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> I'm not sure you could fire people without "impaired empathy and remorse" I have and I'm no sociopath. I think its easy to justify firings if you have a matu

> I'm not sure you could fire people without "impaired empathy and remorse" I have and I'm no sociopath. I think its easy to justify firings if you have a mature and adult attitude towards work. People perform a fireable offense and they're out the door. If you're experienced and honest with what it takes to run a business, this stuff isn't that horrible to deal with. I make tough decisions everyday. Heck, disciplining my kid is a lot tougher emotionally and no one expects you to be some super tough person to do it, every parent has to be able to pull it off. >And yeah, "bold, disinhibited, egotistical" traits are almost required to run a company at all. Those are meaningless psych buzzwords. I want to run my own company and I'm driven by certain ideas, goals, and ideals. I'm fairly low ego and not horribly bold, like most introverted techies. The idea of holding up guys like Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison as perfect CEOs because they act like sociopaths is fairly ridiculous. You don't need to be a huge asshole to get ahead or to be successful. I think the idea that we should praise sociopathy as leadership skills is a fairly toxic attitude that reflects an internalized anti-worker bias.

mrkurt 10y ago
> I have and I'm no sociopath. I think its easy to justify firings if you have a mature and adult attitude towards work. People perform a fireable offense and they're out the door. If you're experienced and honest with what it takes to run a business, this stuff isn't that horrible to deal with. That's best case firing. Firing for performance is much harder, in my experience. Justification for that is never 100% for me, because performance failures are almost always my failure somewhere along the way (because I hired badly, or set bad expectations, or didn't help someone enough).
- skewart 10y ago
  Think of it from the perspective of the other employees on your team. In most cases the person being let go for performance reasons is a drag for them to work with. Plus, even for the employee being let go, it's usually better for that to happen sooner rather than later so they can more quickly move on. Not firing someone who isn't a good fit is just avoiding your own discomfort (letting the person go) while forcing other people to suffer. It's actually the less empathetic, more psychopathic thing to do.
  - mrkurt 10y ago
    Oh I agree. I just don't think understanding that something is logically best for a group of people is why I can do a hard thing. I'm fairly sure there's a part of my brain that lets me act against my empathy for an individual at times.

mrkurt 10y ago

> I have and I'm no sociopath. I think its easy to justify firings if you have a mature and adult attitude towards work. People perform a fireable offense and they're out the door. If you're experienced and honest with what it takes to run a business, this stuff isn't that horrible to deal with. That's best case firing. Firing for performance is much harder, in my experience. Justification for that is never 100% for me, because performance failures are almost always my failure somewhere along the way (because I hired badly, or set bad expectations, or didn't help someone enough).

skewart 10y ago
Think of it from the perspective of the other employees on your team. In most cases the person being let go for performance reasons is a drag for them to work with. Plus, even for the employee being let go, it's usually better for that to happen sooner rather than later so they can more quickly move on. Not firing someone who isn't a good fit is just avoiding your own discomfort (letting the person go) while forcing other people to suffer. It's actually the less empathetic, more psychopathic thing to do.
- mrkurt 10y ago
  Oh I agree. I just don't think understanding that something is logically best for a group of people is why I can do a hard thing. I'm fairly sure there's a part of my brain that lets me act against my empathy for an individual at times.