems are as straight forward as 1+1=2, which is easy to state bluntly. Most problems though are more nuanced than that, and I have personally found that people who like to think themselves superior to others like to hide behind words like honest and blunt.

Depends how efficient you want to be about it. Also, respectful is quite different from "nice," but people's definition of what being nice means is quite diverse.

What you say reminds of what I've experienced as an American that now lives in Europe (Switzerland).

Soon after moving I learned to not smile so much - I was told that it makes me look simpleminded. Especially in meetings, and especially in meetings with German clients. Meetings are serious and very efficient here. I don't even smile at the beginning during introductions.

I also learned that the German-style of an employee review is quite different than in the US. In the US my reviews always started with the good things I did - my accomplishments, and then the bad things but the focus of the review was on the positive. Here, the review starts with the failures and how you can improve yourself, and then covers the accomplishments to about the same degree that the failures are covered in the US.

Self-assessments are more honest here too. I don't think American's are being dishonest when they assess themselves in their review - I just think that Americans aren't good at critical self-evaluation.

I've worked in Switzerland, Germany, and France and they are all very different from each other. Germans are very straightforward and would be considered 'not nice' in the US. The French are political - they may appear nice while they stab you in the back. Germany-speaking Switzerland is more like Germany, but the Swiss are easier to work with - not as rigid. I only had a few projects in French-speaking Switzerland and only one of those were with native French-speaking Swiss but they seemed nicer than the French.

Frankly, I've come to prefer how things work where I live now. From the outside it may not appear to be 'nice'.

On average I would agree with you but you should definitely allow for huge company-to-company variation.

Oh, and your last sentence reminded me of something else. My Swiss company was bought by a large American Silicon Valley company. The first time the C-level staff came for an all-hands meeting was a strange experience.

The Americans were smiley and happy and joking around in the front of the large meeting room... I think I'm becoming more European because I felt like they looked like idiots (idiot in the literal sense). The Europeans (about 100) were quiet as they usually are in meetings - some polite chuckles when an American would tell a joke during his talk, but they were getting frustrated at how long the Americans were taking to get to the point.

I spoke with one of the C-level staff afterwards and I had to assure him that the Europeans weren't upset about the takeover - most of us were happy for it. The Europeans were just more serious and respectful than the Americans were used to.

I'm not originally from America, but at family gatherings everyone wants to be "nice"... instead of discussing how they feel.

IMHO Fred Wilson's point is basically "Don't be a jerk" but he doesn't seem like the person who avoid saying what needs to be said (eg. This idea isn't viable) just to be nice. There is a appropriate way to convey criticism, and then there is being a jerk. Avoid the latter.

Pareto Optimal solutions start with this behaviour

Funny how often conventional wisdom is wrong, and "not being nice" is no different. When you look at the great companies, they were always focused on relationships and generally doing the right thing. Being nice is good not only from a business standpoint, but a personal standpoint as well.

Almost everybody I have ever learned something truly valuable from was a nice person.

I have yet to meet an example of the single-minded-asshole-genius who is actually a success.

Most of the truly credible successes I have met are nice people and highly regarded.

While this is mostly based on hearsay, what about Steve Jobs?

From all the anecdotal accounts and unsubstantiated rumors I have heard, Steve Jobs was a reasonably intelligent, single-minded asshole, and Steve Wozniak was the super-nice-guy genius.

Everybody always pulls Steve Jobs out of the bag to try and illustrate the asshole boss paradigm.

Steve Jobs also used to burst into tears in the Boardroom sobbing about how unfair the system was.

I don't see many management books advocating that approach...bawling your eyes out until your business partners acquiesce.

But, if I ever meet a Steve Jobs, a single minded visionary who is seeking to shape the entire paradigm of personal computing...

...I still wouldn't let him talk to me the way Isaacson reports in his book. Fuck Steve Jobs.

Plus, when it came down to the wire, Microsoft owned them. Literally.

This post makes a claim, and provides minimal/no support for it. Really, the support is because it's a trustworthy source. But still, there's a lot more value in truly understanding the reasoning behind it.

I find this an interesting counter to the Diplomacy post (Alpha Nerd Game) yesterday. I wonder if the same rules apply in Fred's world.

> It’s not the fastest way to make a buck. It takes time. But it is way more sustainable than screwing people over.

Being nice != not(screwing people over)

Big difference.

Being nice in business is easy, it's the not-being-a-backstabing-jerk part that most people don't seem to get.

I think it is important to either be nice to everyone or to be an asshole to everyone. As simple as that

Too often I find that people who are nice in daily life are considered naive or push-overs. It is a skill to be kind to others and to retain the reputation of standing your ground. I'm not sure why there is confusion between having an opinion/looking out for yourself and being a jerk -- and this certainly shines through the most in business where everyone is looking to make money.

My boss is an extremely kind man, but when it comes down to it, he always comes out of meetings and negotiations with what he wanted. Everyone in the company highly respects him for it and everyone is better off because of it.

It's the same as knowing when to say "No."

> I'm not sure why there is confusion between having an opinion/looking out for yourself and being a jerk

Often it'd down to delivery, and how you interact with people, rather than having an opinion.

My "favorite" learning moment personally came when I was once stuck in a meeting room with a colleague while we were waiting for a document revision or something, and out of the blue he told me "you know, when I first joined, I thought you were a jerk". I was really taken aback, because I could not remember any instance of being rude to him.

He explained that he thought so because I apparently "always" raised objections when he came up with an idea, while I'd let dumb ideas from [other employee] slide. But eventually he'd accepted that my input tended to be right, and had come to understand that I didn't mean anything with it.

It dawned on me what the problem was: I let the dumb ideas from [other employee] slide, because I knew everyone recognised how unworkable they were. I wasn't trying to be nice - I was just not wasting my energy on it; let someone else shoot it down and move on.

But this guy often had quite good ideas, that I liked. So with total blindness to how it came across, I tore into them to weed out potential problems. To me, these ideas had merit, and needed to be given careful consideration, either so we had good reason if we rejected them, or to make sure we refined them into the best we could do.

But what I communicated was a stream of seemingly hostile arguments, because I did not realise that he needed acknowledgment that the idea was worthwhile and good; to me that was implicit: It was why I found it worthwhile talking about it.

So often, the difference between coming across as an opinionated jerk and a nice guy who stands up for his opinions is down to making people feel like you appreciate their input and listen carefully, and that you are negotiating a solution with them rather than just hammering through your own viewpoints, even if the end point ends up being essentially the same.

> negotiations with what he wanted. Everyone in the company highly respects him for it and everyone is better off because of it.

People love a strong negotiator, because a negotiation gives people a feeling of stake in the outcome. Someone who is recognisably a strong negotiator is often admired even when you come up against them and know logically you're getting a worse deal than you could have, because a good negotiation is about making the other side feel like it's a genuine give and take, and that you are being listened to (hopefully it is true as well...).

It comes naturally to people. My son often tries to negotiate his bedtime, and we try to accommodate that as much as possible, because we know from experience that when we negotiate from a starting point we set, he ends up going to bed earlier than he otherwise would, and does so happily and without protest, seemingly triumphant because he put in effort on it and got us to yield a bit on our starting position. When we negotiate a time, he'll even remind us when it is time to get him ready for bed, if we don't notice the time.

This is useful information. I can see myself having made this mistake. People don't love a strong negotiator in every culture and usually dislike women negotiating. But being able to work by collaborating and negotiating is really valuable for getting your views across.

There will always be conflict. I'm currently working with two of the nicest people I've ever met but we still have conflict and we still argue and 'fight' over big things such as direction of the company, goals for growth, etc.

It's a matter of how you fight - with these guys it's respectful arguing, sometimes raised voices, even talking over each other, but I know in the end that they're fair and we respect each other.

In my previous company I worked with one of scummiest people I've ever met and the fighting was quite different. He avoided it rather than addressed it, and he also seemed to take my disagreements personal. But from the outside it probably looked like he's 'nicer' than my current partners.

Heated arguments are not a sign of "not being nice", they're just a sign of differing opinions. If having a different opinion makes it impossible for you to "be nice", then you're not nice.

I worked at a company once that conflated mean-spirited policies with "just business". The result was a downfall that was entirely preventable.

Vacation and sick leave were combined ("PTO") which meant that you had to take a vacation day if you got sick. The result of this was that people came into work when ill and everyone was less productive. Very little ever got done in the winter, because it was just one constant office-wide cold. (I had so many colds, that season, that I saw a doctor to find out if something was wrong with my immune system.)

Open-plan offices are another penny-wise, pound-foolish institution. They're not used because they're "collaborative" or "hip" but because they're cheap, and they're cheap because they're shitty. The result, however, is high turnover, increased sick load, distraction and antagonism. There's also an overwhelming amount of evidence that open-plan offices hurt the best employees the most, which means you're losing off the top. That's not where you want to lose.

The killer was when it bought (cough rescued) another company and installed the acquired company's upper management. The new regime's first move was to kill the acquiring company's R&D team-- not because it wasn't doing useful work (it was) but because "their side" (the acquiring company) didn't have an R&D team. So a high-performing R&D team that had already built some powerful stuff (and was 6-9 months away from solving an existential-risk fraud problem) was shut down. Those guys over there have too much freedom! They're in danger of actually saving the company! Shut them down, now!

Of course, the health benefits were shit, which meant that days of work time were lost to haggling with insurance companies and hospitals about bills. Whatever pennies are saved by having a crappy health plan is lost when employees have to haggle on their own behalf to get health care.

Sometimes, cost cutting is the right way to go, but that's rare and usually in a well-understood existential crisis. As in, "this company won't be around in two years unless we're really tight, and here's how we plan to make it up".

I can't respect companies that play against their employees. If you have a crappy health plan, a bad PTO policy, closed allocation, stack ranking, and a bad office space, then you're not playing to win. Instead, you're in the business of competing against your employees, when you should be in the business of excelling at something, and of winning in the market. You only get to pick one, in the long term, in this world.

Unfortunately, for the individual executive, the "be a dick" strategy often works. Most "tech" startups are scams: companies not built to last, but just to be sold to some "greater fool" before it falls to pieces on account of its own sloppy constitution. The individuals who build these crap companies generally get to cash out (or, at least, move on to cushy venture capital jobs) before that happens and, when it does, they can plausibly (if falsely) blame their successors.

Our company uses PTO and open-plan offices, and while they're not ideal solutions, nothing is, and I think they get a bad rap around here.

As for PTO I appreciate my boss's explanation: "I just don't want any sniping over sick days. If you don't feel like you can come in and work, it should cost something. That way nobody will complain when someone calls in sick."

Similarly, I've heard a lot of complaints about open-plan offices, and frankly, I do think they're collaborative. Initially I didn't love the fact that I have to hear everyone's discussions around me, but it's certainly helped problems get solved quicker than they otherwise would. When two devs across the office are discussing a weird bug they're seeing it can have a lot of implications. Maybe you happened to see it two days ago it gives you the opportunity to chime in, or it allows the product manager to say "Guys, that feature isn't super important, if it's really hard we can just cut it", or it allows the QA guy to say "Let me know what area that affects so I can make sure to write some extra test cases". All of those situations seem innocuous when you're all working together, but if you're in separate offices or working remotely people will end up wasting time trying to figure these things out by themselves before reaching out for help.

These aren't ideal solutions, so you just have to be sure to take steps to mitigate the costs. With PTO you have to be generous with the time granted in order to account for the fact that it's employee's vacation + sick days, and with open offices you have to have a space employees can go to get serious work done without distractions. If you DO take those mitigating steps I think they're both good systems.

"As for PTO I appreciate my boss's explanation: "I just don't want any sniping over sick days. If you don't feel like you can come in and work, it should cost something. That way nobody will complain when someone calls in sick."

Time to quit. Your boss thinks your team is full of petty assholes who will complain when somebody takes a few days off for being sick.

It's not too bad if you get a minimum 6 weeks combined PTO. Still you will find people are more likely to come in when sick and drag the rest of the team down with them.

"All of those situations seem innocuous when you're all working together, but if you're in separate offices or working remotely people will end up wasting time trying to figure these things out by themselves before reaching out for help."

Firstly "wasting time trying to figure these things out by themselves" is a key part in overall learning and development. You want engineers to "waste time" like this.

Secondly, having worked in an open plan office for the last 5 years I've found I can help with maybe 2-3% of the conversations people in the office are having. I'm distracted by all of them and it results in chronic low productivity.

"and with open offices you have to have a space employees can go to get serious work done without distractions"

90% of your work should be "serious work". Open office employees are just used to chronic low productivity. When working from home I get 10x the amount of work done that I would at work. Quite honestly I could work at home Monday and then do pretty much no work at all Tuesday-Friday and my output would still be above average for the office.

Can't seem to read the article as the server's not working.

Also, this submission gets 11 votes even though it isn't readable? Strange.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com