Assholes: A Probing Examination • Hacker News Board

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#91

Post by dusklight » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:28 AM UTC

glangdale wrote: post #59

This article is overly fixated on overt assholery. Much of the worst asshole behavior I've encountered has been done by people who are outwardly polite and high functioning and have often never had a cross word for anyone. I would much rather get a tersely worded group email (ooo) than have to do someone else's job for them. Let's be frank. The #1 asshole thing not mentioned here is (shouting and swearing alert) NOT…

Eh at the very beginning of the article, the writer states that this article is exclusively about smart assholes, assholes who are good at their job. Someone who is not doing their job is not a smart asshole and is much more easily identified and removed.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#92

Post by harryf » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:34 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #77

Hello, my name is Cole and I can be an asshole. The definition posted of an asshole casts a very wide net making discussion difficult. Diversity is important and it isn't just about sex and skin color. People act differently, people have different priorities, confidence varies, life situations outside of work alters behavior as do medical conditions and treatments. Different cultures even in this country value vastly…

> Sorting people into bins: assholes and victims, is problematic.

This is true of anything subjective. There are people (intentional assholes in this article) who absolutely _are_ assholes because it gives them pleasure - their ego or otherwise gains something from hurting others. Everyone in a company knows who they without needing to go through a labelling process. Ultimately it's a problem for leaders in a company, those that should be caring about the culture, to remove such people.

Paul Graham described this long ago here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacbJ72dluU (starts at 4m20s) - a leader in YCombinator he makes the judgement calls.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#93

Post by Hamuko » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

glangdale wrote: post #59

This article is overly fixated on overt assholery. Much of the worst asshole behavior I've encountered has been done by people who are outwardly polite and high functioning and have often never had a cross word for anyone. I would much rather get a tersely worded group email (ooo) than have to do someone else's job for them. Let's be frank. The #1 asshole thing not mentioned here is (shouting and swearing alert) NOT…

>Let's be frank. The #1 asshole thing not mentioned here is (shouting and swearing alert) NOT DOING YOUR FUCKING JOB. This is an immense source of frustration for other people, whether because they have to do the person's job for them, or because the person's failure to do their job creates disasters.

One additional problem that I have with this: I feel like the asshole in this situation.

I recall one instance where one of my coworkers was teaching the interns how to do things. When I was working on the code, unit tests failed totally. After spending hours figuring out what had happened, it turns out that the two interns hadn't run the unit tests locally before pushing. And then I had to round up the person teaching the interns as well as the interns and figure out what they had done and what had they had been taught about running tests.

Luckily people tend to learn from their mistakes, so hopefully the end result is that the interns remember the importance of testing with the expense that I look like an asshole.

The chain of events was really the combination of mistakes from the interns (since apparently one of them had been running tests, but with some misguided ideas), from the person training them and the management for thinking we should hire a bunch of interns at the same time and offload their training on couple of people. You can obviously form your opinions on how much of the blame is on which party.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#94

Post by abyssin » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

deanmoriarty wrote: post #69

I’ve been struggling a little bit with this myself, and while I don’t think it’s been a massive problem for me (yet), I am aware of it. I have a very assertive personality, which has done wonders for my career despite my average technical competency. Managers love to hear from me because I have (and have been told so) good communication skills, specifically the ability to quickly summarize pros and cons of solutions,…

I can find myself in your description. One thing I conscientiously do in the hope of not being an asshole is using my assertiveness to publicly praise those brilliant introvert coworkers that I feel deserve more recognition than they get.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#95

Post by DyslexicAtheist » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

d--b wrote: post #87

I work for a company where the CEO has specifically implemented a "no-asshole strategy" from the start. He too talked about the "asshole effect" that causes companies to fall apart. Hire one asshole, and everybody eventually turns into an asshole. Results: the company is only nice guys, and it feels so good. Sure we occasionally hire the asshole. But they're rooted out fairly quickly. How to keep assholes at bay: 1.…

sounds like your boss builds a company on the assumption that people can never change. From my experience if you have a strong team with good core values it's easy to absorb and change / condition the behavior of the odd outlier. In fact that outlier will realize that they need to adapt to the new environment (and when they do you have changed that person's outlook and maybe even their mental health and insecurities).

The sooner we realize people's character isn't a binary good or bad and that we are all the victims of our own insecurities, the better we'll be off. Alternatively we can like your employer create policies which keeps us in our own bubble thinking that we're the good guys (this is when we're also runny risk of actually becoming what we set out to destroy).

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#96

Post by treerock » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:43 AM UTC

dusklight wrote: post #91

glangdale wrote: post #59

This article is overly fixated on overt assholery. Much of the worst asshole behavior I've encountered has been done by people who are outwardly polite and high functioning and have often never had a cross word for anyone. I would much rather get a tersely worded group email (ooo) than have to do someone else's job for them. Let's be frank. The #1 asshole thing not mentioned here is (shouting and swearing alert) NOT…

Eh at the very beginning of the article, the writer states that this article is exclusively about smart assholes, assholes who are good at their job. Someone who is not doing their job is not a smart asshole and is much more easily identified and removed.

From the article:

>I’m specifically addressing the epidemic of smart assholes that are actually good at their jobs, at least on paper.

There are plenty of smart arseholes, who can do their job well (if they wanted) but prefer to be an arsehole. I'm reminded of the Sociopath layer in the Gervais Principle.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#97

Post by dusklight » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:44 AM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #70

NoodleIncident wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a straightforward list of specific behaviors early in the article. None of it is defined by how anyone else feels; that's just the effect of someone who engages in that asshole behavior on a regular basis. The next comment down and probably half of the readers are trying to figure out if they're the asshole themselves, so I don't know where you got the idea that "you" are never the asshole. (Sure is great ho…

I can't help but regard some on the list with suspicion as being far more own fragile ego driven than any actual assholishness. More "you made the sociopath angry by not going along with his bullshit" ones which I see in the anti smart "jerks" one. Some of them are unconditionally valid of course but the list includes questionable ones. * Publicly calling out and blaming others What if they actually are to blame or d…

No. Your response is the reasoning that every non-asshole makes as they get converted into an asshole because of their interactions with assholes. The response to someone being an asshole to you shouldn't be to be an asshole back to them. That is how assholes spread. It is possible to disagree without being an asshole. Just watch some videos of Obama responding to republican talking points for some examples.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#98

Post by d--b » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:52 AM UTC

wozmirek wrote: post #89

d--b wrote: post #87

I work for a company where the CEO has specifically implemented a "no-asshole strategy" from the start. He too talked about the "asshole effect" that causes companies to fall apart. Hire one asshole, and everybody eventually turns into an asshole. Results: the company is only nice guys, and it feels so good. Sure we occasionally hire the asshole. But they're rooted out fairly quickly. How to keep assholes at bay: 1.…

Interesting bit about the 18 interviews. While your company sounds like something really cool, I'd probably not go through all those interviews unless a) they're brief and we move through them quickly (like, in Regarding c) - 18 interviews, each taking at least 30 minutes (screening would be 15 on average but other would make up for it), that's roughly 9 full hours of my very own time, if not more.

I had one quick phone screening, then 2-3 hours on Skype, then they flew me over for a full day of interviews. the whole thing was less than a month.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#99

Post by harryf » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:54 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #77

Hello, my name is Cole and I can be an asshole. The definition posted of an asshole casts a very wide net making discussion difficult. Diversity is important and it isn't just about sex and skin color. People act differently, people have different priorities, confidence varies, life situations outside of work alters behavior as do medical conditions and treatments. Different cultures even in this country value vastly…

Oh and the other thing I didn't see anyone address is teaching "victims" the right Ju-Jitsu for dealing with (intentional) assholes / bullying - the mindset of don't let anyone make you a victim.

I had the "good fortune" of having an internship years ago with a tyrant. This person loved publicly shaming the interns, among a whole bunch of other toxic behaviour, continual needling etc. etc. Their life was a mess, marriage falling apart and alcoholic but beating up the interns was this person's way of boosting their ego up again. They were also a master of ducking and deflecting any possible blame.

Being on the receiving end of this for a year, I was so upset and frustrated that I vowed never to let it happen to me again.

After trying various strategies I found the most effective solution is very simple: get a group of people laugh at the asshole, ideally as a direct response to bullying from them in a group setting. Typically you only need to pull that off once and they will leave you alone from that point on - most bullys are cowards in the face of real resistance. Actually you don't even need to be funny - you just need to do something that can't missed by the group or the bully and creates awkwardness, e.g. a loud, slow clap in response to their comment then if they quiz you on it, you just say "Just giving you a round of applause"

I could write a lot more on this, and much of it would be easy to misinterpret in today's PC culture so I won't but, in essence: don't fall into a victim mindset - stand up for yourself.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#100

Post by dusklight » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 9:54 AM UTC

Iv wrote: post #58

rodhilton wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I linked to as much hard evidence as I could but I'll agree that it's a little light. My hunch, just based on my own observation doing this for 20 years, is that an asshole is like a black hole of productivity, draining it from everyone else to such an extent that they're simply not worth having around, and that no matter how Brilliant they are, the rest of the team can figure out their areas of expertise with the mo…

Disclaimer: I am an independent contractor mostly because I fled what I consider structural defects of the corporate world, so a bit biased. Isn't it a matter of management though? Assholes can be productive to a company if you have a good manager doing damage control and sinking time into firewalling the asshole. Given the prevalence of this disease and the abundance of managers, it seems like a good way to increase…

Why do you believe that the optimal point for a business is maintaining the employees on the edge of quitting? What are the pros and cons of doing this?