Reading the section entitled, "The Jerk," got me to wondering if OP will be ever write the obvious follow-up post, "Why We Promote So Many Jerks".
I have done work for over 100 companies ranging from SMB to large enterprises. Independently (I'll tell you why in a moment) I just made a list of the 10 biggest assholes I ever met the other day. Eight of them were the #1 person in one of those companies. Seven of them are, not surprisingly, out of business.
(The reason I made the list was because I watched "Undercover Boss" for the fourth time the other night. The first three times were great. This episode, about the CEO of Norwegian Cruise Lines, was horrible. All I kept asking myself was, "Where the hell did they get this jerk?" He had no idea how anything happened in his company and had people and functional problems in all 4 departments he worked in undercover. One employee even remarked that he had a problem dealing with women. That's when I made my list.)
What is it about our processes in business that seems to favor assholes? I realize that my experience may not be the norm, but some of the things I've seen done by the President or CEO:
- getting drunk and firing the security guard
- throwing a phone book at his secretary
- belittling vendors until none wanted the business
- routinely yelling f words at employees
- firing other executives on a whim
- begging these executives to return to work
- committing crimes with the books to earn a bonus
- ignoring company saving advice (that would make them look bad)
- sexually harassing subordinates
- committing adultery (& other crimes) in full view of subordinates
I even witnessed a CEO of a Fortune 50 company break down and cry at a Tony Robbins event because he couldn't complete a routine task.
If I sound like I think that our leaders should be held to a higher standard, it's because they should be. Hell, I'd settle for any standard.
I'd love to hear OP's take on the other side of the story, when smart people decide to stop making sacrifices for the assholes they got stuck working for.
>committing adultery (& other crimes) in full view of subordinates
Nit: adultery is not a crime in most of the West.
(Some US states still have it on the books, but it's probably not enforceable, under the same Supreme Court ruling that overturned laws against contraception.)
What is worse is those bosses who do not know anything about what is going on in their companies, are getting bonuses off the performances of the workers doing task that they their bosses has no clue they are doing for them. Seems backwards
Sociopathy and narcissism are overrepresented amongst executives. Smart people (as meant in the post) usually like to discover (scientists) or create (engineers, writers, etc.) things. They don't have to achieve power for power's sake in order to be happy.
Thus, they aren't as well represented amongst executives in established companies because that form of achievement isn't something they valued.
Not to mention that these people have the chutzpah to get what they want. They're always successful in the short term, which means that they've already gained influence by the time anyone figures it out. And when they do, that person gets canned as an example to keep the others in line.
All said and done you need your "bad" employee more than they need you. Brilliance usually comes at a cost. If you were really a good leader you would have been able to get Rodger some help with his drug problem. And if it had worked he would have repayed you with some amazing work.
Stop fucking complaining about "bad" employees who make you more money than everyone else on the team. Your job IS to deal with them - so deal with it.
Else be happy with the 9-to-5 lifers on you team and shut the fuck up. You'll find that you aren't going to be able todo jack shit with them.
Your job isn't to deal with them, its to extract from them. Once you can no longer extract value beyond their cost, "poof, be gone".
Once T.O. isn't a great player, who's gonna put up with him? No one. With that said, when you look at most of the greats, think Gretsky, Jordan, Tiger, Magic, Bird, etc... they are the model player. The only major exception I can think of is Bonds, and with him, steroids I think I helped a lot. If not for the roids, I think Griffey and A-Rod look a lot better.
Once T.O. isn't a great player, who's gonna put up with him? No one.
Clear example of this: Brett Favre. Skipping training camp by pretending to retire each year was fine if he could still put in a good season of football. Having failed to do that this year, he has nowhere to go but out.
Even without his later 'roid years Bonds is statistically by far the best batter of his generation and one of the top 5 of all time (Probably #2, just a sliver behind Williams).
Well he is claimed to have started roids in 1998. While he was a great player before '98, he moves into legendary status after '98. With that said, I shouldn't have put A-Rod in the same breath with the Kid since clearly A-Rod also used steroids.
You know, I'm inclined to agree that one needs to be able to deal with a bit more to get talent. But no amount of leadership can deal with a drug problem. That requires action on Roger's part.
Besides that, this doesn't sound like the typical "Employees aren't good unless they follow my every order to the letter and get along great with every single person in the company" meme that I'm used to hearing. At least there's an acknowledgement that companies might have to deal with these issues in certain cases.
Is it really black and white as that? Would you still hire a genius if his actions were unethical on purpose just on the off streak that he might (or even has) produced 10x the wealth/value/code/output as an average engineer?
It really depends on the person, his flaws, and the role.
Roger the Coke Fiend actually seems like he'd be manageable as a part-timer: keep him on the bench, and if you have a cool 72h burst for him to do, especially if the consequences of his failure are not bad in any case. A dull but productive and reliable guy makes a great accountant. It's all about the specifics.
For someone unethical, I'd be reluctant to do most business, but might be willing to do arms length product purchases. For instance, there are musicians who produce music I sometimes enjoy but wouldn't trust at all.
Definitely. I think at the end of the day, Id still be wary of lack of ethics (or professionalism) regardless of an uber IQ (or HQ - Hackability Quotient!). While there may be a lot of value from this person, the costs of managing would certainly be high as well (from the point of view of ensuring there are no negative effects - both tangible and on team morale)...
Regarding helping people: yes, an enlightened workplace would try to help an employee, but it's far from certain (understaing) that it will work.
> And if it had worked he would have repayed you with some amazing work.
This is wishful thinking. If it hadn't worked, it probably wouldn't be clear right away. Instead it would seem like maybe it was working, and you'd spend months to years in a hopeful and guilty cycle trying to help someone who didn't really want to be helped, or worse yet, wanted to be helped, but still couldn't overcome his addiction.
> Your job IS to deal with them - so deal with it.
Firing someone is one way to deal with them.
> Else be happy with the 9-to-5 lifers on you team and shut the fuck up. You'll find that you aren't going to be able todo jack shit with them.
Self-righteous feel-good bullshit. Organizations need all kinds of people. I have great sympathy for types (1) and (2), but there are many cases where they are clearly self-destructive and toxic to others.
Even if keeping difficult employees is the right move, classifying them (as this post attempts to do) can still be useful. In fact I'd guess it's even more useful.
I've tried very hard not to be one of those people on that list. For a while I was the first, feeling completely helpless to change anything. Then someone within the company helped change some of that for me. Now I've matured to the point where I can objectively look at this company and realize it's a mismatch between my professional goals and the role that they would have me play. Quite simply it's not a software company and that's where I need to work.
Thanks for putting this up. Every time I read something like this is helps keep me in check.
I'm in a similar sort of position, but I'm a developer working at a software company:
My goal is to automate deployments, boost efficiency and introduce "force multipliers" to get the highest bang-for-buck ratio: basically getting rid of the roadblocks between the guys and them churning out awesome stuff at a terrific speed.
On the other hand, the company loses money (in the short term) when I automate things; if two-hour deployments are reduced to 15 minutes each, they can no longer charge the client that extra hour or two for every batch of work. Projects are generally quoted and charged by the hour; if the client's reasonably content with the cost and the resulting work then there's not much incentive to get things done more quickly, regardless of how wasteful we're being.
Sometimes I can clear roadblocks. Most of the time I can't. It's taken a year, but I've come to realise the company's and my own goals are orthogonal, that I'm becoming an Example #1, and that it's time to move on.
(Thanks for posting the article; it's nice to see these negative qualities clearly laid out.)
<pedant>Your goals and the company's are not orthogonal, they are in opposition. Orthogonal means unrelated, but in this case they are related, just not in the right way.</pedant>
Many service companies would love to be product companies. If your automated deployments can be turned into a product, that may be something very valuable to the company. E.g. 37 Signals / Rails.
OTOH, it may be easier for you personally to implement it and sell them on it once you've validated the model, externally.
Look how dysfunctional people can be, and how hard it is for an individual to change his behaviour.
Now, why are we surprised that it's hard to change a group's behaviour?
I.e. if you're frustrated with the slow pace of change at work, try to inventory some of your own pathologies and see how long they've gone un-fixed.
Note: this is not a shut-up-until-you-make-yourself-perfect message. It's more like "holy shit, I've been saying I'll lose 10 pounds for like 10 years now". Organizations are like that, but worse.
Your last line represent my sentiments exactly.
It's easy to get lost in the day-to-day and fail to view things objectively. Every factoid like this helps me to keep an objective view - and to keep on my career path.
This is probably OT and maybe even rude... but that lead-in with the Kanye lyrics is just strange.
My reading of the lyrics snippet (and I'm certainly no expert in these things) suggests that the character is telling a girl to run away from him because he knows he's a dick. Specifically, he's a dick that's especially good at criticism and spreading negativity and of the list of targets, one group happens to be people who work a lot which implies to me that the character's less-than-hardworking nature looks bad by comparison.
So not only is the character a dick, he's a self-professed underachieving one and perhaps even proud of it. He might even be worried that the girl is one of those kinds of people he hates, or maybe he kinda cares for her and knows his personality is toxic on some level, or he just can't have nice things, or there happens to be a hotter girl one table over so this one has to go...
Anyway, it's just odd because it seems like the character that is "speaking" in the song is exactly the sort of guy who might bitch about how troublesome smart people are because he's always got to be the smartest guy in the room but refuses to put in the work required to remain the smartest guy in the room when there's other actual smart guys in the room. So the best solution in that case is to get rid of the others by telling them to "run away as fast as you can."
In summary, it seems to me like the lyrics are actually speaking more as a person who hates over-achievers and/or smart people than as a person who is one of those troublesome smart persons who hates average folk and therefore would appear to, well, not really support the author's actual argument. Or something?
I don't know. I'm probably not one of the smart ones. so... :P
It comes across inappropriate and immature. Regardless of the content, a VC in his mid forties shouldn't be quoting rap lyrics at the head of business articles. I can't imagine having a conversation with this guy about business where he casually offers a quote about douchebags and assholes from Kanye West to explain something.
Kanye belongs on your iPod, not in your Forbes opinion piece.
It's an opinion. His opinion. And he's free to use whatever quotes he wants. The worst that can happen is that it shoos away those who cannot deal with something they don't like and cannot read the article past the part they don't like.
The rest of the article is pretty interesting (and I have met people who fit in all 3 examples).
I wouldn't say it is not allowed, just that it is distracting and takes away from the article. I didn't find it relevant or poignant enough to overcome the initial shock. I skimmed the article afterward but the only thing I took away from it was how jarring the intro was. I'm not just being prude, in a different context the lyrics wouldn't bother me.
Of course, I'm not the arbiter of social conventions but many times you ignore them at your own peril.
As an aside, if you are well known for breaking certain social conventions or are influential enough you can usually get away with it without much criticism. Nobody is going to scold Steve Jobs because he wears a black turtleneck to a board meeting instead of a suit.
Seriously? You're turning this into a juvenile 'my music is better than yours' argument? This is no reason to assume the OP has a specific beef with rap, just that it doesn't belong in a business article, which is true. Reading comprehension also means deriving assumptions from the context and looking for interpretations of what is said that fit within that context.
What is it about rap music that makes it unsuitable for a business article? How many other areas of society do you wall off as inappropriate to learn from when it comes to business?
The point is that in order to be credible to a wide audience, as this article was intended, you need to convey the correct 'tone' so to say. This a part of what is called in classical dialectic the 'ethos' of an argument. (to pre-empt, no, just 'logos' is not enough, and neither should it be - but that's a different argument).
So, in order to build up 'ethos', one needs to present oneself as a mature, mainstream person in the context of the subject under discussion. (yes, some people make a career out of breaking out of this, in order to appeal to a niche audience; see e.g. that ruby webserver blogger guy that gets linked here quite a lot, but that's not what the author in the article does or should be try to do, as far as I can tell).
Like it or not, rap and hip hop music are not mainstream to the traditional Forbes crowd. Partly because (most) rap artists build their careers on their anti-mainstream views, violent and promiscuous images, and cater specifically to an audience who finds one of the draws to the music in that anti-mainstream aspect of it.
So that's what makes it inappropriate in this context. For this author, in this context, to convey his message to as large an audience as possible, he should stick to 'accepted' style figures. And rap lyrics aren't part of that. It was a gamble I guess, and he lost, imo.
(Just to pre-empt another 'hey look at this country boy hating black music!', I bought hip hop LP's (yes, LP's) before Cypress Hill had put out 'Black Sunday' and mixed them on my sl 1200's when many of the readers here were still in diapers. I bought The Chronic a few days after it came out and once hitch hiked 400 kilometers to go to a concert of what was at the time the only crew rapping in Dutch. I'm no stranger to hip hop and rap, and yes I realize that people like Jay-Z have build big businesses on it. Still doesn't make the quote in this article appropriate.)
In the lyrics, the hard-worker is the person singing the lyrics. He's saying he's a jerk for not taking time off to spend time with the girl.
So really he is the smart jerk who is trying to tell someone to stay away because he is a jerk and will just criticize her, although he really doesn't like who he becomes, but that's his gift.
He ends it with toasts to himself (and people like him). While he's toasting them, he clearly doesn't like himself.
"In the lyrics, the hard-worker is the person singing the lyrics."
I just don't get that at all from the snippet quoted, but I can imagine how the larger context of the song might flip the meaning of things around - but I don't know the rest of the song and was going only based on the words in the article with no way of knowing how those words were performed. :)
I suppose the use of "toast" could be a clue that he actually means some kind of respect, but then why respect "douchebags" and "assholes" etc? So my reading put large quotes around "toast" in the way you might "toast" someone sarcastically who just made a giant mistake or something.
If the greater context of the song established that the voice was being sort of facetious here, then I can see how my interpretation could be almost exactly backward - but again, without some grander context, I really feel I had no way to know that if that is indeed the case.
Side note: Over the years I've noticed that either, A) I just suck at interpreting song lyrics, or B) song lyrics are often purposely designed to be ambiguous. I suspect some of both is at work here. :)
The grander context is that this song was performed by Kanye at last year's VMAs. Both he and Taylor Swift did a song in response to the event that happened two years ago, where Kanye took Taylor's award.
The basic concept of the song is I'm a jerk, don't know why, but stay away from me because I'll be a jerk to you. The title of the song is Runaway -- the girl should be a runaway from Kanye.
Ignoring the larger article, I got the impression that he was just listing the sort of people that a woman wouldn't want to be in a relationship with in general: Assholes, douchebags, scumbags, people that always put work ahead of their loved ones, and the sort of person who constantly finds fault with you and belittles you.
Considering that West himself has a reputation for endless work on his projects, I stand by that interpretation.
Well, I've not heard the song - but I think main voice is making a comparison between being an anally-retentive, controlling jerk and being a successful achiever.
The main point being; if you like the latter - you put up with (or celebrate) the former.
I can't see any reference to underachieving in the lyrics - I think you might be projecting some personal assumptions.
The main speaker is most definitely talking about being a high-achiever.
"I can't see any reference to underachieving in the lyrics"
This is what I see as a kind of reference to under-achieving by calling out and insulting people who work harder: "Let’s have a toast for the jerkoffs / That’ll never take work off." It seems to me that the voice is therefore showing contempt for over-achievers and, by taking the rest of the lyrics into account and the fact that I've met a lot of people who despise fellow employees that work harder than they do, I leap to the assumption that the voice himself must be like one of those under achieving dicks.
"The main speaker is most definitely talking about being a high-achiever."
Others have said similar. I think the voice thinks he's "all that," but in my opinion someone who feels a need to say things like this are decidedly not and therefore I don't agree that the voice is actually a high-achiever. It seems more like the speaker in the song is trying to justify his bad attitude by just declaring that he's the smartest/best person in the room and everyone else are idiots (as if by virtue of him saying that, it makes it true - because after all, he's so damn much better than everyone else!) - but that is not the mark of a truly intelligent person, IMO, and that's probably why I interpret the speaker as just being a dick. If he tried harder, tried to teach and support and didn't attempt to chase the girl away, he could be the smartest guy in the room. Instead, he just chases people away to make room for his ego.
Anyway, you could be totally right. I'm just trying to clarify where I was coming from. I would posit that in the case of interpreting art, there's no one truly "right" answer anyway, so it doesn't really matter - and maybe that's the point. :)
On his third day, we gave him a project that was scheduled to take one month. Roger completed the project in 3 days with nearly flawless quality. More specifically, he completed the project in 72 hours. 72 non-stop hours: No stops, no sleep, no nothing but coding.
I know this is against the Silicon Valley philosophy, but that guy just put in almost two 40-hour weeks of work, not three days. It might have done him well to take the next 11 days off.
Edit: I realize he was on drugs, but I think that's a different discussion altogether.
"Roger completed the project in 3 days with nearly flawless quality. More specifically, he completed the project in 72 hours. 72 non-stop hours: No stops, no sleep, no nothing but coding."
Then later on: "He was addicted to cocaine."
So...no comment from anyone on how these two things are almost certainly related?
Also he was bipolar, so probably in a manic state when he worked for 72 hours straight. There's a pretty big difference between "flaky" and "has a serious mental disorder that is going untreated".
I've been in the company of really smart (and likable!) Heretics and they tend to go out not with a bang but with a whimper. It's sad to watch.
They may be even be right but their persistent negativity and challenging of the status quo (even in minor matters) ends up wearing people down. Then eyes start rolling when they talk and their rants are met with sighs rather than attention or acknowledgment. Then they start getting left out of meetings and email conversations as it is easier to get things done without them no matter how smart they are.
All of this feeds the Heretic's perception of being the only sane person in the asylum turning them even more cynical and negative.
Maybe I hang out with too many cynical people, but the Heretics I've run into have usually been pretty popular with coworkers, at least if the Heretic is also a reasonably intelligent and sociable person (rather than the muttering-darkly-in-the-corner variety). Even a decent number of people who don't themselves have much interest attacking their boss / stupid corporate policies / etc., sometimes like to watch on the sidelines while someone else does, at least if they can avoid entanglement in the drama. But I guess most people I know are sort of default-cynical about organizations, policies, and management, so there's a default-positivity about someone who's spending their time railing against it, even if you think their energies are misguided/futile.
Though I guess it does get more problematic if they start attacking their coworkers as sheep/sellouts/etc. The popularity is easier to maintain if they stick to attacking management/bosses/policies and treat their coworkers as being on the same side.
> Maybe I hang out with too many cynical people, but the Heretics I've run into have usually been pretty popular with coworkers, at least if the Heretic is also a reasonably intelligent and sociable person (rather than the muttering-darkly-in-the-corner variety).
Sadly for the Heretic, that won't help them when the boss fires them. It makes for nice post-"layoff" lunches, though.
"Then they start getting left out of meetings and email conversations as it is easier to get things done without them no matter how smart they are."
At this point it's the management fault for not doing (having done) something about it. Firing the person, fixing the status quo or maybe empowering them to fix it.
And yeah, I'm aware I might now sound like the Heretic themselves :)
Kinda scary that I see myself in that list - mostly example 1, reason 1 and 2. OTOH, it's a bit heartening to read "sometimes these people actually make better CEOs than employees" - just hard to get most people to take you seriously when you start off at the bottom (not impossible, just typically harder to do than simply getting hired in at the top).
I have bipolar disorder and I definitely identify with his "the flake" story. I wouldn't just not show up like the guy in the story but I do have depressive cycles where I'm not sure I'm doing any good by showing up; I come in anyway. After a while the cycle swings the other way and I get heroic coding done at a (excuse the pun) manic pace. I like to think it comes out more productive on balance. For instance most recently I spent two months studying legacy code but didn't have the right frame of mind to make changes to it. Close to the deadline I had an upswing in mood and completed a total rewrite of the software in three days during which everything I touched turned to gold. Two key points: one, this was (embedded system) code a senior engineer struggled on for 2 years. So even averaging the month during which I did nothing with the week I did everything, I was still more productive by a huge margin. The second key point is I used both halves of my cycle to advantage. I knew I couldn't handle the rewrite while depressed, but what I COULD do was use that fugue state to plod through his old code like a zombie. Even though I didn't feel like I was making progress (and my boss was beginning to worry!) what I was doing was priming my brain with knowledge of what the legacy code did. That way, when the upswing did come, I didn't waste a single second of it.
I do have depressive cycles where I'm not sure I'm doing any good by showing up; I come in anyway. After a while the cycle swings the other way and I get heroic coding done
I think all creative people are like this, bipolar or not. The problem with the programming world is that a lot of non-creative types want to be programmers, and so they set soem "standard that assumes programmers are people that show up at 9am, click shit in Eclipse for 8 hours, and then go home. Unfortunately, in the history of the human race, clicking shit in Eclipse for 8 hours has never produced a working computer program. Programming is creative work; treat it like a 9-5 job and the result is shitty software.
The sad part is that there is a huge market for shitty software. I bet the car makers and bridge builders wish they had it this good.
I don't know about bipolar disorder or the grandparent's boss specifically, but I've learned never to discuss mental disorders with bosses or coworkers. There simply is no upside and every imaginable downside. Best case: you get labeled as someone who uses a mental disorder as an excuse for not doing your job. Worst case: you become "that crazy person" that nobody wants to associate with.
I'm currently supervising an 37year old rookie. He had some absence issues, so I confronted him.
Tuns out he is an ex-addict (that's why he's rookie at 37). I don't have a problem with people trying to straighten themselves out. He doesn't get any preferential treatment from me - because it won't do him any good. As long as he does the expected work of expected quality he is fine with me.
Knowing that he is an ex addict is valuable to me so I can put our relationship in right context.
Addict is never really cured. Once you're through with addiction, the cravings are there for life. Whenever you need to release your steam the craving for drug kicks back in.
My mentee is coping with that through writing, so sometimes he will not come to work on time - because he's setting his mind straight. So our agreement is that I don't care about his schedule - as long as his work is done according to specified parameters.
I didn't say I don't act differently towards him. I said he doesn't get preferential treatment in a sense that I won't be commiserating him for being an ex-addict. Instead I raised his tempo of learning while gently guiding him through the finer intricacies. But I demand highest quality of him. I also look out that nobody (especially superiors) will pick on him since he is pretty introvert - and I don't want him to slip back due to some extrovert having a bad day.
This guy needs to build character, courage and ultimately self-confidence. And not making it hard for him, plus helping along the way if possible is one of my goals.
I'm 100% with you on your goal, it's a noble act to mentor someone with the spirit that you appear to be applying.
However, it sounds like you are giving them preferential treatment. You say it's just different, but then if those differences aren't available to others they might also advantage it is a preferential treatment.
I guess one could argue it's not preferential in that you'd give the same assistance to another ex-addict.
Personally I don't think you have to help everyone just because you're helping someone, ie preferential treatment doesn't seem wrong to me a priori.
Will you quit arguing over such petty differences?! Jesus Christ! People view the world differently, so of course they'll apply different meanings to the same words, and even to the same concepts.
You said he's not wrong, and you're just arguing over semantics. Why argue? Why?
Sorry for not keeping my post cold and logical and HNish, but that's the problem: you're being robotic here and arguing just to argue.
>Will you quit arguing over such petty differences?! Jesus Christ! People view the world differently
Off topic but WRT your response - "people see the world differently" but apparently my fixation on truth isn't allowed?
On topic, why argue? He says that he's not discriminating but he describes discrimination. I simply wanted to point out that apparent contradiction.
Discrimination is some sort of bete noire of corporate society but I find it quite silly to suggest that we should not discriminate for people because of the peculiarities of their personal situations. If you find that robotic I find your response curious but I suspect you won't meet an enquiry about it well so feel free to move on to one of the other 10 million or so comment threads of the day.
>of course they'll apply different meanings to the same words, and even to the same concepts
If you use the same words to mean something else then we need to converse more to establish that which you are trying to communicate.
I'd like to apologize, since I am not a native speaker. So when faced with subtleties I might not perceive them properly. That said I'm aware of what I wrote and how it doesn't make sense.
And now for the record to just rehash what I am doing:
1. The person is obviously being treated differently from others (he is being given a chance),
2. I will not treat his work differently due to his condition. I want him to get up to speed and I'm helping along,
3. He doesn't need blanket pats on the back. He needs them when they're due and he also needs a proverbial kick in the arse when due.
Also, discrimination is a term used when we act negatively towards someone. I'd be discriminating against my mentee if I were telling him that he's no good dimwit. Or are you suggesting that I'm discriminating towards others?
He is differentiating that the past was a problem rather than the present. See, if the guy was a 37yo rookie because of current, actively on-going problems, then the past would still not matter, but there would be good reason to be wary. So finding out that the thing is in the past is an exercise in finding out enough to dismiss qualms.
You are being disingenuous btw -- this is not like the gender question at all.
>You are being disingenuous btw -- this is not like the gender question at all.
I beg to differ. Could you provide some reasoning?
>but there would be good reason to be wary
If you're not discriminating then it doesn't matter if they're a current drug addict, a past drug addict, partner of a drug addict - you judge them solely on their performance at work.
You are disingenuous because you are trying to change the discussion from "does not get preferential treatment" to "is not the subject of discrimination". You realize these are different right? (First clue: there are different words with different definitions and connotations involved).
As for why it is not like the gender question: asking why a 37yo is doing entry level work is asking about things which it can reasonably assumed to be direct consequences of the applicants choices in life. Preselecting on gender is selection based on something the applicant has almost no control over (excluding the extremely tiny portion of post-op transgenders).
Edit: also I'm not blanket saying discrimination is bad, some types of discrimination are OK some aren't. For instance, discriminating based on "this applicant doesn't have the required skills" is perfectly reasonable. Any attempt to claim an all or nothing approach on a vague notion such as discrimination is nearly the definition of disingenuous, so please don't try and play stupid games with that either.
>(First clue: there are different words with different definitions and connotations involved).
Haha, condescending ever.
The connotations are different, that's the slant someone is trying to put on whether their discrimination is good or bad. We change how we act towards one person such that they benefit relative to another's detriment. Whether it be preferential treatment by omission of detriment or preferential treatment by application of benefit if the treatment alters according to the characteristics of the subject then we have discriminated.
discrimination - "treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit" (Random House Dictionary)
preference - "a practical advantage given to one over others" (ibid)
>As for why it is not like the gender question: asking why a 37yo is doing entry level work is asking about things which it can reasonably assumed to be direct consequences of the applicants choices in life. Preselecting on gender is selection based on something the applicant has almost no control over (excluding the extremely tiny portion of post-op transgenders).
The question doesn't bother me. I don't think your assumption stands to much inspection - I'm sure you can imagine many scenarios that would leave someone in an "entry level" position against their will. Why does it matter how old the person is, can they do the job, will they do the job? One can change one's age no more easily than one can change one's sex.
>Any attempt to claim an all or nothing approach on a vague notion such as discrimination is nearly the definition of disingenuous, so please don't try and play stupid games with that either.
I love these sorts of closing statements, they must be the thinking man's ad hominem "anything that disagrees with my stated position would be idiocy", that's almost the definition of tiny-minded simpleton. </sarc>
Not sure what you are saying here. Please use grown up sentences.
> The connotations are different, that's the slant someone is trying to put on whether their discrimination is good or bad. We change how we act towards one person such that they benefit relative to another's detriment. Whether it be preferential treatment by omission of detriment or preferential treatment by application of benefit if the treatment alters according to the characteristics of the subject then we have discriminated.
You are a one trick pony -- once again you try to deflect. The guy declared he was not giving someone preferential treatment. It does not matter whether this is by lack of advantage or by taking away disadvantage, non-preferential treatment by definition is not preferential -- therefore no one is getting advantage to another's relative detriment.
> The question doesn't bother me. I don't think your assumption stands to much inspection - I'm sure you can imagine many scenarios that would leave someone in an "entry level" position against their will. Why does it matter how old the person is, can they do the job, will they do the job? One can change one's age no more easily than one can change one's sex.
Hrm.... deflection again! The fact that a reasonable assumption can be made does not eliminate other possibilities. Yes, a person's age is strictly a product of forces outside his control, however getting an entry level position at that age is certainly within his control. Why choose that route? There are other options. Why not choose them. In these cases of choice, it is worthwhile to examine the candidate. See by examining one's choices, you can maybe learn about their ability and willingness to do the job. (remember, these are the things you claim to care about, and now we can learn about them!)
> I love these sorts of closing statements, they must be the thinking man's ad hominem "anything that disagrees with my stated position would be idiocy", that's almost the definition of tiny-minded simpleton. </sarc>
Ohh, man out of nowhere-- deflection! I never saw it coming-- honest. It's not really ad hominem. Not even kind of. Im not even declaring you to be idiotic, in fact, since disingenuous is pretending to know less, I sort of did the opposite. I have no problem even with you disagreeing with my position. I was merely preempting a disingenuous position of moral absolutes being attached to a word that has vague boundaries on its applicability (rendering absolutes impossible). You have clearly demonstrated your understanding of the vague edges of the word discrimination by using it in two different senses already, so any claims of not knowing at this point would be false. Looking up the definition of disingenuous will get you the rest of the way to my statement.
"Holding the bus". I like the phrase, everybody has their bad days and should get some slack when they need it in exchange for giving their best when it really counts.
However, I have to take issue with manic coders. I've seen the results of "heroic" coding. It sucks. Sure, it does the job, meets the deadline or whatever but the problem is that quick work is typically nothing more than a "rush job" that becomes a maintenance nightmare in the future.
The thing is no one wants to work with someone who is unstable or difficult. If the success of your enterprise depends on sporadic bursts of mania from individual workers, I'm sorry, that just isn't going to be sustainable.
As for the remarks about the he/she pronoun thing in the article, I think the last sentence would have been much, much stronger if they had used "one" instead of "her" and it simultaneously would have side-stepped some of this issue:
That’s fine, but remember: you can only hold the bus for one.
"She" probably came from some attempt at political correctness. There's been a rise in recent decades to use "she" when speaking about an unspecified person. Historically, it was common to use "he" for that task. Unfortunately english doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun and until/if one becomes accepted this will probably continue to be a confusing issue...
I've never heard a sentence in actual usage[1] where the usage of the singular "they" was ambiguous.
In terms of being understandable and elegant, the singular "they" is probably the best English can do. Unfortunately, it's not widely accepted because it "sounds" uneducated, despite being the current best solution to the problem. Gender-neutral neologisms, like Spivak pronouns [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun], are not commonly understood, while constructs like "he/she" or randomly alternating between generic "he" and generic "she" as in the OP is inelegant and confusing (hence this whole thread).
[1] I'm sure you could construct a contrived example.
Written language has more legitimate uses than completely formed sentences. Pronouns can be troublesome enough, figuring out the antecedent, without requiring yet more context analysis.
Yeah. I caught that too. So awkward. As a she, i'm all for some "she's" in abstract examples, but they switched pronouns in the middle of an expression. Strange.
No one acts that way unless they have severe mental illnesses (such as the cocaine-addicted bipolar genius) or the company already has serious systemic problems. If you see things near the exaggerations in the OP regularly, the company is already diseased and needs major overhaul.
Sans the cocaine habit, and the staggering productivity levels, the second example is an otherwise uncanny match for how I eventually left my last job.
Started off strong, got ahead of schedule, had a mental breakdown, accomplished exactly nothing for about a month, and then quit (to avoid being fired).
There is also the vaultingly ambitious employee. Someone who is both clever and also prepared to do anything to get a promotion or pay rise - even if that means causing chaos, using other employees as collateral damage, etc.
Eugh - I hate people like that. In my last job, the whole marketing team (8 people) were like a group of wrecking balls smashing through the company trying to meet their own individual goals. It was chaos but the MD was a marketing guy himself and couldn't see that the marketing team were doing a whole heap of damage to the company.
I played the heretic role for a while, but eventually I quit because it was a loosing battle and my moral had gone through the floor.
I recognize that this author's proactive use of sex-neutral (or more like sex-diverse?) pronouns comes from a good place. But intermixing he's with she's, him's and her's the way he is is sometimes just confusing.
I imagine it's a poor attempt to be gender-neutral. Alternating genders between successive examples might have worked better. (The Silence of the Lambs alternative formulation, probably not.)
Technically, it would be correct to use 'he' everywhere, since in English that is what is considered the neutral gender. Second best is using He/She to satisfy the PC folks.
"Is considered". Considered by who exactly? How subtle of you to use the passive voice to plaster over the cracks in your argument :) There is no best, just norms surely.
That being said, there are ways to be gender neutral without dropping the clangers that this author does. Be gender neutral by all means but for the love of the children don't switch back and forth like an eager yo-yo.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
Aside from a strange lead-in, there is a larger picture about identifying the dynamic of a team and how to build it. We should prevent these situations by identifying red flags in the hiring process early on. Sometimes that isn't good enough, but to his point, we shouldn't make that same mistake twice. Never heard of this, but it could be a good practice to do a post-mortem in the hiring process after an acidic resource is gone. I'm sure this problem runs rampant in all industries, where they have a much less tolerance.
I'm supposed to take this guy seriously with a lead-in like that? I can't wait for his article on common misconceptions of social propriety among the technically proficient.
Ben Horowitz's "ben's blog" always leads off with a thematic rap lyric; it works pretty well in some cases, but fails in others. I don't think this was the strongest one.
Overall, I think it's a decent attempt at having a hook for otherwise somewhat dry (maybe, but not really) blog posts. He is obviously going for contrast.
Ben Horowitz's "ben's blog" always leads off with a thematic rap lyric; it works pretty well in some cases, but fails in others.
Ok. This is something I touched on in another comment: if you're known for breaking a certain type of social convention than you can often times get away with it, without much criticism.
So this was probably normal to his blog readers but confusing to those of us who were exposed to it for the first time.
Thanks for the explanation. It made me reexamine my initial knee-jerk reaction.
I have done work for over 100 companies ranging from SMB to large enterprises. Independently (I'll tell you why in a moment) I just made a list of the 10 biggest assholes I ever met the other day. Eight of them were the #1 person in one of those companies. Seven of them are, not surprisingly, out of business.
(The reason I made the list was because I watched "Undercover Boss" for the fourth time the other night. The first three times were great. This episode, about the CEO of Norwegian Cruise Lines, was horrible. All I kept asking myself was, "Where the hell did they get this jerk?" He had no idea how anything happened in his company and had people and functional problems in all 4 departments he worked in undercover. One employee even remarked that he had a problem dealing with women. That's when I made my list.)
What is it about our processes in business that seems to favor assholes? I realize that my experience may not be the norm, but some of the things I've seen done by the President or CEO:
I even witnessed a CEO of a Fortune 50 company break down and cry at a Tony Robbins event because he couldn't complete a routine task.If I sound like I think that our leaders should be held to a higher standard, it's because they should be. Hell, I'd settle for any standard.
I'd love to hear OP's take on the other side of the story, when smart people decide to stop making sacrifices for the assholes they got stuck working for.