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No Time to Be Nice at Work

nytimes.com

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Re: No Time to Be Nice at Work

#121

Post by yummyfajitas »

Retra wrote: post #12
yummyfajitas wrote: post #2

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 f…

>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?

Re: No Time to Be Nice at Work

#122

Post by marktangotango »

zxcvcxz wrote: post #113
j_baker wrote: post #6

I have to say: working in a civil work environment makes a huge difference in terms of job satisfaction and job performance. Civility works for the business, the worker, and the customer. Nobody really benefits from incivility except for the arrogant power-monger over the very short term.

Most of these "safe space" environments are filled with arrogant people who, while not being outright rude, can belittle you passive aggressively and it can sometimes be worse than someone just calling you out on your bullshit. A friend of mine worked for a startup that's mentioned on HN quite a lot, (I won't say the name). The lead developers used git and IRC chat a lot. After being hired my friend began to test a n…

I get the feeling there's a lot more to this story, would be interesting to hear the other side. Were they really that doughy?

Re: No Time to Be Nice at Work

#124

Post by zeckalpha »

zxcvcxz wrote: post #113
j_baker wrote: post #6

I have to say: working in a civil work environment makes a huge difference in terms of job satisfaction and job performance. Civility works for the business, the worker, and the customer. Nobody really benefits from incivility except for the arrogant power-monger over the very short term.

Most of these "safe space" environments are filled with arrogant people who, while not being outright rude, can belittle you passive aggressively and it can sometimes be worse than someone just calling you out on your bullshit. A friend of mine worked for a startup that's mentioned on HN quite a lot, (I won't say the name). The lead developers used git and IRC chat a lot. After being hired my friend began to test a n…

Sounds like an organization that won't scale.

Re: No Time to Be Nice at Work

#125

Post by Sideloader »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #120
j_baker wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?

Re: No Time to Be Nice at Work

#126

Post by glaberficken »

psykovsky wrote: post #110
glaberficken wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, nice comment. I think it might have something to do with this: When you are face to face, the interaction tends to be 1 on 1 or involve a small number of people you work with day to day, there's a mutual benefit in having a healthy non violent, relationship (you are happier day to day if you are not an asshole towards others because on average they tend to respond in kind, by not being assholes either). On the w…

eheheheheheh Bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment. Not calling you a pussie, but what you described is what we see everyday in the world wild web. I suppose it isn't any different on a work setting.

btw I didn't flag your comment, I thought it was funny =)

Re: No Time to Be Nice at Work

#127

Post by j_baker »

hlfcoding wrote: post #74
j_baker wrote: post #6

I have to say: working in a civil work environment makes a huge difference in terms of job satisfaction and job performance. Civility works for the business, the worker, and the customer. Nobody really benefits from incivility except for the arrogant power-monger over the very short term.

Re. civility, I've had very good results in reducing stress between both parties by clearly separating the defects in the work from the person / people involved. I think that's the key because I've had terrible experiences when that did not happen, when I was either blaming or blamed (seemingly) by teammates personally for any mistakes. Still, I'd rather receive any honest feedback than none at all, even if it is pre…

I think this is a great point. I try to stick to a philosophy of "support the person, critique the idea".

Re: No Time to Be Nice at Work

#128

Post by wpietri »

jf22 wrote: post #68
wpietri wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like you're conflating the difficulty of the work (coal mining is hard, dangerous work) with the way people treat each other at work (like the shitty bosses in the article). When I read books about other times and places, my main impression is that the work may have been harder, but that the people were much kinder to one another. Given that I've worked at some places that were horrible and some that…

Which other times and places? I have the exact opposite impression. Human life and dignity weren't valued until the last 200 years or so. There were no worker protections until very recently you were treated like shit if you weren't a member of the ruling class/race/religion. Much kinder? Not giving a shit if a chinese laborer was killed was building a railroad isn't exactly kind...

Sure, but most people didn't have jobs until recently. A lot of human history is subsistence agriculture in small villages. And a lot of human prehistory is various sorts of nomadic life. The boss-as-tyrant model is only possible when somebody makes their living by controlling others, which only works in times of substantial free resource scarcity and low opportunity.

Re: No Time to Be Nice at Work

#129

Post by hackuser »

wpietri wrote: post #128
jf22 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which other times and places? I have the exact opposite impression. Human life and dignity weren't valued until the last 200 years or so. There were no worker protections until very recently you were treated like shit if you weren't a member of the ruling class/race/religion. Much kinder? Not giving a shit if a chinese laborer was killed was building a railroad isn't exactly kind...

Sure, but most people didn't have jobs until recently. A lot of human history is subsistence agriculture in small villages. And a lot of human prehistory is various sorts of nomadic life. The boss-as-tyrant model is only possible when somebody makes their living by controlling others, which only works in times of substantial free resource scarcity and low opportunity.

A good point in general, though I'd add that, 1) slavery has been around for a long time and in many cultures family members are/were treated as property, especially women and children; and 2) for much of history[1] power, including ownership of land, has been concentrated in few hands, who often were not very kind to their subordinates.

I wonder what the historical distribution of self-employed (including subsistance farming) vs employed by others.

[1] Of course it depends how far back we go in history. Until 10,000 years ago we all were hunter gatherers.

Re: No Time to Be Nice at Work

#130

Post by slgeorge »

nhashem wrote: post #35

There's a school of thought among "economic leftists" that the disconnect between US productivity and average US worker wages since the 1970s, is due to a decline in "outrage constraint."[0] Executives didn't pay themselves that much more than their workers because it would essentially be considered "uncouth" to do otherwise. They might be rich, but they would be condemned and considered pariahs among their peers. Yo…

@nhashem - great comment, well thought out and worded, thanks. I'm not going all Wikipedia on you, but can you provide some links or thoughts on the idea that "what's unfortunate to me is that this means some of our society's most brilliant and productive people will essentially get marginalized"?

In my experience, people who believe in the totally individual focused system, see anyone who doesn't as not being tough or focused enough to survive the realities of highly competitive environments.

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