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Assholes: A Probing Examination

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Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#61

Post by stakhanov »

To me, the definition of an asshole is slightly different. An asshole is someone who acts out every social interaction on the principle of "dominate or be dominated". It's the lack of a middle ground that makes an asshole, so that people can't just go into an interaction being each other's peers, and also finish the interaction with being each other's peers, having been nice and respectful towards each other, preserved each other's individual freedoms, and exchanged some information.

I agree that assholery has a tendency to spread, and the mechanism in my observation is as follows: You can start out NOT being an asshole. When there is an asshole for you to deal with, you'll realize "All of my interactions with this person end up with this person dominating me." But you don't like being dominated because that's natural (psychological reactance), and bad for your career. So next time you interact with that person you know you have to act on the principle of "dominate or be dominated", i.e. the asshole-principle. Soon enough it becomes a habit, and you may inadvertently behave towards non-assholes as an asshole as well, making you an asshole.

Another interesting corollary of this definition of asshole is this: If you perceive a lot of assholes around you, maybe YOU are the asshole.

It also explains why you find more assholes as you go up the corporate ladder: Being higher up means you get more opportunity for exhibiting domineering behaviour without repercussions (namely towards your subordinates).

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#62

Post by kspp »

appwiz wrote: post #5

Also see "Brilliant Jerks in Engineering[1]" by Brendan Gregg. [1] http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-11-13/brilliant-jerks.html

Clickable link:

http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-11-13/brilliant-jerks....

Saves one second per person, that's like a whole man-day across all the readers.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#63

Post by Razengan »

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…

> 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.

Indeed, there are many ways to hurt, belittle and generally make someone feel bad or unwelcome without being blamable for anything.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#64

Post by enriquto »

This article builds on the premise that a few employees are assholes and none of the managers are. In my experience, the reality is the exact opposite, where all managers (especially those at the higher level) are assholes. In that case, none of the considerations of the article seem to be useful. Yet, it is a fun read, especially the "unrelated" pictures and the colorful language.

I am surprised by this sentence:

> Formalizing social skills as part of the job description can help with this.

This kind of thing leads to a subtle but most damaging form of management assholery, whereby employees are "invited" to participate in social gatherings at expensive places, and are frowned upon if they don't participate.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#66

Post by Razengan »

At least 10 thousand years of civilization, and we are still trying to figure out each other and ourselves.

Why is "Don't be a dick" so hard to codify?

All these religions, ethics and philosophical systems, and all this technology, convenience and comforts.. and we still have so much friction in interacting with others of our own species.

The best solution we seem to have found is leaving each other alone.

I've come to believe that true maturity is the realization that everyone is capable of feeling the same things you feel.

But most of us – me included – seem to have "Single Player Syndrome" where we feel that we are the only person capable of feeling what we feel, and everyone else is an NPC with diluted senses and processing capabilities.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#67

Post by Udik »

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…

> the root of the situation is that (a) someone isn't doing their actual job in a remotely competent way

Not really. I've worked with several assholes. They were all extremely assertive, and usually also very competent (but I've found also the utterly incompetent ones). The problem is that even if they're right 95% of the time, the 5% of the times they're wrong they force everybody along the wrong path, because their purpose as work is not to get stuff done right, but to assert their status. So talking them out of a bad idea is impossible, and they tend to favour solutions that serve more the purpose of demonstrating their skill than to get good results.

(As an aside, since assholery is widespread in software engineering, it is legitimate to wonder how much of the so called "best practices" floating around are just exercises in one-upping each other in a status game- "hey, you write your tests first, but you should really write them first in this obscure DSL that is being promoted by the creator of ... ")

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#68

Post by Razengan »

Iv wrote: post #13

Unfortunately, we have plenty of examples of successful companies where toxic behavior is rampant. I agree that firing assholes improves a company's morale and environment, but sadly there is little evidence that it actually help a company's business.

> I agree that firing assholes improves a company's morale and environment, but sadly there is little evidence that it actually help a company's business.

Maybe the root issue lies with our societies putting business above ethics. "As long as you're making money, everything's fine, until you piss off someone with more money than you."

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#69

Post by deanmoriarty »

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, while keeping extreme fairness in my technical judgements. On top of this, my “fearless” (asshole?) personality makes me treat everyone in the hierarchy (including VPs and upper management) as peers, and I have no problem arguing with them if I feel I have a reasonable technical issue I care about and diverging opinions from theirs.

Most of my brilliant coworkers, much more technically talented than me, tend to be more introvert and never “pick an argument with management”, which also means they never get the visibility I get, which results in public praises, financial incentives, and interesting work. I wonder if they perceive me as asshole.

Re: Assholes: A Probing Examination

#70

Post by Nasrudith »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #51
sz4kerto wrote: post #47

Asshole: people who you don't like. Every interaction with others should make you feel good about yourself otherwise the other person is an asshole. You are never an asshole by definition, of course. Maybe a victim, but asshole -- never. Diversity means having people around who think and behave the same way as you do but have different hairdo or different thing between their legs. Introverted or depressed people are…

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 deserve to be called out? Putting it on the never list is a bad idea but it should probably be a last or N to last resort.

* Stirring shit and troublemaking

That is dangerously ambiguous as terms to include both in terms of what qualifies as stirring shit. If it is actually trying to rile people up fine but that exact phrase could be used for anyone who goes against the grain. Trying to stop bad practices which /will/ lead to literal disaster because "we have always done it that way" or reporting misconduct can also be called the exact same thing.

Related cluster * Ignoring people trying to contribute * Dismissing the opinions and ideas of others without discussion * Undermining someone’s confidence for asking questions

There is one major problem with this sub-block. It never stops to ask if the "victim" is themselves massively wrong and doesn't get the hint that they are themselves negative in productivity and not even getting any learning out of it. To be frank the case where they aren't ignorant or even inept but an outright idiot who doesn't take a hint.

Like saying insisting the company should make their next car run on water and doesn't listen to why that is thermodynamically impossible (it would actually run on whatever substance it reacts with). While there are values to considering alternative approaches and departure from conventional wisdom willful ignorance isn't equal to actual expertise no matter how "polite" it may be to treat as such.

This may be where the you are never the asshole perception really creeps in - despite all of the talk about two way communications and feelings of others that the other party may be in the wrong and not "the asshole". It can look like every reference to the others is really just obfuscated grammar for myself to make the writer sound less self centered and like they have more support than theh really do.

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