No Time to Be Nice at Work

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/opinion/sunday/is-your-boss-mean.html

by SimplyUseless • 11 years ago

166 125 11 years ago

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 failure of the uncivil person - this is pretty clearly a failure of the sabotager. Some people are willing to harm random third parties (shareholders) in acts of petty revenge against those they dislike (for possibly valid reasons). Quite a bit of victim blaming going on there.

I agree that the person with power should - as a pragmatic move - attempt to behave in a manner that accounts for the bad acts of others. In much the same way, people should avoid putting themselves into situations where there is a high risk of crime. But the ultimate responsibility for an individual's actions lies on the individual, not the person who was "asking for it."

j_baker3• 11 years ago

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

s73v3r4• 11 years ago

It's the only way people like that can justify their own sociopathic behavior.

yummyfajitas5• 11 years ago

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...

rayiner• 11 years ago

Unlike the innocent victim of crime, shareholders create the culture that leads to the sabateurs. They reap what they sow.

yummyfajitas5• 11 years ago

The shareholders may (and likely are) completely unaware, particularly if the saboteurs are passive-aggressively harming the shareholders rather than honestly quitting.

parennoob• 11 years ago

Putting it as "sabotage" is a bit too dramatic in my opinion. Say Mary walks her boss Tom through filing the necessary documentation every time they put a product on the market (even though it is really his job), and Tom always takes the credit if the product hits the market. This pisses off Mary because she is never acknowledged.

Now suppose when releasing Product Z, Mary says "Um, do it yourself. It's your job.", Tom fucks up the documentation, and the product tanks. I don't think Mary is a saboteur in this case at all -- she is just not being nice and going "above and beyond" like usual.

I suspect this sort of thing is what the article is referring to, and what occurs in the majority of cases.

yummyfajitas5• 11 years ago

I've been in the situation of Mary, sort of (no one was "taking credit", but I don't care much about such emotional concerns - pay me, let me do my job, I don't care). My action: I did the best I could for shareholders, including doing things that were blatantly not what I was hired for. When it became clear that it was going to be a long term task, I openly said I'd quit if I were expected to continue doing it.

Redoubts• 11 years ago

Some people are willing to harm random third parties (shareholders) in acts of petty revenge against those they dislike (for possibly valid reasons).

Make your employees shareholders; problem solved.

Retra• 11 years ago

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.

yummyfajitas5• 11 years ago

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?

pyre• 11 years ago

While the people taking illegal or immoral actions are responsible for their own reactions, it's possible for someone to call others to action through nothing but speech. If someone actively goes around pissing off as many people as possible, how is it not in someways "their own fault" when someone reacts poorly to this?

Also, as another poster said, calling the pissed-off employer a "sabotager" is not actually what the article is saying. The manager may "sabotage" their own success by causing all of the employees under themselves to quit en masse. Is this a "bad" action that only the employees are responsible for, leaving the manager as the poor and helpless victim?

s73v3r4• 11 years ago

"It's a bit weird how the article paints this as a failure of the uncivil person"

Because it is. If you're an asshole to me, why on earth would you expect that I want to help you? Or do anything more than the bare minimum?

s73v3r4• 11 years ago

"Some people are willing to harm random third parties (shareholders)"

Shareholders do this to employees all the time. So I cannot blame employees for not caring about the shareholders, when the shareholders have shown so much contempt for employees.

littletimmy• 11 years ago

This is to be expected when the working environment gets as cut-throat as the American workplace has become. Blame it on inequality, blame it on the puritanical drive to overwork, blame it on the zeal to squeeze every last bit of profit. It's just one other symptom of how anyone who is not an oligarch in this society is meant as an expendable resource to be crushed by the ubermensch.

My only hope is that the USA fails to export its brand of moral decrepitude to the rest of the world. Europe should stay civilized, for the sake of its people.

tedks4• 11 years ago

The United States is the way it is because this is the only way to survive within the framework of competitive capitalism. European attempts at cultural protectionism will fail as market pressures force them to adopt American customs and habits.

This is just basic economics. American companies ruthlessly optimize for profit. Any attempt to optimize for anything else will take away from the potential for profit. In a global economy this means that profitable companies will beat out nice companies, and eventually "nice" company shareholders will force restructuring according to American ideals.

I would also say that based on existing trends the United States is quite rapidly succeeding at bringing its way of life to the rest of the world. There are no more competing ideologies left, and the next few years will lead to more trade agreements that will mop up the remains of protectionism. Soon, English will be mandated as a first language in most of the world, and we'll have a truly globalized culture.

MrBuddyCasino2• 11 years ago

That is a very simplistic world view. Have you ever been to Europe? Central and northern Europe are very successful economically. I know several people that once worked for an american firm, and won't ever do so again. I have never heard that about swiss, swedish or german firms.

You might want to check out these GDP stats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy#Current_world_ec...

The US and Europe are pretty close. The PIGS states have issues, but eastern Europe still has huge growth rates.

4lejandrito• 11 years ago

I think like you, but I am not based on specific evidence, just feelings. Could you suggest some literature that goes deeper into this topic?

encoderer• 11 years ago

Employee happiness is absolutely relevant to P&L. Happy employees are more productive and have less turnover.

Companies already know this. It becomes a game of "how little must we do" but it's far from the sweatshop imagery I saw while reading your comment.

I grew up middle class in middle America and it's not just the SF tech scene I've made my career in; I grew up in a world of company picnics and "4 10s" work weeks. Also, layoffs and plant closures. I'm not naive to the nature of American business, I just have inclusive opinions about how companies can be run profitably. And doubly so in tech.

static_noise• 11 years ago

You're telling it like it is. But does it have to be this way and does it have to stay this way? Once the competition is eliminated the wheels of capitalism start to lose ground. I'm not really sure if our cargo cult of "work work work" at all costs can be upkept for very long, especially when resources per capita start tightening.

rorykoehler5• 11 years ago

I mostly agree however the American ideology and it's hunger for profit and domination is resulting in it cannibalizing itself. The trade agreements are a case in point as they are (from what I have read as I know their contents are still largely secret) by very definition protectionist. That said it is a very different type of protectionism to European protectionism. In Europe the protectionism was for social purposes (protecting local jobs etc) while in the US it is to give US corporations unencumbered access to the global economy (ie protecting the interests of unfettered corporatism). Looking a bit further down the road we can see that Marx was amazingly right, just way too before his time. Capitalism's ruthless march toward ever greater efficiency means it will end up undermining itself. There is no other possible outcome.

millstone• 11 years ago

Who says that being nice is a competitive disadvantage? Being mean or stingy to employees makes them less motivated, increases turnover, and ensures you only get the people that nobody else wants to hire.

Costco is an example of a retailer that treats its employees well, and enjoys turnover rates a fraction of the industry norm. That means greater productivity, and lower hiring and training costs.

The problem is not optimizing for profit, but optimizing for quarterly profit. Short-term thinking for short-term profit but long-term costs.

vezzy-fnord• 11 years ago

Economic protectionism has been an integral part of U.S. policy since the 1850s or so. Politicians were pretty big on tariffs and land law acts for nearly a century, though they have since declined in favor of gunboat diplomacy.

crdoconnor3• 11 years ago

This is just basic economics.

"Basic economics" as some people call it, is a religion, not a science.

Basic neoliberalism, as taught in econ 101, is just as much a shallow pretext for maintaining existing power structures as Stalinism/Marxism was in the Soviet Union, and its predictive power is close to non-existent.

Guess why, for example, David Koch donated to Florida State University and then demanded the right to determine their economics syllabus? So he gets to dictate what counts as "basic economics".

happyscrappy• 11 years ago

Unfortunately for Europe the actual problem is Asia and globalizaton in general. However much you may dislike it the economy is global. Yes you can sell each other heavily regulated lattes but that does not change the market realities for fungible items.

lionhearted3• 11 years ago

Europe should stay civilized, for the sake of its people.

Yeah, what a shame those driven over-working puritans went and exported their Americanism to those civilized Europeans in 1944.

Edit: I'll make the point more explicitly in response to the downvoting. (1) It's easy to decry efficiency and hard work in times of peace. But liberté, égalité, fraternité requires not having your society conquered by Hitler or Stalin. France failed that test and would've been a Nazi puppet state if not liberated by a harder-fighting more determined force than the Germans. (2) Anti-Americanism is really lame; America's achievements in the last 80 years have done so immensely much good, while being probably the most benevolent, cooperative, and pro-social world hegemon of all time -- it's not even particularly close. America has its problems, but is an amazing country and our citizens should be proud of our achievements.

vacri4• 11 years ago

But liberté, égalité, fraternité requires not having your society conquered by Hitler or Stalin.

...

France failed that test and would've been a Nazi puppet state if not liberated by a harder-fighting more determined force than the Germans.

Your comment ironically misses that the bulk of the work to bring down Hitler came from Stalin. There's a lot of American Exceptionalism in your comment, and you're handwaving away a lot of inconvenient points - not the least of which is that the French were surprised by brand new tactics in WWII, just like everyone else. The US had the luxury of years of time to figure out how to respond, plus had an immense industrial base that the enemy could not touch. France was plenty willing to fight hard - witness their WWI experience.

The US is awesome, and has tons of awesome people. But you should be exhorting folks to see the full picture rather than papering over the cracks and providing a doctored view of history.

hackuser2• 11 years ago

This is nothing unique to the United States (or to the 21st century). Just read a history book about another time and place. The workplace here and now is far kinder and gentler than almost any time or place in history (with the possible exception of contemporary, developed nations).

In the good old days, children worked and in horrible jobs, such as coal mines; workers regularly lost limb and life; 7 day weeks and incredible hours were the norm, and in physically and environmentally horrible jobs.

That said, we should do better.

wpietri2• 11 years ago

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 were very kind, I'd say that the dangers of the work are often temporarily necessary for economic reasons [1], but the way we treat each other is something purely chosen. Not always chosen explicitly, but a natural consequence of other choices we make in setting up the systems in which we work.

[1] E.g., coal mine deaths have fallen off pretty sharply as we have gotten more wealthy and more technologically advanced: http://www.msha.gov/stats/centurystats/coalstats.asp

crdoconnor3• 11 years ago

The workplace here and now is far kinder and gentler than almost any time or place in history (with the possible exception of contemporary, developed nations).

We had kinder and gentler workplaces 30-40 years ago.

We can thank the business community for destroying our unions for that, and neoliberal economists for providing a plausible sounding rationale for why it was in our best interests.

Also, while we haven't quiet brought back debtors prisons, child labor, back breaking labor and 18 hours days, we are certainly headed squarely in that direction.

j_baker3• 11 years ago

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.

JohnyLy• 11 years ago

I totally agree. Working in a nice/friendly environment makes you more motivated and therefore more efficient.

gambiting• 11 years ago

This is a personal anecdote - my dad used to run a company that sorted second hand clothing. He had a huge warehouse, where people would stand in one place and literally pick clothes out of one basket and then sort them into several smaller ones, by colour or type. The atmosphere in the warehouse wasn't exactly perfect,but employees could talk to each other and they had a radio playing music. Based on some observations, he introduced a complete ban on casual talking and he took away the radio. Sure, for the employees it must have been much worse. But the productivity increased by 50% - an average amount sorted per day per employee was 400kg, after the change it went up to 600kg, which in the scale of things made a HUGE difference at the end of the month. The company could process a lot more with the same number of people. And yes, sure - people would get unhappy and leave, but it being rather easy manual labour - there were always 50 other people willing to take the position. I'm not defending my father, I think the way he ran the company was horrible for the employees, but it's just the personal anecdote showing that working in a nice/friendly environment doesn't necessarily make you more efficient. They could chat, so they spent time chatting,not doing what they were paid to do.

InclinedPlane• 11 years ago

The vast majority of my friends and acquaintances that are in the tech industry have changed jobs with work environment (co-workers they like, friendly environment, etc.) as among the most important factors, even above compensation. That seems to be universally true of almost every developer or engineer I've come across. Work environment is a huge factor in where someone works and how long they decide to stay there or whether or not they decide to leave. Given that, engendering a friendly work environment seems like one of the most cost-effective ways to bring in and retain talented engineers.

hlfcoding• 11 years ago

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 presented incorrectly and callous. Holding back feedback to be nice can grow problems and erode trust.

j_baker3• 11 years ago

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

zxcvcxz• 11 years ago

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 new product they were working on and submitted some changes to github, they accepted the pull request and my friend submitted a few more finding all sorts of bugs. At this point the lead developers started to argue about how the changes were unnecessary and that my friend needed to learn more about how their product worked, what was rude is that they were publicly arguing while leaving him out of the conversation. No words directed at him, just conversation about him. A few weeks later they realized their project really did have a lot of bugs and pushed through a large change with many of my friends bug-fixes in it without giving him credit or even so much as a thank you.

The lead devs would pal around and make inside jokes and ask my friend to do all sorts of work while leaving him "out of the loop" as if he were some "lackey" for them to boss around and not really part of the team.

Not too long after he started working there the team told him he needed to attend a "conference on sensitivity in OSS" halfway across the country. My friend couldn't make it and then he was basically interrogated by the lead devs as to how he feels is the proper way to treat people. He said he was treated as if he was in trouble and felt like he was being accused of a crime. About a month later he left the company after being continually snubbed by his superiors and not receiving any appreciation for his work.

Personally I get this feeling with a lot of "safe space" organizations I've contributed too. The leaders are arrogant and passive aggressively rude, treat you like crap and belittle your work, then act high-and-mighty because they've never said a curse word.

marktangotango• 11 years ago

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?

zeckalpha• 11 years ago

Sounds like an organization that won't scale.

warmcat• 11 years ago

From my personal experience, I agree on the stress caused by uncivil workspace...especially if the boss is uncivil. I used to get thoughts of suicide when I was working for a boss in a job right out of college and my health declined a lot. It was not until I changed my job that I saw a huge difference in civil and uncivil workspace and its effect on life.

ionforce• 11 years ago

There was thing somewhere (Internet!) that the number one reason people switch jobs is because of their relationship with their manager.

I agree with you. Happiness is hugely a function of said relationship.

netcan• 11 years ago

We are such apes.

ak39• 11 years ago

That is so true. Primates, not just apes. Here's Sapolsky explaining how stress in an hierarchical social arrangement impacts heart health and life expectancy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4UMyTnlaMY

negamax• 11 years ago

Having seen my fair shares of people like these, I say it has everything to do with their own personal lives not sorted and them taking it out at workplace. If anything, companies should be extra vigilant in rooting out such workers.

comrade12• 11 years ago

Aggressive behavior is the norm when working as a consultant. You have to know that it's not personal and that part of it is negotiation on the part of the client, part of it is anger on the part of the client, some of it is just due to poor personality, some of it due to your misunderstanding of the situation and culture.

Most people are not fit to work in a high-stress, aggressive environment, but some of us are. And that's why we get paid a lot for not doing a heck of a lot.

I worked as a 'clean up' consultant in Europe for a couple of years - going to clients that had failing projects and were desperate to bring in a developer to get the project back on track. My job was 75% calming the client down and making them feel loved and 25% programming.

And boy, do I have some stories...

jliechti1• 11 years ago

Are you able to share a few?

hoers• 11 years ago

seconded

spotman2• 11 years ago

I share the opinion of the parent comment, pretty much exactly.

Some of my comrades call this a layer-8 problem. (hint: there is only 7 technology levels, 8 is the human one).

One story in particular my firm was hired to come into a startup that had failed to scale, both technology wise, and personnel wise. They had hired up to 25 engineers, hoping to fix their stability issues, and almost going bankrupt doing it. I am at no liberty to say which company this is publicly unfortunately.

It was stressful, but you can't take things personal. You have to put aside feelings, to get useful data out of these people to make the platform work. You can't possibly care about someone's ethics, approach, and often even coding style on these missions. The goal is to try and not piss off as many people as you and, and go ahead not worry if you do have to piss someone off to get the job done, and not lose sleep at night if someone does not get along with you.

The end result was that they had to shed, through various reasons the great majority of their internal team. We stabilized things and bought them lots of time, while they slowly brought in new senior tech management and rebuilt their internal team from the ground up.

It was a multi year affair, and involved working on over 12 codebases and consolidating applications from 3 different hosting providers into AWS.

They got very close to running the ship into the ground. If you think staying up late and pulling the occasional all-nighter is unhealthy, or having a job that has extremely high expectations and leave you no time for a personal life is bad, this is about one hundred times worse. Since my team is small and highly skilled we can get a lot done in a short amount of time, and occasionally we are terse even with each other. But the amount of sleep deprivation that comes with a task of gargantuan size, where your dealing with hundreds and thousands of requests (sometimes per second), the company is going for broke, and a single code change can improve monetary situations in instantaneous, tractable ways, it gets super intense.

You have the CEO, the COO, the CFO all breathing down your neck. One day they see light at the end of the tunnel from fixing the currently broken problem, and then the next day, you discover another codebase lost in git that powers commerce for android, is starting to experience issue, and you don't even know where to find credentials to log into its production systems since it was setup by some employee in the middle of the night a year ago that is no longer there.

I can go on and on and on. But honestly, please don't read this as a recommendation. Being a digital mercenary is fun in your 20s, but it got old quick. Of course I still do it, but I have a much healthier way of saying NO, more often now. You can make a very lucrative living doing this sort of work, but its hard to earn the reputation to get these clients, and you may end up forgetting what your family looks like by the end of a 2 year job that is 365/24/7.

The story did have a happy ending though. The company does well today. Extremely well. A new era of management has come in over the last year, and I think everyone learned a lot. They are a household brand and I hear about them in the news it seems like monthly.

Cheers

comrade12• 11 years ago

I think there's only one that I'm comfortable talking about since it was long ago and the people involved have all moved on from their parent companies.

Louis Vuitton was relaunching their public-facing website, which was tightly integrated with their back-end systems - inventory, manufacturing, etc. IOW, it wasn't just a regular website.

They hired a consulting company here in Europe who sold them a solution that was the epitome of using the wrong tool for the job - it was a non-relational database solution for what was obviously a pretty traditional relational db application. (except the product content - images, movies, etc, had to be tied to their back-end db systems)

Louis Vuitton rented out the Louvre for the launch party, hosted by the CEO. But no one took it upon themselves to let the CEO know that the rewrite would not be done in time for the launch. Not even close. The launch party happened but the new site wasn't ready. There was nothing to present at the launch.

The CTO was fired of course. We were hired to help bring the project back on track along with a couple of other consulting companies - it was about 5 senior developers and a few dozen junior developers.

However, the work was being done in France where the norm is to not work under pressure like what we had to do. And the senior consultants where all american, swiss, and german, and only one very good and amazing french developer. I spent most of my time working on politics and very little time developing. We managed to get some of the work away from the managing French company to be done by Swiss and German companies. And then I was transferred to another project with another desperate client.

I was in Hyderabad a couple of years later and met the fired CTO at a party - he was starting a consulting company in India to provide consultants to Europe. Nice guy but meeting him made me understand why what happened happened.

Xcelerate• 11 years ago

Most people are not fit to work in a high-stress, aggressive environment

Yep, that's me, and I have no shame admitting it. I absolutely cannot handle that kind of environment. The less interpersonal interaction I have to deal with, the happier I am.

Luckily, as a grad student I can work by myself and spend my time creating and learning all kinds of interesting things. But I'm a little worried that once I graduate I won't be able to find a job that has this much freedom...

67726e• 11 years ago

They are certainly out there, they just aren't as common as one would like. Finding a good small business or startup (I don't mean a Silicon Valley "Facebook for Cats"-esque venture) with the right people can be a game changer.

After leaving my first job, I went to a, purported, "real startup" which wound up being run in a manner that was very corporate. Sure, you get the no-dresscode and flexible hours (which isn't really all that unique to startups nowadays anyway) but being treated like a petulant child with a Slack channel masquerading as a time clock, a bot that monitors the tone of speech, and being lied to about compensation, duties, etc. It was clearly wrong as could be.

Moved on to job #3, and the difference is night and day. Sure, the ability to work remote and set hours are very nice, but what makes the job amazing is working with folks who are dedicated, and treat you like an adult and an integral part of the team.

Coming out of your first, idyllic environment, you might not yet be cognizant of all the things that are important, but do be careful to try to distill your thoughts and be wary of what the folks hiring tell you.

jseliger• 11 years ago

I think much of it is the nature of dealing with clients too. I wrote more about that in "How I learned about assertiveness and reality from being a consultant" (http://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/07/how-i-learned-about-assert...), which started life as an email to some friends who didn't totally understand the nature of consulting: Someone pays you, or they don't. If no money changes hands you don't have a business.

Much of the polite and deferential behavior that's inculcated in the education system or in large companies can be exploited by potential clients. Consultants have to learn this, and pretty much every one does, either with greater or lesser ease.

mikerichards2• 11 years ago

Yes, and unfortunately you have to add to the aggression by being aggressive and abrasive yourself.

You have to stand up for yourself and push back. I make it a point to be somewhat aggressive and non-collaborative when I'm dealing with our VP of Development just so he knows that I won't be pushed around.

Guess what. It works. I've intentionally been aggressive in meetings with him to show him that I won't be pushed around. It's almost like a test for some upper management types. "Let me see if I can tweak this guy"

That's sad. I'd rather have a thoughtful, collaborative environment, but we deal with the cards we've been dealt.

geomark• 11 years ago

Reminds me of my boss's boss at a big company some years ago. When you presented a proposal or project status he would badger you with vulgarities until you swore back at him. He insisted you swear at him. Then you could move on with your message. I felt sorry for my boss, a very religious man who would not swear under any circumstances. He absorbed terrible abuse in every meeting I attended where he and his boss were both present. But I had no problem since my nature is rather rough so once I knew the rules I would cuss that pr*ck out at the first opportunity every time, and he loved me. Toxic environment much?

mason55• 11 years ago

I've spent most of my career in a client facing role of one sort or another. One difference, at least from what I've seen, is that the incivility mentioned in the article is generally directed at the clients (behind closed doors of course). Especially once you grow past a size where losing a single client won't kill the company, you get the blame the client for everything that goes wrong (really just venting about the normal things that go wrong in any technology delivery).

I do think that, in that environment, one of the senior people has the responsibility to keep the client hate from becoming totally toxic and pervasive. Of course there are bad clients but even good clients can be demanding and you don't want to have a whole team of client facing people who hate all of their clients.

Edmond• 11 years ago

Funny, I wrote a blog post a couple years ago on this very issue:

http://colabopad.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-10-commandments-of...

learc83• 11 years ago

I worked as a 'clean up' consultant in Europe for a couple of years - going to clients that had failing projects and were desperate to bring in a developer to get the project back on track. My job was 75% calming the client down and making them feel loved and 25% programming.

How did you get into this if you don't mind me asking? Before I started programming (and went back to school), I worked in customer service/technical support for several years where 90% of my job was calming people down. I've also done plenty of contract work, so I think I'd be pretty good at what you described.

michaelochurch• 11 years ago

First, I think that people aren't becoming less uncivil but that environments are getting worse. If anything (although this is probably an artifact of increasing age and status) people seem to be getting better, on the whole: fewer mean jokes and exclusionary behaviors. Work environments, with the open-plan trend, are getting a lot worse and more stressful. It used to be that an off-color joke was heard by 2 people in a private office; now it's heard by 40 in a bullpen. Open-plan offices tend to magnify the cumulative effects of microaggressions, which is one of the reasons why every population except for the most constitutionally insensitive one (those who've never had negative experiences, either due to general inexperience or a combination of privilege and luck) hates them.

Second, when you're aggressive or even uncivil, it hurts you with that person. That said, it can be beneficial-- in very small doses. Punching down is bad, while punching up is risky (the best target is a person of high status, that is "punching up", and low character, but with no real power) and if you're perceived as being uncivil for personal benefit, you're just considered an asshole. Usually, uncivil behavior is to one's benefit when (and pretty much only when) one is perceived as being that way for the group: you're a protector. People tire of selfish rule-breakers and firebrands, but those who behave in such ways for group benefit tend to inspire loyalty.

Don't get me wrong: it's generally best not to be uncivil or arrogant at all. It's just not intellectually honest to say that it's always socially detrimental to be that way. You have to be extremely selective in your targets to make it work, though.

douche4• 11 years ago

Have you ever considered writing a book? Something like a "Peopleware 2.0"?

iamcurious• 11 years ago

Yes. I would read it.

douche4• 11 years ago

I mean, your blog is must-read material every time new content shows up in theoldreader, and I keep coming back to certain points, like the Gervais principle series.

itbeho• 11 years ago

My personal favorite quote from a previous boss: "I left you alone last week when you were out for your wife's surgery. Now it's time for you to catch up."

fsloth3• 11 years ago

What a douchebag. I'm glad you can describe this work relationship in the past sense.

nhashem• 11 years ago

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. You could optimize your personal gain, but the reputational damage would be be so suboptimal for your firm that you'd wind up in a net worse position.

Social norms and conventions have significantly shifted since then. It is now entirely acceptable for executives to pay themselves several hundred times the average worker compensation[1]. There is no longer any real cost, reputational or otherwise, for optimizing for your personal gain So you might as well get yours, and fuck everyone else. Sure, some people with "Sanders 2016" bumper stickers will whine on Reddit about you, and maybe they'll even get together and yell at some buildings until they collapse due to a combination of in-fighting and tear-gas. But for the most part, you'll just shrug, order another round of layoffs, and think about how much your RSUs will appreciate in the inevitable stock price bump.

And if you're truly concerned about reputational risk, and can't reconcile that some people in society will still think you're a "bad person" for this, and the thought of being a bad person causes too much discomfort for your liking, then you can literally compare them to Hitler and find a sympathetic audience.[2]

I have to imagine -- and yes, I literally have to imagine, because I don't have any quantitative evidence and don't pretend otherwise -- that this is essentially a sociopath mindset (perhaps best explained by the Gervais Principle[3]) that then trickles down at every level of most professional organizations. When you're optimizing for your personal gain, you don't have a lot of time to consider things like "empathy" or "fairness." This is unfortunate to those disposed to such personality traits like the OPs father, because they essentially get eaten alive in the modern American workplace. At many professional organizations, the approach is binary. If it's not "fuck you, got mine" then it's "fuck! you got mine."

HN is known for having a significant population of those who that there is nothing wrong with this, and if the most productive members of society happen to be sociopaths, then they should be rewarded as such as their productivity is what drives the human race forward. But what's unfortunate to me is that this means some of our society's most brilliant and productive people will essentially get marginalized in their professional (and indirectly, their personal) lives, not because they lack some level of competence, self-reliance, productivity, etc, but because they're incapable of embracing a sociopathic mindset to professional advancement.

I have no problem with those who want to make their fortunes in any way possible, so they can retire to Galt's Gultch with their fortunes. I suppose I only question why they're so hell-bent on having only assholes for neighbors.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/23/opinion/the-outrage-constr...

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/25/t...

[2] http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/the-rich-strike-back-1...

[3] http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

slgeorge• 11 years ago

@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.

dmourati• 11 years ago

I'm guilty of workplace incivility. I was oblivious how much I was negatively impacting my colleagues. I read No One Understands you and What to do About it and the No Asshole Rule. Both helped me to improve.

hliyan• 11 years ago

How does this compare with the idea of "disagreeable givers"? http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/why-it-p...

patrickdavey• 11 years ago

I once went to a talk on the "8 powers of leadership", one of these "powers" was the power to be yourself. The presenters idea was to get your "go to hell kit" ready (x months of living expenses saved) and then act the way you believe you should. For example, if a boss started shouting at me, I would politely, but firmly, say shall we continue this in another room, once there, I would try to work out what the issue was and come to some resolution. I certainly wouldn't stand for that sort of behaviour, life is too short.

Respect yourself, get your go to hell kit ready, and stick up for yourself, there are always other jobs if push comes to shove, especially for anyone reading this.

unabst2• 11 years ago

This is so true, and victims of bullying especially have a problem with this. It helps to realize that the problems is often also the cause, because bullies choose their victims. In a work environment, a kit is probably a good idea, but you'll see people who can't stand up for themselves regardless of circumstance, even when the risk is non-existent. It also has a lot to do with standards and how high or low your standards are for how you should be treated. Too high or too low and there is a price to be paid.

jqm• 11 years ago

On the other hand the fake niceness of some workplaces is just as repugnant. And it makes it harder to find out where you stand and what needs to be done. I fully agree there is no need for hostility in the workplace and it shouldn't be tolerated. At the same time I believe many people have become oversensitive and forgotten the massaging of their personal feelings are not the reason a company exists.

sgt101• 11 years ago

A lot of these things are artifacts of intense competition and change. Ignoring invites often happens (where I work) when people have 20 appointments in a day already! Stress transmits from the top down; if your business is "as usual" you can get your hands round it and run it smoothly, if your platform is on fire and your customers are throwing bombs at you (and disappearing) then staying on an even keel is hard.

wyclif• 11 years ago

For those of you that like business books, and want to improve the culture of your workplace in terms of creating space for respect, civility, compassion, and yes—love, I thought this is relevant to these issues:

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Is-Killer-App-Influence/dp/140004...

It's not a new book, and it's written by a Yahoo guy, but don't let those things put you off. There's tons of actionable stuff here.

__Joker2• 11 years ago

I have heard first hand about some CEO or bosses deliberately practising meanness/curtness. The worst thing of all is I could not fathom they kind of justifying and moving on. Most likely if things are working something most be right.

fsloth3• 11 years ago

Large orgs can do well due to market conditions despite it's leaders. To quote Andy Grove terminology, being an asshole seldom creates leverage. It's kinda cargo cult to figure out some prominent social behaviour of a CEO is the reason for orgs success when in reality there are so many things going on that are hard to observe as outsiders.

__Joker2• 11 years ago

Completely agree. Drawing positive correlation between CEO behaviour and success is fraught with lots holes. My peeve against this is people(employees) accepting such behaviour and to some extent condoning the same.

Also my last statements I meant the attitude of people that "Most likely if things are working something most be right."

jryanwilliams• 11 years ago

Job role plays a big part in how civil someone thinks they are expected to be to one another. With the transactional nature of sales, I see many leaders approach their sales team with a sort of 'what have you done (closed) lately' mentality, which is a slippery slope that can get very ugly very quickly.

glaberficken• 11 years ago

Civil face to face relations and at the same time "uncivil" communication via email.

I've lately been experiencing this at my work place.

Face to face, people are all really civil to each other, assertive, giving objective feedback and collaborating really well to get work done.

However when things move to the written form (email mostly) things can quickly escalate into finger pointing and the blame game.

Anyone got thoughts on what would pressure us to act this way?

awinder• 11 years ago

One of the more insidious ways that reading books / training up on management or being civil is when people understand the high level message and can relate to some of the individual strategies without personally embracing the ideology. So when you're face to face with other people, you can recall strategies of being civil, you play the part, but deep down the message hasn't been really been fully embraced. All it takes is a situation where strong social cues have been removed (electronic communication) and you're unable to notice that the situation requires care and involves other human beings, and you see a lot of reverting to old, poor habits.

One very skin-deep method to help out there is to create a strong culture around not having endless email discussions and knowing when to take things "off-line". Close, personal communication with care and compromise is how disputes get amicably resolved, and the impersonality of email leads to sides just wanting to be told "You are right, I am wrong". Which is a situation that will never, ever, ever happen.

unabst2• 11 years ago

Kindness is so so so underrated. If one needs an excuse to be kind, they are already an asshole. And those who stick around horrible people need to realize that those people suffer greatly for how they behave even if they deny it. In startups especially. A leader that lacks integrity and lacks a heart does not deserve any loyalty, and if you're giving it, you need to consider the possibility that you are victim of a bully.

I also love the conclusion of original article:

Given the enormous cost of incivility, it should not be ignored. We all need to reconsider our behavior. You are always in front of some jury. In every interaction, you have a choice: Do you want to lift people up or hold them down?

No Time to Be Nice at Work

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