[blah blah blah] that made me want to work for myself. I want the freedom to be myself. Don't confuse working by yourself with working for yourself. When you w

[blah blah blah] that made me want to work for myself. I want the freedom to be myself. Don't confuse working by yourself with working for yourself. When you work by yourself, you can do as you please. When you work for yourself, you have employees, customers, investors, landlords, and many other people with whom you have complex relationships full of consideration for each other's objectives and feelings. Do not start a business with the goal that since you're the boss, you will be above the consequences of words or actions that hurt people. You are a person. When you deal with other people, it's more than a few bits here, a few dollars there. We can disagree with whether the word "bitch" is appropriate or not in a presentation at a conference, but I implore you not to think that somehow running a business means that you need never worry about hurting other people with your words or deeds. This isn't the world of stodgy HR policies and training manuals. Leona Helmsley once said "We don't train people to be nice, we hire nice people." I bring this up to say that no, I abhor HR policies at least as much as you do, but I suspect for different reasons. Your words suggest that the problem with HR policies is that there will be a rule that you may not use the word "bitch" in a presentation. My problem with HR policies is that there is a focus on following the rules rather than taking responsibility for making choices. Kinda like the difference between law and morality. Like you, I prefer to work in an environment where people speak their mind. However, I also prefer to work in an environment where people apply their own filters, where people take responsibility for their words and don't shrug it off as automatically acceptable since there are no rules, no HR people vetting their decks. To summarize, like you I love the freedom of small startups. But the whole point is to use that freedom in positive ways. Perhaps you and I disagree about whether the word "bitch" is negative or not. But I hope you can appreciate that with freedom comes responsibility, and by ditching the HR department we voluntarily take on the responsibility to make good choices, and we accept accountability for our actions.