Be Nice Or Leave • Hacker News Board

Re: Be Nice Or Leave

#91

Post by lilsunnybee » Thu, Jun 19, 2014, 4:52 PM UTC

dreamweapon wrote: post #87

candybar wrote: post #74

Being nice is easy. Being good is hard. What's missing here is that powerful people are almost always transacting on behalf of many others who are not present at the bargaining table. By being nice, they may be trading other people's money for personal goodwill that they get to keep for themselves. This is "being nice" in some ways, but this isn't good for society and may be highly unethical. Would you want governmen…

Would you want government regulators to be nice to the industry people they are regulating because in the long run they benefit from having good relationship with industry leaders? Would you want hedge fund managers who's managing your money to be nice to banks, that is, overpay for services, because fees come out of your pocket while they can monetize the relationship in the future? Umm, I think Fred was suggesting…

Banks and other companies are not abstract entities to the people doing the negotiations; they are other negotiators and people like you. Being nice is a good way to improve relations with the other party, but this can often be short-sighted or even self-serving if you aren't taking into account the best interests of other people not present in negotiations; plenty of government representatives play nice with their donors to secure future campaign money, and/or ensure a cushy position with that company after leaving office, for example.

Re: Be Nice Or Leave

#92

Post by protonfish » Thu, Jun 19, 2014, 4:53 PM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #65

protonfish wrote: post #61

Everyone is throwing around "nice" like it is a well-defined term and not a fluff word. Let's try to define it a little better. In my experience, there are 3 types of "nice". One is where somebody is subservient to you. Another is when a person is polite and tells you what you want to hear. The other is where somebody is honest and can be counted on to do what they promise. I propose that you cannot be either #1 or #…

I believe the conversation is about being like #3, but without being rude and abrasive. It's possible. Being honest and reliable does not excuse rudeness and abrasiveness. In my experience, rudeness and abrasiveness are indicative that the person has not had to/been able to grow up. Perhaps they have extreme talent. Perhaps they have lived a life of extreme focus. Perhaps their moms still look after them. The reason…

I would argue that the qualities of "rude" and "abrasive" are similar to "offensive" - They are judgements by the observer, not objective qualities of the observed. What is abrasive to one person might be fine for another. If you are the type of person that gets his panties in a bunch when somebody says something you don't like, maybe you are the one who still needs his mommy?

Re: Be Nice Or Leave

#93

Post by adamzerner » Thu, Jun 19, 2014, 5:17 PM UTC

This post makes a claim, and provides minimal/no support for it. Really, the support is because it's a trustworthy source. But still, there's a lot more value in truly understanding the reasoning behind it.

Re: Be Nice Or Leave

#94

Post by 001sky » Thu, Jun 19, 2014, 5:23 PM UTC

lilsunnybee wrote: post #90

jib wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your reasoning Amazon are crazy for keeping as low margins as they are. They are leaving money on the table in the belief that as long as they stay somewhat profitable their future earnings will outweigh the short-term benefits from the money grab they certainly could make. They also have the added benefit of being hard to attack this way. Fred Wilson is making a similar argument. By leaving some money on the tabl…

Running low margins in retail is often more of a really cutthroat business strategy, rather than simply trying to be nice to customers. You can easily run smaller competitors out of business, and increase your volume and overall profits, by making the competition unable to compete.

"Predatory pricing" has the name it has becuase its..not 'nice'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

Re: Be Nice Or Leave

#95

Post by 001sky » Thu, Jun 19, 2014, 5:28 PM UTC

dreamweapon wrote: post #88

dreamweapon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you want government regulators to be nice to the industry people they are regulating because in the long run they benefit from having good relationship with industry leaders? Would you want hedge fund managers who's managing your money to be nice to banks, that is, overpay for services, because fees come out of your pocket while they can monetize the relationship in the future? Umm, I think Fred was suggesting…

Downvoter - explain, please.

Abstract corporations are legal persons, but they are fictitious in the sense of relatinoship building. Relationships are only built with actual people, who may or may not have perfectly aligned interests with the legal entities they work for. This is both true in the instant (a VC might have more than one fund he invests from) and over a lifetime/career (that same VC migh work for various wholly distinct legal entities and /or transition between investing and operational roles. Similarly, governments and banks are run by people wearing multiple hats -- take alook at how many legal entities were inside of enron, lehmand, or one of the other TBTF entities just for some perspective. Other large corporations are likewise composites of various fiefdoms and P&Ls and are not at all aligned internally at the personal level.

edit: I didn't downvote you, but its just part of the picture that might expain something.

Re: Be Nice Or Leave

#96

Post by SyneRyder » Thu, Jun 19, 2014, 5:33 PM UTC

Possibly related: last week on This Week In Startups, the interview with Yossi Vardi discussed his philosophy of only investing in "nice" people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozcfDoC-srM#t=14m37s

And later that week, during the interview with Gil Penchina, Jason mentions the benefits of being nice, after being screwed over by someone who shut him out of a deal and took advantage of a founder by offering them a term sheet & telling them not to shop it around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flX3NEb5bf0#t=30m49s

(more specific comments here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flX3NEb5bf0#t=37m57s

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it's curious to see so much discussion of "nice" at the moment.

Re: Be Nice Or Leave

#97

Post by sbhere » Thu, Jun 19, 2014, 5:41 PM UTC

> It’s not the fastest way to make a buck. It takes time. But it is way more sustainable than screwing people over.

Being nice != not(screwing people over)

Big difference.

Re: Be Nice Or Leave

#98

Post by dhimes » Thu, Jun 19, 2014, 5:53 PM UTC

protonfish wrote: post #92

dhimes wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the conversation is about being like #3, but without being rude and abrasive. It's possible. Being honest and reliable does not excuse rudeness and abrasiveness. In my experience, rudeness and abrasiveness are indicative that the person has not had to/been able to grow up. Perhaps they have extreme talent. Perhaps they have lived a life of extreme focus. Perhaps their moms still look after them. The reason…

I would argue that the qualities of "rude" and "abrasive" are similar to "offensive" - They are judgements by the observer, not objective qualities of the observed. What is abrasive to one person might be fine for another. If you are the type of person that gets his panties in a bunch when somebody says something you don't like, maybe you are the one who still needs his mommy?

Indeed, society's norms are something like GAAP, but for interactions. There will certainly be deviations, a population of observers party to those behaviors would agree.

But then there are those behaviors that a majority of observers would classify as 'douche-y' or something synonymous. In that sense they are qualities of the observed. Sometimes it's accidental- we've all done that. Most of us feel a little bad when we realize that we've unintentionally hurt someone's feelings, even if we think we've done it for their own good. Sometimes the person has no idea- missing the social cues that they've said or done something painful to another. These people can't be blamed any more than an albino can be blamed for the color of her skin.

Then there are the assholes, the ones who are smug about their 'directness,' who take some pride in keeping others off balance. Kind of like the big loudmouth at the bar that nobody messes with because they are simply intimidated, these people seem to get some social ego benefit from their behavior. They have no class.

Re: Be Nice Or Leave

#99

Post by pjmorris » Thu, Jun 19, 2014, 5:59 PM UTC

oinksoft wrote: post #68

pjmorris wrote: post #6

I spent a long time in the South Florida IT job market. In an area with millions of people and thousands of companies, it never ceased to amaze me how many people in the field knew each other. One of the key factors in job-hunting, then, was your reputation. If you did good work and people liked working with you, there was usually something available. If either of those things wasn't true, life was more difficult. A…

I'm not going to lie, this sounds like hell. Places like that make outcasts of anybody who makes the rest "look bad" by "working too hard." It's nice to be valued for your technical skills when you consider the alternative.

I never saw someone become an outcast in the community for working harder or smarter. A given organization might operate like that, but the whole point of a community is that there's more to the world than one organization and one job. I've seen plenty of good people pulled out of bad situations by the community.

Re: Be Nice Or Leave

#100

Post by sheepmullet » Thu, Jun 19, 2014, 8:21 PM UTC

rqebmm wrote: post #71

michaelochurch wrote: post #24

I worked at a company once that conflated mean-spirited policies with "just business". The result was a downfall that was entirely preventable. Vacation and sick leave were combined ("PTO") which meant that you had to take a vacation day if you got sick. The result of this was that people came into work when ill and everyone was less productive. Very little ever got done in the winter, because it was just one constan…

Our company uses PTO and open-plan offices, and while they're not ideal solutions, nothing is, and I think they get a bad rap around here. As for PTO I appreciate my boss's explanation: "I just don't want any sniping over sick days. If you don't feel like you can come in and work, it should cost something. That way nobody will complain when someone calls in sick." Similarly, I've heard a lot of complaints about open-…

"As for PTO I appreciate my boss's explanation: "I just don't want any sniping over sick days. If you don't feel like you can come in and work, it should cost something. That way nobody will complain when someone calls in sick."

Time to quit. Your boss thinks your team is full of petty assholes who will complain when somebody takes a few days off for being sick.

It's not too bad if you get a minimum 6 weeks combined PTO. Still you will find people are more likely to come in when sick and drag the rest of the team down with them.

"All of those situations seem innocuous when you're all working together, but if you're in separate offices or working remotely people will end up wasting time trying to figure these things out by themselves before reaching out for help."

Firstly "wasting time trying to figure these things out by themselves" is a key part in overall learning and development. You want engineers to "waste time" like this.

Secondly, having worked in an open plan office for the last 5 years I've found I can help with maybe 2-3% of the conversations people in the office are having. I'm distracted by all of them and it results in chronic low productivity.

"and with open offices you have to have a space employees can go to get serious work done without distractions"

90% of your work should be "serious work". Open office employees are just used to chronic low productivity. When working from home I get 10x the amount of work done that I would at work. Quite honestly I could work at home Monday and then do pretty much no work at all Tuesday-Friday and my output would still be above average for the office.