The definition posted of an asshole casts a very wide net making discussion difficult.
Diversity is important and it isn't just about sex and skin color. People act differently, people have different priorities, confidence varies, life situations outside of work alters behavior as do medical conditions and treatments. Different cultures even in this country value vastly different behaviors.
Not everyone is perfect just how they are but everyone doesn't have to act the same way to be acceptable.
Labeling, setting up dichotomies, and othering people can be a much more toxic behavior than being an "asshole".
People with Asperger's or otherwise on the autism spectrum can be huge "assholes" by the definitions here. Does autism make you unemployable?
Behavior issues in the workplace and out are much more nuanced than this.
It is good to be pushed out of your comfort zone in both needing to develop thicker skin AND showing empathy to others' sensibilities but within bounds.
Sorting people into bins: assholes and victims, is problematic.
When it comes down to it, not everyone must work well together. Just like there is a wide diversity of people's dispositions there can be a wide variety of team dispositions. Not fitting into a particular group doesn't have to make a 'wrong' person, it can just mean the best fit is somewhere else. Become a big enough organization and it is something you will have to face.
> People with Asperger's or otherwise on the autism spectrum can be huge "assholes" by the definitions here. Does autism make you unemployable?
Those "smart assholes" with Asperger I know can be very nice people if being nice is rewarded. But it requires a conscious effort on their side (and fair feedback from those around them). If being an asshole is tolerated, they take the easy route of not caring.
> It is good to be pushed out of your comfort zone in both needing to develop thicker skin AND showing empathy to others' sensibilities but within bounds.
Maybe. But in my experience, most of the "victims" usually don't speak up. It is those with an already much thicker skin, the ones that don't shy away from a confrontation, who bring up the topic.
EDIT: I overall object to the label of "asshole". Insulting people with toxic behavior is toxic in itself.
Oh and the other thing I didn't see anyone address is teaching "victims" the right Ju-Jitsu for dealing with (intentional) assholes / bullying - the mindset of don't let anyone make you a victim.
I had the "good fortune" of having an internship years ago with a tyrant. This person loved publicly shaming the interns, among a whole bunch of other toxic behaviour, continual needling etc. etc. Their life was a mess, marriage falling apart and alcoholic but beating up the interns was this person's way of boosting their ego up again. They were also a master of ducking and deflecting any possible blame.
Being on the receiving end of this for a year, I was so upset and frustrated that I vowed never to let it happen to me again.
After trying various strategies I found the most effective solution is very simple: get a group of people laugh at the asshole, ideally as a direct response to bullying from them in a group setting. Typically you only need to pull that off once and they will leave you alone from that point on - most bullys are cowards in the face of real resistance. Actually you don't even need to be funny - you just need to do something that can't missed by the group or the bully and creates awkwardness, e.g. a loud, slow clap in response to their comment then if they quiz you on it, you just say "Just giving you a round of applause"
I could write a lot more on this, and much of it would be easy to misinterpret in today's PC culture so I won't but, in essence: don't fall into a victim mindset - stand up for yourself.
> Sorting people into bins: assholes and victims, is problematic.
This is true of anything subjective. There are people (intentional assholes in this article) who absolutely _are_ assholes because it gives them pleasure - their ego or otherwise gains something from hurting others. Everyone in a company knows who they without needing to go through a labelling process. Ultimately it's a problem for leaders in a company, those that should be caring about the culture, to remove such people.
Excellent reply. I make the joke ot myself "you are always the last to know that you are the asshole". I think there are systemic problems which can cause folks to be 'assholes' against their best attempts to do otherwise. The original article hugely oversimplifies this. (Not a big fan of the Aspbergers exclusion, though - I see this used a lot)
"Hello, my name is Cole and I can be an asshole.
The definition posted of an asshole casts a very wide net making discussion difficult."
It sounds like you have made a decision to not examine the cases where you have been an asshole and make serious efforts to improve. And a smart organization might decide to get rid of someone like you.
> Not everyone is perfect just how they are but everyone doesn't have to act the same way to be acceptable.
This undermines the very concept of "law and order". There "must" be restrictions on behaviour if it is intrusive, offensive, inflamatory, indecent etc. I think it is okay to have an enforced "code of conduct" to prevent assholery.
Psychopath are by definition assholes. They account for 1%-3% of the population. Narcissists are another category of assholes that account for 1% of the population.
There is no ambiguity these people create toxic workplace.
This is why i really dislike the diversity-crowd (straw-man here...). The only result were some laws obligating people to explicitly name the minorities of the month. The only proponent of this is the HR department. Nah, not really, but they have to.
The diversity crowds achievement was to give corporations more power. If I were belong to a minority, I wouldn't dislike the diversity crowd, I would hate them with unrequited passion.
There is a difference between equality and equity. There is also a conflict between equity and freedom. But these are discussion that will never again surface in the next 10 years, because of the diversity crowd.
The straw-man I describe are giant assholes in my opinion. And I wouldn't want to have anything to do with them. Because they are also toxic.
edit: Further more, I think people defining an allegedly large and epidemic group of people as untenable, are probably assholes. Unbelievable...
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 DOING YOUR FUCKING JOB. This is an immense source of frustration for other people, whether because they have to do the person's job for them, or because the person's failure to do their job creates disasters.
In many of the situations I've seen (or, frankly, participated in) where someone is behaving somewhat like an asshole, the root of the situation is that (a) someone isn't doing their actual job in a remotely competent way, (b) that someone isn't doing anything to fix that situation and (c) management doesn't know or care.
> 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 ... ")
> 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.
> Asshole behavior begets additional asshole behavior from others. Non-assholes are hardened into assholes over time to survive, and a spiral of incivility reigns.
I've been infected by this before. Never again. (I prefer to slap up so I ended up getting shown the door.)
Before we go through a hiring round with my team nowadays, I like us to review what I've seen approvingly referred to over on Metafilter as The Baboon Article:
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).
>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".
Your definition is complementary to the author's. You are talking about relational motivation, the author about the feelings that are evoked in the person being dominated.
> It may seem “unfair” to toy with the idea of losing the assholes, particularly the unintentional assholes. Since they “don’t know better” it seems almost cruel to let them go simply because they’re making everyone around them miserable, and it somehow feels like a smaller request to have 50 people tolerate one asshole’s behavior than to demand one asshole figure out how to not alienate everyone with whom they interact. Frankly, I think you’d be doing an asshole a favor by losing them, nothing is a better teacher than failure.
So…..
Once you have successfully labelled someone, you should actively fight any tendency towards empathy with them. Don’t bother worrying about whether their behaviour was intentional. Just kick them out. It’s for their own good.
At this point, I’m labelling the author an asshole.
I really love the euphemisms/double entendres/word play. It definitely makes it more fun to read.
One thing I realize as I read this is that, I’ve definitely engaged in certain ‘asshole behaviors’ at times. It’s been a long challenge to become more socially skilled and handle pressure/emotions better, but a lot of bad habits linger, I think.
The worst habit of which is definitely complaining about coworkers to other coworkers. Not in a hateful or personal way, but sometimes when I get frustrated by something someone does, I vent to someone unrelated instead of confronting the other person.
Another terrible habit that I had in the past was a tendency to respond while still fuming, which never ends well; usually it ends in both sides of an argument escalating while others grab the popcorn.
I hope I make enough effort to not be the kind of asshole that needs to be flushed out of an org, but similarly hopefully it’s not just me that is imperfect at the art of not being an asshole.
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.
Excellent article. I hope managers read it. The toughest problem I've had w.r.t. assholes was convincing managers that certain people were in fact assholes and they were not essential to the company's survival. Assholes are extremely good at kissing up and shitting down. And managers don't like to hear they've been manipulated.
Not sure exactly how but I’ve mostly avoided places where being an asshole is acceptable. This could be to do with actively avoiding bro-fest type places, looking for high-impact rather than high-pay kind of work, but I can’t really take credit.
Separately, I’m quite shocked reading this HN thread seeing people defending the behaviour the article describes. I suddenly feel like I don’t really know the tech industry at all!
What's ironic is...the only people I can think of that I've worked with over the years who exhibit the signs called out in this piece were VP level or higher.
The signs listed of an asshole are pretty easy to spot but try sniffing out the 'hidden', highly-skilled two-faced exec. asshole. They are readily promoted and treat execs. one way and low-level employees another.
It makes sense, in a way. Sociopaths are willing to do things normies aren’t, therefore they have more options, therefore they have more paths to success.
Slang for "asshole" in Spanish is "capullo" or "gilipollas". Originally, these words described a dumb,candid,innocent person, but nowadays they are used to refer to "smart assholes".
"listillo" is another word for "smart asshole" that I like. Literally, it means "little smart person". Diminutive of the word "listo" (smart)
"enterao" is yet another word for "smart asshole". It is a contraction of "enterado", a person that knows about everything.
1. Benign lack of social skills (terse emails etc.). These people are not a major problem in my experience, and are sometimes even under-appreciated because they don't (successfully at least) sell themselves or play politics. They don't really have bad intentions and can often improve their behavior.
2. Narcissism (belittling others, must always be right, etc.) This is a _huge_ problem that in severe cases can destroy an organization. Such people are basically incurable because this is a deep seated psychological problem (really a personality disorder) and nothing a manager can fix. You must get rid of such people at all costs.
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 linked to as much hard evidence as I could but I'll agree that it's a little light. My hunch, just based on my own observation doing this for 20 years, is that an asshole is like a black hole of productivity, draining it from everyone else to such an extent that they're simply not worth having around, and that no matter how Brilliant they are, the rest of the team can figure out their areas of expertise with the morale boost they get after leaving (or drastically changing their behavior, though sometimes the bridges are burned too much for recovery).
Again this is mostly anecdotal, from what I've seen teams do when the Resident Jerk was fired or left. I've never in my 20 years as a professional software developer seen a single person leave a team and then see the team immediately fall to pieces because that person really was the critical lynchpin that people thought. I've seen lots of people stick around far, far too long because folks (management usually) were WORRIED that's what was going to happen, but it never actually seems to.
I have no proof, by my gut feeling is that success in business is generally a concept assholes are better adapted for.
The reason I say this is that most companies that we consider "successful" are in my experience mostly being assholes to their customers. Since a company doesn't have an independent personality of its own, I imagine that such behavior must come from the people at the top of the food chain at those places, or at least the people very high in that chain.
I wonder if that is instead due to successful companies being unable to properly vet applicants when there is pressure to find applicants for fast-growing businesses.
> 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."
I think it's often about people's needs and goals. Assholes maybe could help your company's success short-term, but would infect the culture long-term. And it seems to me that most people want quick success.
Around these parts the term 'attitude disability' gets floated once in a while. It doesn't translate very well... but the translation doesn't need the negative connotation it has over here.
Nullifying a circle of tit-for-tat takes a lot of energy, and stable blood sugar. Too much short carbs in prefab food is causing all of us all kinds of damage.
I always get the impression that it's "technical assholes" vs. "wise managers who should be brave enough to fire the assholes."
In practice: I see lots of assholes in management up to the director level, and the CEO doesn't do anything because they just hired their friends. Then, people just leave. Nobody cares because the issue of "tech assholes" is trendy these days.
[+] [-] colechristensen|6 years ago|reply
The definition posted of an asshole casts a very wide net making discussion difficult.
Diversity is important and it isn't just about sex and skin color. People act differently, people have different priorities, confidence varies, life situations outside of work alters behavior as do medical conditions and treatments. Different cultures even in this country value vastly different behaviors.
Not everyone is perfect just how they are but everyone doesn't have to act the same way to be acceptable.
Labeling, setting up dichotomies, and othering people can be a much more toxic behavior than being an "asshole".
People with Asperger's or otherwise on the autism spectrum can be huge "assholes" by the definitions here. Does autism make you unemployable?
Behavior issues in the workplace and out are much more nuanced than this.
It is good to be pushed out of your comfort zone in both needing to develop thicker skin AND showing empathy to others' sensibilities but within bounds.
Sorting people into bins: assholes and victims, is problematic.
When it comes down to it, not everyone must work well together. Just like there is a wide diversity of people's dispositions there can be a wide variety of team dispositions. Not fitting into a particular group doesn't have to make a 'wrong' person, it can just mean the best fit is somewhere else. Become a big enough organization and it is something you will have to face.
[+] [-] jlg23|6 years ago|reply
Those "smart assholes" with Asperger I know can be very nice people if being nice is rewarded. But it requires a conscious effort on their side (and fair feedback from those around them). If being an asshole is tolerated, they take the easy route of not caring.
> It is good to be pushed out of your comfort zone in both needing to develop thicker skin AND showing empathy to others' sensibilities but within bounds.
Maybe. But in my experience, most of the "victims" usually don't speak up. It is those with an already much thicker skin, the ones that don't shy away from a confrontation, who bring up the topic.
EDIT: I overall object to the label of "asshole". Insulting people with toxic behavior is toxic in itself.
[+] [-] harryf|6 years ago|reply
I had the "good fortune" of having an internship years ago with a tyrant. This person loved publicly shaming the interns, among a whole bunch of other toxic behaviour, continual needling etc. etc. Their life was a mess, marriage falling apart and alcoholic but beating up the interns was this person's way of boosting their ego up again. They were also a master of ducking and deflecting any possible blame.
Being on the receiving end of this for a year, I was so upset and frustrated that I vowed never to let it happen to me again.
After trying various strategies I found the most effective solution is very simple: get a group of people laugh at the asshole, ideally as a direct response to bullying from them in a group setting. Typically you only need to pull that off once and they will leave you alone from that point on - most bullys are cowards in the face of real resistance. Actually you don't even need to be funny - you just need to do something that can't missed by the group or the bully and creates awkwardness, e.g. a loud, slow clap in response to their comment then if they quiz you on it, you just say "Just giving you a round of applause"
I could write a lot more on this, and much of it would be easy to misinterpret in today's PC culture so I won't but, in essence: don't fall into a victim mindset - stand up for yourself.
[+] [-] johnchristopher|6 years ago|reply
It's my understanding that on average it's harder to get a job and some kind of jobs look out of reach.
Also, is the population ratio of Asperger/autism such that the definition of asshole should be reworded ?
[+] [-] harryf|6 years ago|reply
This is true of anything subjective. There are people (intentional assholes in this article) who absolutely _are_ assholes because it gives them pleasure - their ego or otherwise gains something from hurting others. Everyone in a company knows who they without needing to go through a labelling process. Ultimately it's a problem for leaders in a company, those that should be caring about the culture, to remove such people.
Paul Graham described this long ago here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacbJ72dluU (starts at 4m20s) - a leader in YCombinator he makes the judgement calls.
[+] [-] mbubb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woodandsteel|6 years ago|reply
It sounds like you have made a decision to not examine the cases where you have been an asshole and make serious efforts to improve. And a smart organization might decide to get rid of someone like you.
[+] [-] wawhal|6 years ago|reply
This undermines the very concept of "law and order". There "must" be restrictions on behaviour if it is intrusive, offensive, inflamatory, indecent etc. I think it is okay to have an enforced "code of conduct" to prevent assholery.
[+] [-] w1nst0nsm1th|6 years ago|reply
There is no ambiguity these people create toxic workplace.
There is no ambiguity in a harrasment situation.
[+] [-] raxxorrax|6 years ago|reply
The diversity crowds achievement was to give corporations more power. If I were belong to a minority, I wouldn't dislike the diversity crowd, I would hate them with unrequited passion.
There is a difference between equality and equity. There is also a conflict between equity and freedom. But these are discussion that will never again surface in the next 10 years, because of the diversity crowd.
The straw-man I describe are giant assholes in my opinion. And I wouldn't want to have anything to do with them. Because they are also toxic.
edit: Further more, I think people defining an allegedly large and epidemic group of people as untenable, are probably assholes. Unbelievable...
[+] [-] glangdale|6 years ago|reply
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 DOING YOUR FUCKING JOB. This is an immense source of frustration for other people, whether because they have to do the person's job for them, or because the person's failure to do their job creates disasters.
In many of the situations I've seen (or, frankly, participated in) where someone is behaving somewhat like an asshole, the root of the situation is that (a) someone isn't doing their actual job in a remotely competent way, (b) that someone isn't doing anything to fix that situation and (c) management doesn't know or care.
[+] [-] Udik|6 years ago|reply
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 ... ")
[+] [-] hurrdurr2|6 years ago|reply
This is in my opinion way worse than being an asshole who does his/her job well.
[+] [-] Razengan|6 years ago|reply
Indeed, there are many ways to hurt, belittle and generally make someone feel bad or unwelcome without being blamable for anything.
[+] [-] klenwell|6 years ago|reply
I've been infected by this before. Never again. (I prefer to slap up so I ended up getting shown the door.)
Before we go through a hiring round with my team nowadays, I like us to review what I've seen approvingly referred to over on Metafilter as The Baboon Article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/science/no-time-for-bulli...
[+] [-] stakhanov|6 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] woodandsteel|6 years ago|reply
Your definition is complementary to the author's. You are talking about relational motivation, the author about the feelings that are evoked in the person being dominated.
[+] [-] plutonorm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marksweston|6 years ago|reply
So…..
Once you have successfully labelled someone, you should actively fight any tendency towards empathy with them. Don’t bother worrying about whether their behaviour was intentional. Just kick them out. It’s for their own good.
At this point, I’m labelling the author an asshole.
[+] [-] jchw|6 years ago|reply
One thing I realize as I read this is that, I’ve definitely engaged in certain ‘asshole behaviors’ at times. It’s been a long challenge to become more socially skilled and handle pressure/emotions better, but a lot of bad habits linger, I think.
The worst habit of which is definitely complaining about coworkers to other coworkers. Not in a hateful or personal way, but sometimes when I get frustrated by something someone does, I vent to someone unrelated instead of confronting the other person.
Another terrible habit that I had in the past was a tendency to respond while still fuming, which never ends well; usually it ends in both sides of an argument escalating while others grab the popcorn.
I hope I make enough effort to not be the kind of asshole that needs to be flushed out of an org, but similarly hopefully it’s not just me that is imperfect at the art of not being an asshole.
[+] [-] Razengan|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dreamcompiler|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|6 years ago|reply
Sadly, it often doesn't work like that. Frequently, people just feel like "Damn, I'm good!" and give zero credit to the person who was good to them.
[+] [-] paulfurley|6 years ago|reply
Separately, I’m quite shocked reading this HN thread seeing people defending the behaviour the article describes. I suddenly feel like I don’t really know the tech industry at all!
[+] [-] krumpet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bakary|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noitsnot|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomanyrichies|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fasteo|6 years ago|reply
Slang for "asshole" in Spanish is "capullo" or "gilipollas". Originally, these words described a dumb,candid,innocent person, but nowadays they are used to refer to "smart assholes".
"listillo" is another word for "smart asshole" that I like. Literally, it means "little smart person". Diminutive of the word "listo" (smart)
"enterao" is yet another word for "smart asshole". It is a contraction of "enterado", a person that knows about everything.
Sorry for the interlude.
(*) By the OP standard, I am an asshole.
[+] [-] nestorherre|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keyle|6 years ago|reply
Because after all, assholes are popping up in the news constantly.
[+] [-] rodhilton|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Melchizedek|6 years ago|reply
1. Benign lack of social skills (terse emails etc.). These people are not a major problem in my experience, and are sometimes even under-appreciated because they don't (successfully at least) sell themselves or play politics. They don't really have bad intentions and can often improve their behavior.
2. Narcissism (belittling others, must always be right, etc.) This is a _huge_ problem that in severe cases can destroy an organization. Such people are basically incurable because this is a deep seated psychological problem (really a personality disorder) and nothing a manager can fix. You must get rid of such people at all costs.
[+] [-] Iv|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rodhilton|6 years ago|reply
Again this is mostly anecdotal, from what I've seen teams do when the Resident Jerk was fired or left. I've never in my 20 years as a professional software developer seen a single person leave a team and then see the team immediately fall to pieces because that person really was the critical lynchpin that people thought. I've seen lots of people stick around far, far too long because folks (management usually) were WORRIED that's what was going to happen, but it never actually seems to.
[+] [-] hayavuk|6 years ago|reply
The reason I say this is that most companies that we consider "successful" are in my experience mostly being assholes to their customers. Since a company doesn't have an independent personality of its own, I imagine that such behavior must come from the people at the top of the food chain at those places, or at least the people very high in that chain.
[+] [-] valtism|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Razengan|6 years ago|reply
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."
[+] [-] _def|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lallysingh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ganzuul|6 years ago|reply
Nullifying a circle of tit-for-tat takes a lot of energy, and stable blood sugar. Too much short carbs in prefab food is causing all of us all kinds of damage.
[+] [-] kazinator|6 years ago|reply
You give people a safe environment in which they feel free to voice what they really think without fearing repercussions, and there you go.
[+] [-] appwiz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olgeni|6 years ago|reply
In practice: I see lots of assholes in management up to the director level, and the CEO doesn't do anything because they just hired their friends. Then, people just leave. Nobody cares because the issue of "tech assholes" is trendy these days.