Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

From the article: But insensitivity or disrespect often sabotages support in crucial situations. Employees may fail to share important information and withhold efforts or resources. Sooner or later, uncivil people sabotage their success — or at least their potential. Payback may come immediately or when they least expect it, and it may be intentional or unconscious.

It's a bit weird how the article paints this as a failure of the uncivil person - this is pretty clearly a failure of the sabotager. Some people are willing to harm random third parties (shareholders) in acts of petty revenge against those they dislike (for possibly valid reasons). Quite a bit of victim blaming going on there.

I agree that the person with power should - as a pragmatic move - attempt to behave in a manner that accounts for the bad acts of others. In much the same way, people should avoid putting themselves into situations where there is a high risk of crime. But the ultimate responsibility for an individual's actions lies on the individual, not the person who was "asking for it."

Putting it as "sabotage" is a bit too dramatic in my opinion. Say Mary walks her boss Tom through filing the necessary documentation every time they put a product on the market (even though it is really his job), and Tom always takes the credit if the product hits the market. This pisses off Mary because she is never acknowledged.

Now suppose when releasing Product Z, Mary says "Um, do it yourself. It's your job.", Tom fucks up the documentation, and the product tanks. I don't think Mary is a saboteur in this case at all -- she is just not being nice and going "above and beyond" like usual.

I suspect this sort of thing is what the article is referring to, and what occurs in the majority of cases.

I've been in the situation of Mary, sort of (no one was "taking credit", but I don't care much about such emotional concerns - pay me, let me do my job, I don't care). My action: I did the best I could for shareholders, including doing things that were blatantly not what I was hired for. When it became clear that it was going to be a long term task, I openly said I'd quit if I were expected to continue doing it.

Unlike the innocent victim of crime, shareholders create the culture that leads to the sabateurs. They reap what they sow.

The shareholders may (and likely are) completely unaware, particularly if the saboteurs are passive-aggressively harming the shareholders rather than honestly quitting.

Are you seriously suggesting that the uncivil boss is the real victim?

It's the only way people like that can justify their own sociopathic behavior.

No, I'm suggesting shareholders are the real victim. They are the ones paying agents to maximize their wealth while those agents pursue their own agendas instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...

>They are the ones paying agents to maximize their wealth while those agents pursue their own agendas instead.

I am a secret agent not just any agent...and I pursue my own agenda instead. lol

Dude, life is not an economics textbook. Have you actually worked in the real world with real people?

While the people taking illegal or immoral actions are responsible for their own reactions, it's possible for someone to call others to action through nothing but speech. If someone actively goes around pissing off as many people as possible, how is it not in someways "their own fault" when someone reacts poorly to this?

Also, as another poster said, calling the pissed-off employer a "sabotager" is not actually what the article is saying. The manager may "sabotage" their own success by causing all of the employees under themselves to quit en masse. Is this a "bad" action that only the employees are responsible for, leaving the manager as the poor and helpless victim?

> Some people are willing to harm random third parties (shareholders) in acts of petty revenge against those they dislike (for possibly valid reasons).

Make your employees shareholders; problem solved.

>But the ultimate responsibility for an individual's actions lies on the individual [...]

Or it doesn't. It could easily lie on the culture. Or the ones with the power to change things more easily.

But whatever. I guess you read your tea leaves and divined the nature of human responsibility from reality itself, so there's no reason to think about it or anything.

If I'm part of the sexist lower class Indian culture, or Islamist/certain African/FGM culture, is my choice to assault a woman not ultimately my responsibility?

Or is "culture made me do it" only an excuse when you sympathize with the action?

"Some people are willing to harm random third parties (shareholders)"

Shareholders do this to employees all the time. So I cannot blame employees for not caring about the shareholders, when the shareholders have shown so much contempt for employees.

"It's a bit weird how the article paints this as a failure of the uncivil person"

Because it is. If you're an asshole to me, why on earth would you expect that I want to help you? Or do anything more than the bare minimum?

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