Not being an asshole will make you more money • Hacker News Board

Re: Not being an asshole will make you more money

#61

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

Of course it won't. Otherwise the advertising industry wouldn't exist.

More than that. In general, the market rewards being asshole and borderline fraudster. Reputation is a thing within smaller groups, but what matters is primarily reputation related to your behavior towards your peers in that group. And if your peer group is composed of assholes, then being an asshole is a positive trait as long as you're not an asshole towards members of that group.

Another thing: when you're a no-name upstart, reputation matters little because nobody knows you. When you're a large, successful business, any bad reputation can be compensated by proportionate spending on PR and advertising.

Yet another thing: in B2C, consumers often don't have a meaningful choice. An individual is juggling a lot of different priorities in their lives, not least of which is "saving money" and "buying stuff one likes". So e.g. Coca-Cola does a pretty lot of evil stuff, but people have strong taste preferences in the product category Coca-Cola sells, so nobody really boycotts them. Or, pretty much every major brand of smartphones is doing evil things, and every major telco provider is filled with assholes - yet as a citizen of the western world, I really do need to have a smartphone. So I have to choose someone. Or, a grocery store next to the place I used to live would wash stale meat with detergent and sell as fresh. This lands straight into asshole category, but I still went there, because a) it was the closest store, and b) I have no guarantee other stores don't do the same (and plenty of reasons to suspect they do).

And yet another thing: taking VC investments; when investors come knocking for their returns, plenty of startups are forced to become assholes.

--

TL;DR: The market rewards assholes. If you're not an asshole, your competitors will force you to either become one, or get marginalized. There's an excellent essay that goes into details about the mechanics of that: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.

Re: Not being an asshole will make you more money

#62

Post by throwanem » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #60

mediaman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that easy to accept only your own changes though. You can accept all changes, or reject all changes, but accepting only your own and rejecting others, at least in Word, takes specific effort.

I attribute user error and stupidity when most people attribute malicious intent. 99% of the time, I am correct. I'm betting that, if the lawyer was not acting maliciously , s/he used the wrong version of the document to accept changes.

Fair point. On the other hand, I'm not much more inclined to work with a stupid lawyer than a malicious one. If he opens by screwing up this badly, what's he going to do next?

There are some cases in which granting the benefit of the doubt is too much of a risk to be worth taking.

Re: Not being an asshole will make you more money

#63

Post by ta1234567890 » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

A few years ago I started a company, then raised money through convertible notes. By the time the notes were due (2 years), we weren't ready to raise a round yet, so all investors extended their notes. All except one.

The investor that didn't want to extend the note was also the CEO of the company that was our largest client, so not only did he call his note, he also ended his company's contract, making a huge hole in our revenue.

After doing that, and knowing that the company would be struggling financially, he sued, forcing the company into bankruptcy.

From the beginning we tried negotiating a payment plan or some other form of compensation, to no avail. Although at some point he did "offer" to completely take over the company and fire the founders (which we of course refused).

During bankruptcy, he took over the assets of the company while also giving us and the trustee a hard time.

Now, after having ruined the jobs of everyone that worked at our company plus the potential upside of all the other investors and shareholders, he is suing me and my cofounder personally.

The company closed 2 years ago and it looks like this new lawsuit will take another 2 years. Also no one knows if this guy is going to stop at that.

Be very careful about doing business with assholes, especially if they have a lot of money and you will be taking any type of potential liability (e.g. debt) in their favor, even if it's not personal liability, they might still try to go after you and make your life miserable.

Re: Not being an asshole will make you more money

#64

Post by izacus » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #11

seanhunter wrote: post #5

I have an example. In a previous role was in a position where we were negotiating a large-ish (>1M USD) multi-year contract when our client asked us to also do a proof of concept about some topic. It was just 1 week or 2 weeks so I said it would be free but because of various regulatory stuff we needed a contract in place. I was dealing with the same purchasing lawyer on both contracts. The process was super-standard…

Are you sure it wasn’t a genuine mistake?

No, I've had this happen when drawing up contracts with American lawyers way too many times for it to be mistakes. We've had lawyers try to sneak in one sided clauses after we agreed differently with business owners pretty much constantly.

It always significantly deteriorated relations with that company. But I guess Americans think that's fine because "it's just business".

Re: Not being an asshole will make you more money

#65

Post by moron4hire » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

meritt wrote: post #32

seanhunter wrote: post #5

I have an example. In a previous role was in a position where we were negotiating a large-ish (>1M USD) multi-year contract when our client asked us to also do a proof of concept about some topic. It was just 1 week or 2 weeks so I said it would be free but because of various regulatory stuff we needed a contract in place. I was dealing with the same purchasing lawyer on both contracts. The process was super-standard…

> by backing out all of our changes and only putting in his changes That so feels like a mistake because that's the sort of tactic that would completely and utterly remove their capability of ever working as a corporate lawyer ever again for any company. If that genuinely happened, that lawyer needs to be disbarred, but that's a pretty damn egregious accusation.

> That so feels like a mistake because that's the sort of tactic that would completely and utterly remove your capability of ever working as a corporate lawyer ever again for any company.

No, that's basically SOP for big corporate lawyers.

Re: Not being an asshole will make you more money

#66

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #62

Loughla wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attribute user error and stupidity when most people attribute malicious intent. 99% of the time, I am correct. I'm betting that, if the lawyer was not acting maliciously , s/he used the wrong version of the document to accept changes.

Fair point. On the other hand, I'm not much more inclined to work with a stupid lawyer than a malicious one. If he opens by screwing up this badly, what's he going to do next? There are some cases in which granting the benefit of the doubt is too much of a risk to be worth taking.

[deleted]

Re: Not being an asshole will make you more money

#67

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

asjw wrote: post #31

BigBubbleButt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And 9 out of the top 10 American billionaires are self-made. It's amazing how you can use the same data to argue the opposite point, just on how you frame it.

I don't think that is true Warren Buffet' father was a congressman Larry Page's father was a professor of computer science at University Sergey Brin's father was professor of mathematics at University and his mother worked at NASA these are the first three I looked up and they don't look like low or middle class

How are professors not middle class, financially? Academia doesn't pay particularly well.

Re: Not being an asshole will make you more money

#68

Post by Loughla » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #62

Loughla wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attribute user error and stupidity when most people attribute malicious intent. 99% of the time, I am correct. I'm betting that, if the lawyer was not acting maliciously , s/he used the wrong version of the document to accept changes.

Fair point. On the other hand, I'm not much more inclined to work with a stupid lawyer than a malicious one. If he opens by screwing up this badly, what's he going to do next? There are some cases in which granting the benefit of the doubt is too much of a risk to be worth taking.

Oh, absolutely. Making a stupid mistake isn't necessarily better than malicious intent. I wouldn't work with either of those people, especially if my livelihood is involved.

I was just saying that I tend to err on the side of stupidity. Most people are stupid. Very few are bad actors in their day-to-day lives.

Re: Not being an asshole will make you more money

#69

Post by SkyBelow » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

BigBubbleButt wrote: post #18

fenwick67 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 out of the top 15 American billionaires inherited their wealth, that is the secret to wealth, have rich parents.

And 9 out of the top 10 American billionaires are self-made. It's amazing how you can use the same data to argue the opposite point, just on how you frame it.

Are they self made? They might have made billions, but did they come from wealthy well connected families that or were they self made? Turning a million into a billion is significantly easier than turning a hundred into a billion because it buys you the ability to try without risking your future.

Re: Not being an asshole will make you more money

#70

Post by cooperadymas » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

BigBubbleButt wrote: post #18

fenwick67 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 out of the top 15 American billionaires inherited their wealth, that is the secret to wealth, have rich parents.

And 9 out of the top 10 American billionaires are self-made. It's amazing how you can use the same data to argue the opposite point, just on how you frame it.

Every time someone brings up people being self-made the discussion turns into post hoc justification. It seems that we can't simply accept someone's immense success and we must find some excuse for why they made it. Yes, luck and the people around them play a role in any success (and equally, in any failure) and that must be accounted for, but that's not nearly enough to automatically discount the actual person.

I guarantee if a the son of a middle class innkeeper with an absentee father from Greenbow, Alabama became a billionaire people would say he had an advantage because he got to experience a diverse group of people as a kid and had a loving mother who supported him. An orphan living on the streets in an impoverished town in Italy and we'd say not everyone has the opportunity to make their own way when they're only 9 years old.

Shrug.