6 ms·

Things I learned dealing with psychopaths in startups

7 points by algirau 11y ago

p4wnc6 11y ago
To me, this article reads as an excuse for the company to behave in a sociopathic way, and then turn around and try to pin the blame on some employee when they (perhaps rightfully) stand up for themselves. I've been in situations where people performed blatant religious discrimination towards me, and also threatened to reduce my wage due to discussing pay with a coworker (threatening any form of retaliation for discussing pay is blatantly illegal). The company easily could have raised some of these same complaints towards me just to try to leverage their comparably greater resources to pin blame on the worker rather than own up to the all too common sociopathic tendencies that develop inside bureaucracies. In the end, both this comment and the parent article are just anecdotes. But I say it's a better prior to be more skeptical of managers/higher-ups/bureaucrats who are willing to drop the "psychopath" nuke on behavior they don't like, than the toxic employee.
- algirau 11y ago
  Well to be frank, I am sharing an experience dealing with a problem member in a 5 person startup. You are correct it is an anecdote. One I want to share in hopes no one has to go through a similar issue. Your victimization does not mean every member-company transgression is due to the company. Minority members that have insider information can do serious damage and not care of the legal ramifications when there are obvious consequence to them.
  - p4wnc6 11y ago
    I understand that not every member-company transgression is due to the company. But sources like Moral Mazes give us a vast set of evidence to believe that companies are intrinsically organized to be able to commit such transgressions without ever bearing responsibility for them, and that extraordinary effort is put forward to create organizational frameworks that codify exactly this manner of villifying worker victims and coordinating across organizations to create workplace cultural norms such that any action of standing up for one's self is deemed "unprofessional" or "not becoming of a true team player" or whatever other HR code word you want, all the way up, apparently, to "psychopath." In this sense, we ought to be more willing to apply skepticism to the company, and more skeptical in general that things like company charter documents, HR policies, company handbooks, or even just email memos about company culture and policy (the more likely case in a start-up), are designed to create legal deniability for the pursuit of illegal and irrational whims of executives, and truly nothing more. This is so much the modus operandi of companies in general, start-up or otherwise, that until after we account for the huge base rate of company-initiated transgressions, it just has little relevance to focus so much on the "toxic" employee. In fact, one of the most successful scams of the organizational HR world is to draw so much disproportionate attention to the scarecrow "toxic employee." Both of my worst experiences with outright fraudulent and corrupt managers have come at start-ups, where there wasn't even the thin veneer of an HR apparatus to even pay lip service to protecting us from executive whims. Now, having said all that, I can certainly still agree that your case might be an exception. But I would prefer if your article was written more that way: that when this happens on the part of an employee, it's generally very rare and the best thing for the company to do is try to learn how they could have handled it better (read: publicly calling someone something as incendiary as "psychopath" is not it, even if it were true), and voiciferously acknowledge that in the vast, vast majority of cases, it is the company being toxic, not the employee who responds by standing up for herself.
adamzerner 11y ago
Do you knoW that this person is a legitimate psychopath?
- sandstrom 11y ago
  Good question. It feels like this term is being thrown around quite a lot. Out of curiosity I browsed Wikipedia which had this to say: Psychopathy emphasize three observable characteristics to varying degrees: - Boldness. Low fear, high tolerance of stress, unfamiliarity and danger, and high self-confidence and social assertiveness. - Disinhibition. Poor impulse control including problems with planning and foresight, lacking affect and urge control, and demand for immediate gratification. Low conscientiousness. - Meanness. Lacking empathy and close attachments with others, use of cruelty to gain empowerment, exploitative tendencies, defiance of authority, and destructive excitement seeking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Definition
  - algirau 11y ago
    I think this applies closely. I am surprised that the tendency to compulsively lie is not also in the Wikipedia definition.
    - p4wnc6 11y ago
      But when it comes to something as medically severe as psychopathy isn't it the whole point that it shouldn't matter what you, or me, or any layperson thinks? If you already don't like this coworker because of disagreements and actions at work, you're very likely to overestimate these symptoms, or believe that someone who is only a little ways along the spectrum to psychopath is actually much further. Imagine if we believed everyone who went through a bad breakup or divorce and called their ex partner a psychopath out of anger (even justified anger). It just seems really extreme to use some armchair diagnosis from someone emotionally invested in believing bad things about the other person.
      - 11y ago
dfraser992 11y ago
Based on my experiences, I would say this person the article speaks of is more probably a schzoid type personality, or borderline personality disorder? I think the popular media driven depiction of psychopaths as bombastic assholes to be click-bait - real psychopaths are a lot more like Patrick Bateman ("American Psycho") - cool as a cucumber and always in control of their emotions And thus the interaction they have with people. They're like an information black hole - little leaks out of them, but they are sucking up every bit of non-verbal etc info out of you and consciously processing it. Thus they see your blind spots and can devise ways to take advantage of your 'shadow' side or hidden psychological needs.
- algirau 11y ago
  I tend to agree. What is most infuriating this person is just not smart enough to be a good psychopath, if there is such a thing as a "good psychopath". His lies just put him into a smaller and smaller box. And not trying to be an intellectual elitist but this individual thinks he is the most intellectual and clever person to walk on the plant yet can even understand how much more intellect I and my team members have over him. Again I'm not trying to seem arrogant but arguing with someone who does not know how dumb they are, and who is poorly lying is very infuriating. Ever read an email where the person's grammar was so bad it hurts your head? Witnessing a person trying to outsmart you via email by writing in old english with excessive use of semi-colons really hurts your brain.
  - dfraser992 11y ago
    More evidence of PERHAPS a narcissistic type disorder? I have read shedloads on the subject, including real scientific papers, not just popular articles. But these are only hypothesis and perhaps you might find them useful. The guy certainly sounds disordered, but psychopathic as in the 'dark triad'? No, not all, from what you say.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > Based on my experiences, I would say this person the article speaks of is more probably a schzoid type personality, or borderline personality disorder? What the fuck. This tiny little article gives you nothing with which you can make those claims.
DanBC 11y ago
> CEO & Founder > psychopaths > utterly insane > psychopathic minority member > latent craziness > psychopaths > broken psychology > psychopath’s > crazy will make the sane crazy > their crazy existence > psychopath > crazy I should stop being surprised when company owners leave themselves open to litigation. MH is a disability, and disability is a protected characteristic in US law.

7 points by algirau 11y ago

To me, this article reads as an excuse for the company to behave in a sociopathic way, and then turn around and try to pin the blame on some employee when they (perhaps rightfully) stand up for themselves. I've been in situations where people performed blatant religious discrimination towards me, and also threatened to reduce my wage due to discussing pay with a coworker (threatening any form of retaliation for discussing pay is blatantly illegal). The company easily could have raised some of these same complaints towards me just to try to leverage their comparably greater resources to pin blame on the worker rather than own up to the all too common sociopathic tendencies that develop inside bureaucracies. In the end, both this comment and the parent article are just anecdotes. But I say it's a better prior to be more skeptical of managers/higher-ups/bureaucrats who are willing to drop the "psychopath" nuke on behavior they don't like, than the toxic employee.

algirau 11y ago
Well to be frank, I am sharing an experience dealing with a problem member in a 5 person startup. You are correct it is an anecdote. One I want to share in hopes no one has to go through a similar issue. Your victimization does not mean every member-company transgression is due to the company. Minority members that have insider information can do serious damage and not care of the legal ramifications when there are obvious consequence to them.
- p4wnc6 11y ago
  I understand that not every member-company transgression is due to the company. But sources like Moral Mazes give us a vast set of evidence to believe that companies are intrinsically organized to be able to commit such transgressions without ever bearing responsibility for them, and that extraordinary effort is put forward to create organizational frameworks that codify exactly this manner of villifying worker victims and coordinating across organizations to create workplace cultural norms such that any action of standing up for one's self is deemed "unprofessional" or "not becoming of a true team player" or whatever other HR code word you want, all the way up, apparently, to "psychopath." In this sense, we ought to be more willing to apply skepticism to the company, and more skeptical in general that things like company charter documents, HR policies, company handbooks, or even just email memos about company culture and policy (the more likely case in a start-up), are designed to create legal deniability for the pursuit of illegal and irrational whims of executives, and truly nothing more. This is so much the modus operandi of companies in general, start-up or otherwise, that until after we account for the huge base rate of company-initiated transgressions, it just has little relevance to focus so much on the "toxic" employee. In fact, one of the most successful scams of the organizational HR world is to draw so much disproportionate attention to the scarecrow "toxic employee." Both of my worst experiences with outright fraudulent and corrupt managers have come at start-ups, where there wasn't even the thin veneer of an HR apparatus to even pay lip service to protecting us from executive whims. Now, having said all that, I can certainly still agree that your case might be an exception. But I would prefer if your article was written more that way: that when this happens on the part of an employee, it's generally very rare and the best thing for the company to do is try to learn how they could have handled it better (read: publicly calling someone something as incendiary as "psychopath" is not it, even if it were true), and voiciferously acknowledge that in the vast, vast majority of cases, it is the company being toxic, not the employee who responds by standing up for herself.

adamzerner 11y ago

Do you knoW that this person is a legitimate psychopath?

sandstrom 11y ago
Good question. It feels like this term is being thrown around quite a lot. Out of curiosity I browsed Wikipedia which had this to say: Psychopathy emphasize three observable characteristics to varying degrees: - Boldness. Low fear, high tolerance of stress, unfamiliarity and danger, and high self-confidence and social assertiveness. - Disinhibition. Poor impulse control including problems with planning and foresight, lacking affect and urge control, and demand for immediate gratification. Low conscientiousness. - Meanness. Lacking empathy and close attachments with others, use of cruelty to gain empowerment, exploitative tendencies, defiance of authority, and destructive excitement seeking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Definition
- algirau 11y ago
  I think this applies closely. I am surprised that the tendency to compulsively lie is not also in the Wikipedia definition.
  - p4wnc6 11y ago
    But when it comes to something as medically severe as psychopathy isn't it the whole point that it shouldn't matter what you, or me, or any layperson thinks? If you already don't like this coworker because of disagreements and actions at work, you're very likely to overestimate these symptoms, or believe that someone who is only a little ways along the spectrum to psychopath is actually much further. Imagine if we believed everyone who went through a bad breakup or divorce and called their ex partner a psychopath out of anger (even justified anger). It just seems really extreme to use some armchair diagnosis from someone emotionally invested in believing bad things about the other person.
    - 11y ago

dfraser992 11y ago

Based on my experiences, I would say this person the article speaks of is more probably a schzoid type personality, or borderline personality disorder? I think the popular media driven depiction of psychopaths as bombastic assholes to be click-bait - real psychopaths are a lot more like Patrick Bateman ("American Psycho") - cool as a cucumber and always in control of their emotions And thus the interaction they have with people. They're like an information black hole - little leaks out of them, but they are sucking up every bit of non-verbal etc info out of you and consciously processing it. Thus they see your blind spots and can devise ways to take advantage of your 'shadow' side or hidden psychological needs.

algirau 11y ago
I tend to agree. What is most infuriating this person is just not smart enough to be a good psychopath, if there is such a thing as a "good psychopath". His lies just put him into a smaller and smaller box. And not trying to be an intellectual elitist but this individual thinks he is the most intellectual and clever person to walk on the plant yet can even understand how much more intellect I and my team members have over him. Again I'm not trying to seem arrogant but arguing with someone who does not know how dumb they are, and who is poorly lying is very infuriating. Ever read an email where the person's grammar was so bad it hurts your head? Witnessing a person trying to outsmart you via email by writing in old english with excessive use of semi-colons really hurts your brain.
- dfraser992 11y ago
  More evidence of PERHAPS a narcissistic type disorder? I have read shedloads on the subject, including real scientific papers, not just popular articles. But these are only hypothesis and perhaps you might find them useful. The guy certainly sounds disordered, but psychopathic as in the 'dark triad'? No, not all, from what you say.
DanBC 11y ago
> Based on my experiences, I would say this person the article speaks of is more probably a schzoid type personality, or borderline personality disorder? What the fuck. This tiny little article gives you nothing with which you can make those claims.

DanBC 11y ago

> CEO & Founder > psychopaths > utterly insane > psychopathic minority member > latent craziness > psychopaths > broken psychology > psychopath’s > crazy will make the sane crazy > their crazy existence > psychopath > crazy I should stop being surprised when company owners leave themselves open to litigation. MH is a disability, and disability is a protected characteristic in US law.