Our No Asshole Rule

http://www.adventur.es/adventures-blog/2014/12/22/no-asshole-rule

by yarapavan • 12 years ago

41 68 12 years ago

wolfgke• 12 years ago

But what about employees that aren't assholes per se (in the sense that they are evil or egocentric), but just socially awkward?

To give one example: A intellectually brillant employee wants to explain some complicated programming or math concepts so that the other people at the company can become better - a very noble plan. But because of their social inaptness this is considered to be rude and arrogant by the other team members.

ivraatiems2• 12 years ago

I have found that often (but not always), individuals who claim "awkwardness" or hide behind a label of awkwardness to avoid criticism for misbehavior are, in fact, assholes (as this article would seem to define them). People who are truly awkward don't go around telling others how awkward they are (close friends/partners/family excepted).

The difference is easy to suss out: approach the person in question, say "hey, I think behavior X is causing an issue between us, can we work on it?" and wait. If they agree to try and then actually do(even if they don't succeed), they're not an asshole. If they make excuses, or agree to change but make no visible effort, they are.

philh2• 12 years ago

wolfgke was talking about people who are awkward, not people who label themselves awkward.

iagooar• 12 years ago

I actually worked with a guy like this. He was a very intelligent, almost brilliant programmer at a very young age. But as brilliant as he was, he also was pretty socially awkward. It took me a lot of time and patience getting used to his way of communicating. At first, he sounded like an arrogant a\\hole, who always knew better. After some time working together, I was able to reinterpret his behavior so that I wouldn't feel offended by his ways and even found him being an actually cool guy to work with. But I know for sure, that a lot of people didn't try, which in the long run could cost him some of his reputation.

HCIdivision17• 12 years ago

`dang has pointed out the Principle of Charity [0], and I think it's beneficial to go one step further and choose to interpret that people are trying to be helpful by default. In fact, I think that if a person merely chooses to interprest best-case first by default, you can generally get along with anyone (until they incontrovertably prove you wrong... then it gets a bit awkward fast).

I think that if the others are trying not to be jerks, then this awkward soul won't have much trouble. Properly implemented, there can be a lot of slack available to such a person. (Heck, I'm not brilliant, but many people seem to put up with and like me despite being fairly intense when wound up.)

EDIT: Hey, references are cool: [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8800322

pjc50• 12 years ago

Well, if the explanation is done in a manner that people don't like, it's also likely to be ineffective. You can't improve things from a peer position while setting everyone against you. Believing that you're right is not a license to offend.

pc862• 12 years ago

This is important. You can be an asshole (in the present tense sense of the word) without "asshole" being a defining part of your character. If you're socially awkward but well-intentioned, yet when you speak everyone rolls their eyes because you come off as a condescending jerk, the end result is not much different than if you were actually a condescending jerk all along.

learnstats22• 12 years ago

In my experience, that kind of employee is dependent on good management.

If they can be coached into providing help only where other team members appreciate it, then they can become a highly valuable member of the team.

Or, if they are told simply to stop it by an authority figure, a person with noble intentions will normally respect that. An acceptable but perhaps tense solution.

On the other hand, if they are allowed to annoy and frustrate other team members, then they're probably going to cause increasing amounts of trouble within the team.

iopq2• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, if that happened to me I would think the managers are morons and my teammates are dicks for saying that I was being an asshole.

PhantomGremlin• 12 years ago

When dealing with engineers it's very important to remember a few things:

   Engineers are all basically high-functioning
   autistics who have no idea how normal people
   do stuff.
   Cory Doctorow

A milder form of this is frequently called Asperger's syndrome.[1] Sorry for the extended quote, but its from the Harvard Medical School family health guide, so hopefully there is at least some scientific consensus behind it:

   Despite normal and sometimes superior intelligence,
   people with Asperger’s have difficulty understanding
   social conventions and reading social cues. As a
   result, they often seem tactless or rude, and making
   friends can be hard for them. They may be unable to
   take hints, keep secrets, or understand metaphor,
   irony, and humor. The meaning of gestures, tone of
   voice, and facial expressions are a mystery to them,
   and their own body language and expressions may be
   inappropriate or hard to interpret. They stand too
   close, talk too loudly, and don’t make eye contact.

Having said all that, in my experience engineers are often very coachable and can be taught social skills. The quintessential stereotype for this character is the scientist Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory.

[1] http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/update0305a.shtml

cooper12• 12 years ago

Please don't stereotype groups of people, regardless of how consistent your observations of them have been.

It's pretty damning to a group to automatically assign them to autism or asperger's syndrome, both of which are medical disorders only properly diagnosed by doctors. It's like automatically treating the elderly like they have Alzheimer's. It also ignores that there can be (and are) great variations within groups, and applying a label on them can have reverberating consequences in policy.

I'm sure you and Cory Doctorow have good intentions, so please don't take this as an affront against you. I'm just tired of people (especially the media) generating ridiculous stereotyped images of people. Good examples of these are the socially inept "nerd" Sheldon Cooper that you mentioned, the misunderstood genius that helps the heroes save the world in movies, and reclusive haunted writers. While I'm sure people of each type actually do exist, we should't treat people any differently unless we have a valid reason, and even then we should try to understand them as an individual.

I understand that I might have taken your comment a bit out of context, so I apologize for that.

whiskeySix• 12 years ago

This did not pass my bullshit test... does that make me an asshole?

kyberias2• 12 years ago

Oh, yes, definitely. Only because every one of us is someone's asshole.

lordbusiness• 12 years ago

This is what I call a 'content free' article.

Yes, it's nice to wax lyrical about zero-tolerance of baddies, and we can all rally behind such a idea, but the practical side of how to implement this without some egotistical maniac deciding whimsically who is an asshole isn't viable, and if they do think they have achieved such a utopia, I'll bet dollars to donuts that they are deluding themselves. Case in point, this article is intolerant. Intolerant people are in actual fact, assholes.

Also, as Michael Palin once said regarding the early days of scoring Monty Python work, paraphrased, 'if you won't do anything out of principle then sooner or later you're left with nothing but".

thornygreb• 12 years ago

I was not an asshole when the company hired me...the company turned me into an asshole!

crazyjayd2• 12 years ago

I know the feeling. I work with a real asshole, and that in turn has turned me into a asshole. I have to fight it on a daily basis, and it makes me really hate coming into work. I just try to stay positive.

tempodox• 12 years ago

I see why adventur.es see the need to do something like this, but like all methodologies, this recipe is liable to being hacked, cargo-culted, and used as a weapon for assholes, believe it or not. There is no hope of measuring and comparing objective data. I suspect, this is a far too simple answer to a real problem. It was surely meant well, but it will end up producing worse.

(Edit: Typo)

DanielBMarkham• 12 years ago

Upvoting this because it's worthy of discussion, but in my mind a little off-base.

Ever work in a big, dysfunctional environment? I have. My job is to help teams work better, so I get a chance to work in startups, BigCorps, government IT shops -- pretty much everything.

As a rule, large dysfunctional environments are full of people who are extremely polite to each other. You have to be: when you've got a thousand people, you can't walk around ticking people off. People don't survive like that.

But those are the worst places to work. Even worse than the out-of-control, balls-to-the-wall startups. Why? Because hidden apathy is rampant. People will smile, help out, be polite -- even applaud new ideas. But nothing changes. The organization has eliminated assholes to the point where no difficult conversations take place.

Don't go there.

Ever see a high-performing team? Got news for you. Sometimes people say things they shouldn't. They're incivil -- but not on purpose. It's just that they care deeply about what they're doing and you're not always able to express criticism in the most fluffy way possible.

A better way is to go with fierce opinions, lightly held. People have difficult conversations, sometimes with invective and emotion, but from a standpoint of caring for each other and the work. Once they've made their case with as much vigor as they like, they're amenable to change.

So it's not assholes. Everybody is an asshole. It's part of being human. It's manipulative people -- weasels -- whether they use bullying or "facilitation" to manipulate. People who don't have a clear and simple mission that everybody knows and agrees with are poison to any organization.

One business self-help guy put it this way: intent counts more than technique. You can be a bit rough around the edges as long as you mean well and are flexible. What you can't do is use aggression to force people to your will. But there are plenty other tricks besides aggression to do this, and they're all bad.

cmdkeen• 12 years ago

It's also worth pointing to Tuckman's "forming, storming, norming and performing" stages of group development. The example you describe is an institutional level of norming.

During the performing stage, which many teams never actually reach, teams can exhibit arse like to outsiders. They have become a unit that fully understands each other, knows how to raise objections efficiently (often read as rude by outsiders), and doesn't want anything to break up the amazing experience that is being part of that team. Adding a new team member into the mix will upset the balance and push the team back to previous stages.

MrBuddyCasino• 12 years ago

This is important, the opposite of being an asshole is not being nice. Not that the text seemed to imply this, but this is forgotten all too often. I'll take a swearing, passionate Linus any day over some nice weasel.

kyberias2• 12 years ago

It sounds to me they don't like some people for whatever the reason, tag them assholes and refuse to "tolerate" them. I've always wondered whether the criteria for an asshole is the same for each intolerant individual.

WalterSear• 12 years ago

Sounds pretty assholeish to me.

uniformlyrandom• 12 years ago

I wonder how they determine if someone is an asshole. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to fire anyone. Because this line:

We have no tolerance for dishonest, manipulative, belittling, or egocentric individuals

, made me think that this blog post was written by an asshole.

noxryan• 12 years ago

This is what they claim:

"There are two almost sure-fire ways to understand someone’s perspective. The first is to eat with them. How do they treat the wait staff? Are they demanding, or easily agitated? What happens when things aren’t perfect? The other test is to meet their significant other. What qualities did they choose in the person with whom has the most influence over them? We call these the asshole acid test."

Ygg2• 12 years ago

What happens if you have no significant other? Does that fail that test?

If yes, this test was written by an egocentric asshole.

jameshart3• 12 years ago

And if your meal with them also reveals that the person asks the waiter whether the meat is Halal, or that their significant other is the same sex as them, then you had better have a better argument than 'I just didn't like the way they treated the waitstaff' or 'I don't like their SO' to justify not hiring them...

_pmf_• 12 years ago

made me think that this blog post was written by an asshole

No, no; marketing people are excluded from this rule, obviously. The rule is only applicable to these disgusting engineers who have opinions and technical insight.

antimagic• 12 years ago

Because... you're defending the right to be dishonest, manipulative, belittling or egocentric? That's an unusual point of view.

pc862• 12 years ago

Truthfully I was on the fence about "manipulative" (not the other three, though). I get that it has a negative association, but at the end of the day aren't you just trying to show someone why doing _______ is in their best interest? Understanding that the connotation of "manipulative" is that it's not actually in their best interest.

philh2• 12 years ago

I feel like there's a pattern of people who say "I have no tolerance for <bad group, vaguely defined>", and use that as an excuse to be as mean as they like to whomever they like.

I don't get that impression from this post. But plausibly, uniformlyrandom isn't defending the right to be an asshole; but merely mistrusts that someone who claims not to tolerate assholes, is in fact a good judge of that.

Corrector2• 12 years ago

What checks are there to ensure that those enforcing the rule are (1)doing it correctly, (2) not themselves a-holes?

And, assuming it's possible to implement this rule, how do you prevent exploitation, and hence, extinction?

cubano• 12 years ago

Isn't it at least sort of true that one person's asshole could be another's best friend?

Plus, we all have bad days...of course you shouldn't interview on one of those but it could happen.

What if the person has no significant other at the time..does that automatically make them an asshole?

CapitalistCartr• 12 years ago

Good article overall. Requiring to meet the "significant other" is illegal in the Untied States. Marital status is taboo. I find a person's driving tells the most about their personality.

onion2k• 12 years ago

There's quite a good book called "Assholes: A Theory"[1] that explores why some people are so hard to get along with, and more importantly why we need people like that. Assholes are quite often a catalyst to change, both in the sense mentioned in the article that they make you want to walk away from some things, and in the sense that working with them can force changes to the status quo in things that otherwise things will fail if they stayed as they were.

[1] http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Assholes.html?id=GCqXH...

Raphmedia• 12 years ago

A no asshole rule is bullshit. What you want is a no bully rule.

Being harsh is alright. The people are respect the most are those that have the balls to come up to me and say "your idea is rubbish, your point of view is stupid". Yes, this guy is an asshole. But he is a good one.

What you want to avoid is the bullies. The ones that will insult you for no reason. Belittle people to feel better. Those are the ones that are dangerous for a team.

Everybody is an asshole from the point of view of someone else.

edtechdev• 12 years ago

Everybody is an asshole from the point of view of someone else.

Agreed. One man's asshole is another man's best friend.

Also, and perhaps more commonly, people behave differently to different people and in different circumstances. I've never met someone who was an asshole to their boss, even if they acted assholey in general to everyone else.

Bullying is a bit easier to operationally define, focused on behavior, not attitudes or personality traits as much.

shanusmagnus• 12 years ago

I know it's kind of popular in hacker culture to claim that you can't possibly disagree or critique without being a total dick, a la Linus, but it just isn't true. It's an excuse and nothing more. If you're in surgery or under fire in a foxhole or are storming into a burning building then perhaps you don't have mental attention to modulate your tone of voice. Otherwise, act like a professional adult. It's not that hard.

dinergy• 12 years ago

I lived in Columbia, MO for nearly 10 years. It is absolutely full of assholes. I wonder how they're still in business. :)

unimportant• 12 years ago

Meeting a potential employees significant other? I would like to see the person that agrees with that. :D

In the end its a managers ability of good people judgement to keep problematic personalities out, in combination with probation periods.

Unfortunately sometimes some of them slip through and are even rewarded with promotions (happened in two of my previous jobs), even though all colleagues hate them, by employing the good ol sucking upwards, kicking downwards strategy.

drzaiusapelord• 12 years ago

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 guy and Paul Graham get wrong: there simply is no "one good personality" for businesses. We need a mix of personalities to get things done effectively, or at all. Yeah my coders and sysadmins should probably be INTJ's, but I don't want an INTJ sales guy.

I also think there's folly in being ultra-sensitive and ultra-politically correct with hiring. So what if someone has more confidence than you? Is it such a threat to your company and well-being? I think this idea of a young company being a nerf-game nerdfest of humble geeks all "being nice" is asinine. These companies get eaten up by tough guys who just can out-compete them. Niceness comes with a lot of limits and in the long run, can't compete. Look at how quickly Google has given up its 'no evil' mantra, for example, or how Bill Gates had to transform from 1980s geek hero to 1990s hated Bill Gates. It was a limiting philosophy, especially when you have shareholders.

vosper• 12 years ago

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.

jarcane2• 12 years ago

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.

ohitsdom• 12 years ago

I get your "different personalities for different roles" point, and it's a good one. But you lost me on the "niceness can't compete" argument. Why not? And to me, tough isn't the opposite of nice. Being nice doesn't mean being a pushover. It means being courteous and professional.

I'm not sure what you're implying when you say niceness has limits. Are you saying being ethical is not competitive? Because I would strongly disagree with that.

jonahx• 12 years ago

So what if someone has more confidence than you? Is it such a threat to your company and well-being?

I think it's interesting that you tacitly equated "asshole" with "confidence." I don't think you're alone in this, and certainly not if you treat it as merely a fast heuristic. I don't think it's right though. And I think it's a relatively new cultural phenomenon, perceptibly growing over the last thirty years.

"Confidence," (in the self-confidence sense) is etymologically just about trust or faith in oneself or one's abilities. It has nothing to do with aggression or selfishness. That correlation is something, I think, that people notice and selectively remember. It makes sense from a Darwinian perspective that we selectively remember "assholes." And the Sammy Glick / Gordon Gecko / etc narrative is so much a cultural staple at this point that it's self reinforcing.

xiaoma• 12 years ago

I don't see dishonest / various other anti-social behaviors as code for "confident". Even being egocentric is something other than confidence. In fact it's often a lack of one that leads to the other.

It's entire possible to be confident without being an asshole.

alkonaut• 12 years ago

Having a meal with someone is a great test to see if someone is an asshole. Of course, very few will be such huge assholes that it shows up at the first meal.

A better approach is to just keep a lookout when you scan their online profile (which you should). Everyone will have some posts on Twitter/HN/FB/Reddit/Disqus that they aren't proud of, but the assholes will be immediately visible.

Having no visible trail on the Internet could be a sign that you are privact concious but I'd go so far as to say it's a liability these days.

serve_yay• 12 years ago

Well-intentioned of course, but I think people need to be vigilant against this sort of thing ossifying into something less savory. Or in other words, it is possible to be an asshole about being anti-asshole. I keep seeing that word more and more in these discussions, and I noticed the phrase "no tolerance" is used very heavily here. See how zero-tilerance worked for our schools.

mrottenkolber• 12 years ago

"Asshole" is not a class of people, it's an insult. That being said I'd rather deal with a rough-edged person than listen to crap like this. If you write something down, please make sure its intellectually valuable and reflected and not just a random polemic load of crap that could have been generated by a half-arsed algorithm.

We live in a world where algorithmic natural language generation is a real thing. I can only strongly suggest that now is the time to start communicating in an intelligent fashion because being able to express a philosophically sound thought is the only thing that distinguishes you from a machine nowadays really.

jameshart3• 12 years ago

I strongly suspect you are a Markov chain.

euphemize• 12 years ago

For those who read till the end:

  The other test is to meet their significant other. What qualities did they choose in the person with whom has the most influence over them? We call these the “asshole acid test.

I like the idea, and would love to meet every candidate's SO, but I can't imagine how this would work out well, practically speaking. I'm also thinking in reverse - what if my SO's prospective employer requested to meet me - knowingly that the hiring chances will depend on how they read my personality...I'm not sure it's a great thing to put people through.

crazyjayd2• 12 years ago

I would imagine they have a big dinner, with drinks etc. Invite all significant others (Candidates and Employers) to make it a kind of "fun" thing. I would be super proud to have my future employers meet my SO. Also, she's a really solid sounding board, and she could point out that the employers are actually "assholes".

josephlord• 12 years ago

Sounds a bit constipated to me.

To be serious it depends greatly on the definition of asshole. If it means that racist, sexist, other discriminatory behaviour and general mean or vindictive behaviour is not tolerated that is good. It does need to be careful that it doesn't prevent disagreement and dissent when they are appropriate. Really not keen on interviewing and judging on partners either. The question of how they treat people of perceived lower status (waiting staff) is probably valuable on the other hand.

grandalf• 12 years ago

Some people are too nice and others are too mean.

In the middle are people who can hold themselves and others accountable and whose behavior cultivates a culture of respect and teamwork.

In my opinion, assholes are people whose behavior (intentional or not) shuts down creativity and collaboration.

The key thing to understand is that companies learn as a team how to get the desired results. This means people need to be able to communicate, to trust their coworkers, to feel comfortable putting themselves out there, etc. Success is made up of thousands of small interactions.

Assholes are people who get in the way of healthy team functioning by bullying, trying to be right all the time, intimidating others, etc.

Some assholes are smart and have something to offer, but it should be weighed against the cascade of downsides as well.

overgard• 12 years ago

So there's this term I love that has sort of fallen out of use recently, but it's useful in this conversation:

"grinfucker"

IE, the kind of person that is socially extremely polite and gracious, but fucks you over in subtle ways.

I totally agree with the spirit of this article, but I think they've defined "asshole" as "caustic person". I think the most corrosive people are actually the grinfuckers -- the people that will smile at you one day and stab you in the back the next. I like caustic people! They might be difficult in the moment, but at least they're honest.

je42• 12 years ago

What do you think about meeting the "significant other" as a test ?

madd_o• 12 years ago

Of course, your realize the issue with a no asshole policy, right?

Everyone left is full of shit. <grin>

jfoutz• 12 years ago

I 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.

fenomas• 12 years ago

It'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").

BinaryIdiot• 12 years ago

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.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

I 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.

jarcane2• 12 years ago

The responses to this thread remind me of nothing so much as this comic: http://amultiverse.com/comic/2015/01/05/its-about-ethics/

ryandvm• 12 years ago

Given 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...

Our No Asshole Rule

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