What do you think about meeting the "significant other" as a test ?
Our No Asshole Rule
61–70 of 75 posts
Re: Our No Asshole Rule
#62Of course, your realize the issue with a no asshole policy, right?
Everyone left is full of shit.
Re: Our No Asshole Rule
#63I wonder if this is more about homogeneous cultural norms. If you respond to criticism the similarly to the way I do, I can predict how to provide effective criticism.
In a small team, i think the conventional wisdom is spot on - hire a really good cultural fit, even in favor of technical chops.
In a larger organization you're inevitably going to have a wider distribution of values simply because there are more people. At a some point the organization needs to figure out how to get people to play nice together. The larger the organization, the more tolerance for variance is required. I guess if you're doing something really cool or are willing to pay a lot that can be mitigated just because you'll have a larger pool of candidates.
Of course, you can't really figure out how people respond to stress until they're stressed, which happens way way after they are hired. It's probably a better heuristic to figure out how the organization can cope with wide variance norms, rather than trying to pick people that act like me.
Re: Our No Asshole Rule
#64It's bizarre how this article seems to suggest that "asshole" is some kind of objective quality, rather than just a label we use for people we don't like.
I'd say anyone who has "rid their company of assholes" has simply fired the people they dislike (while retaining people that somebody, somewhere, thinks are assholes). To imagine otherwise would require a much more rigorous definition of "asshole" than is evident in the article (it sounds like they've basically gone with "I know it when I see it").
Re: Our No Asshole Rule
#65> Adventur.es takes a proactive, zero tolerance approach to assholes.
Oh good another zero tolerance policy to be abused. That's forward thinking...
Look I don't like assholes as much as the next guy / gal (I mean asshole is an insult so that's a no-brainer) but this post is just smack with the egocentric quality they are against and just sounds naive.
Re: Our No Asshole Rule
#66> We have no tolerance for dishonest, manipulative, belittling, or egocentric individuals This seems code for "I don't want an egocentric person here with more confidence than me." Honestly, it depends on the role. I want my guy who handles negotiations to be a tough character. I want my lawyer to be fearless. I want my security guards to be unafraid to assert themselves if they see something. This is what both this…
> This seems code for "I don't want an egocentric person here with more confidence than me." I think this is entirely your projection on the article; I didn't read it that way at all. I've worked with confident, effective people (including sales people) who possess none of the negative attributes the article talks about, and are all-around nice people to be with.
One of the nicest men I've ever met was my father's estate lawyer.
He could certainly be hard and firm when he needed to be, but perhaps because he was so nice when he didn't, he really didn't have to leverage much more than a flat tone when that hardness was needed.
Re: Our No Asshole Rule
#67I think this is a useful policy but one danger to watch for is definition creep. Any policy of exclusion can be unconsciously used to discriminate. And that gets to the second challenge, is that the folks most likely to get along are the ones with the most common set of life experiences and that can lead to a lack of diversity as well.
Re: Our No Asshole Rule
#68The responses to this thread remind me of nothing so much as this comic: http://amultiverse.com/comic/2015/01/05/its-about-ethics/
Re: Our No Asshole Rule
#69Given that a number of the typical "asshole" traits fall under various psychiatric diagnoses like Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Histrionic Personality Disorder, I'm kind of surprised that we don't see more lawsuits over firing people like that.
Not that I'm advocating that _every_single_person_ fall into a protected class, but I do believe that most people's personalities are inherent. I certainly don't know of any reformed assholes...