11 ms·

Why It Pays to Be a Jerk

183 points by cft 11y ago

scolfax 11y ago
The only time it doesn't pay is during the interview: http://recruitinganimal.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345220fb69e201b8d08d4c63970c-pi http://recruitinganimal.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345220fb69e201b...
- mildbow 11y ago
  Actually, you'd be surprised. I'm taking the "jerk" definition to mean a sense of self-entitlement and sense of power. You don't need to be a jerk and eat the last cookie but having a strong sense of "alpha" confidence in most interview-like situation pays off really well. Next time you have an interview (or a one-on-one or a salesy meeting), try to exude some sense of power[0] (don't overdo it!) and see how the other person reacts. I know that it blew my mind the first few times I tried it. As an aside, it's crazy to me that we engineers are so focused on hacking systems but seem to denigrate hacking personal interactions as if it's something dirty/beneath us. [0] http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Aqwis 11y ago
>Measuring narcissism was tricky, Hambrick said. Self-reporting was not exactly an option, so he chose a set of indirect measures: the prominence of each CEO’s picture in the company’s annual report; the size of the CEO’s paycheck compared with that of the next-highest-paid person in the company; the frequency with which the CEO’s name appeared in company press releases. Lastly, he looked at the CEO’s use of pronouns in press interviews, comparing the frequency of the first-person plural with that of the first-person singular. Then he rolled all the results into a single narcissism indicator. It must be nice to be able to just make up and use a method for identifying "narcissists" without having to test whether the people you're identifying as narcissists are, in fact, narcissists. In my opinion, if this is how you do research you can hardly call what you do science.
- parennoob 11y ago
  True, and the "first person singular = narcissism" equation that this makes struck me as strongly inappropriate. With this metric, a CEO who takes personal responsibility (e.g. "I instructed the finance department to do X, and I'm sorry about that but it is a necessity for reasons Y and Z") is going to be identified as a narcissist compared to the one who hides behind words weasel words like ("We architected and rolled out a brand new program, which we hope you will like very much (not)"). If that is your measure of narcissism, then it's fine -- but it should probably be called something else. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the first CEO in the above example was more successful than the second.
  - quietplatypus 11y ago
    We have to keep up with the game. There's a recent (maybe not lol) prevalence of narcisstic people who love to avoid using personal pronouns and turn up the false objectivity.
  - WalterSear 11y ago
    As a former psychology researcher, I would hazard, that like any decent, published, study, they validated their measurements before using them. Minutiae like this is often missed in the press description.
    - philh 11y ago
      If you (or anyone) happens to have journal access and feel like checking, this seems to be the paper: http://asq.sagepub.com/content/52/3/351.abstract http://asq.sagepub.com/content/52/3/351.abstract It's not mentioned in the abstract either, but I don't know whether we'd expect it to be.
      - WalterSear 11y ago
        It's not usually mentioned there. The length of the abstract is usually limited by the publishing journal - it can often be as little as 100-150 words.
advael 11y ago
So wait, according to this article: People who are nice, team players, selfless, etc. cluster near the top and the bottom of our hypothetical payscale graph. People who are narcissistic, egotistical, entitled, and overall "assholes" also cluster near the top and the bottom of payscale graph. But their data on narcissists only comes from CEOs? I would suggest that in aggregate this tells us basically nothing about how one should act to get ahead (Except maybe "Avoid the middle road of only being an asshole sometimes?"). It does however suggest that narcissism might be more common among CEOs than in the general populace, although again, not a predictor of being a particularly successful one. This is all of course setting aside the obvious problems of "How are they even defining these nebulous categories (In the case of narcissism, their measures were pretty unconvincing IMO. A lot of those decisions could have been made by marketing/PR people. There's sometimes value in the 'personal brand' of your CEO, even if they themselves are pretty humble in attitude) and even if we believe their definitions, how could they possibly be measuring them in a rigorous way in the wild"
- WalterSear 11y ago
  They weren't just talking about that study, mate.
taki1 11y ago
It is true in American culture. It is not true in European (not sure about Asian) culture. Try putting your shoes on the table in Europe at the same time claiming credit for someone's else work in Paris or Berlin. The difference is a cultural one. Americans don't complain when they see or experience injustice or poor behavior. Nobody will talk to a jerk like this in Europe.Or actually he will hear something. Like: "Can you take your shoes from the table Mr. Important? You are not at home! BTW, Jane did this work, not you, why are you claiming credit for her work?" I can't imagine someone telling something like this to a jerk in the US. At the same time I can't imagine someone not telling something like this to a jerk in Europe. Also, never have seen so much politics and self-praise as in the US. But then again, maybe a strict culture that puts everyone in their respective place, is the reason why we don't get Steve Jobs or Bill Gates success stories.
- Aqwis 11y ago
  I criticized the article below, but I'd like to note that the study about the café was done by Dutch researchers, not Americans.
- nastygibbon 11y ago
  As a so called 'European', I'm kind of shocked/dubious that this would also be acceptable in American culture. My guess is most people would agree that if you put your feet on the table and take credit where it isn't due then you're probably an ahole. But this is a stereotype of the typical 'jerk'. It's the jerks that 'play the game' and aren't necessarily blatant that do (perhaps unfairly) well.
  - Zak 11y ago
    As an American who has spend a good amount of time in Europe, I've noticed a cultural difference that may be relevant. Almost universally, Europeans take their shoes off when entering a home. As a guest, it is expected, and failing to do so unless specifically instructed not to is rude. A majority of Americans I know do not take their shoes off at home and guests are not expected to unless specifically asked or given some cue. Feet on a desk in an office would be considered rude in both Europe and the US, however, I have a suspicion it's considerably more rude in Europe.
stegosaurus 11y ago
I think that in some vague sense, self confidence (sometimes spilling over into egotism) is a requirement in order to occupy high positions. Before you can convince others of your skill, you have to convince yourself. And even then, you have to be willing to actually take the top spot. Plenty of people are uncomfortable with earning vast amounts of money - they might want it, but the actual process of taking surplus value from underlings is something different.
- amelius 11y ago
  > I think that in some vague sense, self confidence (sometimes spilling over into egotism) is a requirement in order to occupy high positions. The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell
  - mildbow 11y ago
    Sure about that ? :) Jokes aside, exuding confidence is different from being confident and orthogonal from the truthiness of you statement/position. Being a leader means that you can exude confidence regardless of how confident you are on the data or it's source. Why? Because, at the end of the day your team needs to trust you to make the correct decision and the first thing they will measure (knowingly or unknowingly) is whether you trust yourself. If you keep being proven wrong your team will stop trusting you. But, that will start happening a lot sooner if you don't look like you trust yourself. tldr: being doubtful and exuding doubt in yourself are completely different things. If you are in a leadership position doing the latter is poison to your team.
    - deciplex 11y ago
      I have worked for people who were overly (sometimes unjustly) confident in themselves and also for one person who was basically a dispassionate, consensus-building Bayesian optimizer. A confident person might be able to get more people on his side initially, but he will have to consistently deliver successes after that point, and once the facade cracks more than a few times, he is screwed. This is true even if, depending on the industry or the problem space, a high expectation of consistent success is irrational on the part of the people following him. On the other hand by making people a part of the decision-making process and laying bare the framework by which action is conceived and then taken, while it may be harder (sometimes very much harder) to get people to go along, they will also tolerate setbacks along the way much better. I think it is also probably much easier for people to act in a way that is consistent with the goals of the team, since they will know and be closer to what those goals actually are in the first place. I guess what I'm getting at is, "confidence" I take to be a type of information-hiding activity. This can be made to work and is sometimes even the optimal choice, but it does require more social skill and risk on the part of the confident person.
quietplatypus 11y ago
Atlantic article has a bunch of unexamined underlying assumptions that are then presented as some false dichotomy, in order to inspire fear and self-loathing in the masses? Color me unsurprised. There are times to be nice and times to be a jerk. That's it. You have to listen to your instincts, an activity assiduously avoided by the Atlantic demographic. I've noticed that as I've spent time on both sides of being nice and being mean, it's easier to turn one or the other on or off depending on the situation. Eventually, I stopped being nice (or even mean) out of obligation. I've gotten a lot happier as a result. Yes, it's also a thing to cave into being a jerk out of social pressure. Which is when we get to the unexamined foundation of this article: that we have to be nice or mean because it will "pay off" or help our position in society. This is just a bunch of bullshit because what matters isn't your personality, it's what you contributed to the world. If that means you need to kick some ass in order for your contribution to be seen, then that's ok. On the other hand if that means you need to be super friendly and nice, that's also ok. Skipping the pretension and being real is what matters, and in a large number of cases that pays off the best anyway!
- noobermin 11y ago
  Amen to being real. I've had a boss that is insecure, obviously wants to assert themselves and does so in non-direct ways, like through email, but can't do it in person and acts nice (falsely, as I've now come to learn). It drives me nuts. Being direct and honest saves a lot of time. However, people come from different backgrounds and have different levels of comfort in expressing themselves, so we often have to learn to deal with such people.
- jokoon 11y ago
  I would not say it like that. Being a jerk might be seen as necessary in a environment of political correctness and kindness. Also, sometimes, decisions being taken swiftly can mean steady progress, while not being very pleasing. There is a difference between being "real straightforward" and being a jerk that just annoy others without having any nice intent behind it. You say you have got happier, but it might be at the expense of others, and did it improve your work or the work of others, or the work of the company ? Hard to tell.
- 11y ago
codeoclock 11y ago
I'd rather be nice than successful
- vermooten 11y ago
  +1 I reckon that it's more than 'being an asshole' It's about being yourself. If you are an asshole then be one. If you're a nice guy, be one.
  - mkagenius 11y ago
    It is this that concerns me, people are not "nice guy" or "asshole" by nature. Its a behavior that can be acquired and changed.
- xyproto 11y ago
  Successful at what? Niceness? Collecting gold?
- mildbow 11y ago
  They aren't mutually exclusive: being nice or not is a tool in your toolbox for all interactions. You can be nice all the time, but that doesn't mean you'll be effective all the time. It's crazy to me that we engineers are so focused on hacking systems but seem to denigrate hacking personal interactions as if it's something dirty blah blah[0]. [0] copied from my other comment.
  - zobzu 11y ago
    I noticed that being nice and pretty good all the time brings you nowhere vs anyone being meh and pretty bad all the time. I think that's the whole point too, there's a lot of details but in the end - if you're nicer than the other guy, he'll exploit that. In yet another set of words - which while funny is actually exactly the same concept: batman: i'll always beat superman, he has a strong weakness. people: kryptonite? batman: no, he's a nice guy, i'm not.
- erikb 11y ago
  But I bet you wouldn't like someone who tries to suck up to you, either. So maybe the idea is to make a good impression on others, and that might need more than simply being nice, even if you don't want to be successful.
tlogan 11y ago
Being a jerk and having very little empathy will definitely help you becoming successful in money and glamor sense. Not sure if that will help you to become successful in your life since your jerkiness and empathy will eventually spill over to your personal life causing life to be pretty much miserable. But you do not need to read books to learn this: actually no book will teach you this. Life will. Sadly, sometimes that it is too late.
- thelogos 11y ago
  I don't think this is true. It's narrative nice people tell themselves to find reason in a world that has none. Yea, they suffer sometimes from poor planning and bad luck, but more often than not, they'll get away with it. And they won't feel bad about it, not even a little bit. Just see how some people cheat on their spouse and then get a sweet settlement and fat paycheck every month by order of the court. Maybe those people are secretly miserable but I doubt it. It's actually pretty clever if you think about it and nature rewards cleverness.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
nhebb 11y ago
For anyone interested in anecdotes about boorish leaders, "What Would Machiavelli Do?" is a fun read: http://www.amazon.com/What-Would-Machiavelli-Justify-Meanness/dp/0066620104 http://www.amazon.com/What-Would-Machiavelli-Justify-Meannes...
thelogos 11y ago
Why can't you be nice but firm at the same time? I know people who tries to be stubborn to cover up their lack of knowledge. Usually, those people are smarter than the majority but not quite smart enough to realize that they're not always right. One thing I don't understand is why Steve Jobs took credit for some of the stuff that Jony Ive did (assumming this is true). He's already the CEO, so unless he was worried about Ive usurping his position, there was absolutely no point. People talk behind your back and the truth will usually get out. It's just miscalculated and ego-driven with absolutely no gain, monetarily and socially. Then we have the story of him scamming Wozniak over his fair share of the Atari bonus. Maybe Jobs thought they wouldn't have a long friendship left? Forget nice or jerk for a moment, but would you sell your friendship with a genius for that small amount of money? At this point in his life, Jobs was a nobody and without Wozniak, he would probably still be a nobody. Imagine if Wozniak found out earlier. Imagine if Ive went over to a rival company. Some of these jerks do not realize how long people hold grudges and what an angry person is capable of. A lot of it is just childish like a bully beating up some small kid for no reason. It's not smart or assertive, just short-sighted. Look at how many revolutions were started by hunger and poverty. Millions of Irish people starved to death during the Potato Famine and evicted from their land while their landlords happily dined on lobster soup. The Irish Republican Army is still running around today. It's people like this that breeds problem in the world. Today most of us are not dying from hunger in the first world but just go back in time a little bit and you can watch these "jerks" dining on abalones, shark fins, caviar while riding inside their cozy palanquin. They do leave some scrap left for the peasants though, enough to stay alive, work and pay tax. But they see it as theirs to begin with, so it's ok. All that generosity "trickling down". Being a jerk pays, until it doesn't.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  "At this point in his life, Jobs was a nobody and without Wozniak, he would probably still be a nobody." I have to disagree here. While Jobs might not have been a tech giant without Woz (then again, he might...NeXT, Pixar, new Apple all happened without Woz), I'm as certain as I can be that the man would have been famous no matter what. Possibly as a cult leader, a music promoter, or a politician, but famous somehow.
AndyKelley 11y ago
The article sounded like it was going to be interesting but I couldn't get past all the ads in my face.
ronnier 11y ago
Have you ever sat around trying to talk to a colleague with his shoes on top of the table? It's awful behavior and I can't stand it. I usually just walk away.
eranation 11y ago
I think that this is a context of which country, era and industry you are in. If you are a general in the middle ages, or a wall street stock broker in the 50s, or a gangster / mafia leader in the 30s, then being a Jerk is kind of a must have to move forward. If you are a software engineer at a SF startup, not so much. Why people try to find "global truths" when it's clear that right and wrong are very, very subjective. Being nice in highschool only works if you are the most attractive / popular person, (so does being a jerk). If you are not so attractive / smart / good in sports, then being a Jerk or being nice won't really help you... When you are an adult, being a jerk usually never pays, unless you are surrounded by jerks and you want to fit in. Also there is a difference between respecting people and liking people.
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  > ...being a Jerk is kind of a must have to move forward. If you are a software engineer at a SF startup, not so much At least in the companies I've worked at (outside SF), if you don't step up you will just be taken advantage of and put on the sidelines. Want to be lead on the new project coming up? Don't want your boss to expect you to work this weekend? Unless SF is full of hippies in charge, it's going to be exactly the same there.
  - tluyben2 11y ago
    There is a difference between being a jerk and being assertive and self confident isn't there?
    - eranation 11y ago
      Exactly what I wanted to write. Huge difference and people don't seem to understand it.
- gutnor 11y ago
  > When you are an adult, being a jerk usually never pays, unless you are surrounded by jerks and you want to fit in. Definitively not the experience I have at working in large companies. It is a coincidence because I have had that very same discussion with colleagues last week and we collected the stories. In our experience being a jerk always pays off if you have higher aspiration than staying in your team (i.e. you want to be promoted or move to a different team) Our conclusion is that big companies don't fire somebody without bullet proof objective reasons and since most employees at all level are non confrontational, the jerk are never called on their bullshit. So you get the jerk accusing everybody of murder and nobody calling him on it, which is the end of any HR move to fire him. The other option is to move them around until they end up in the position where they are less toxic. So we all ended up with variation of stories like "The boss told us he knew the guy was a jerk, and not to worry about his attempt to sink the team: nobody is taking him seriously" that eventually conclude with the guy moving to be somebody else problem until he eventually get what he wanted ( promotion, raise, ... )
smegel 11y ago
It's a little bit like saying good soldiers are violent, aggressive brutes who like killing people. Some jobs require bad people.
krick 11y ago
Am I the only one who feels very uncomfortable with the fact people these days are using "jerk" and "asshole" as an "objective" description of other people qualities? Is it a long time since this became "normal" in English? Not only it sounds vulgar and disgusting, it is very poor way to express your opinion as well. If I'm calling you "a jerk" it means nothing except the fact I don't like something about you (which maybe also not entirely true). Things like "putting your feet on the table" and "speaking first" are concrete and measurable, "being a jerk" is not. In fact, you cannot be "a jerk" at all, you can be somebody, who was called "a jerk" by somebody else. And why am I calling you a jerk? You can never know. Maybe I consider you being a jerk, because you don't open the door for a lady. Maybe, because you do open the door and those are being "oppressive towards female equality" or some other ridiculous thing.
- reddytowns 11y ago
  I agree. I found especially ridiculous the part of the article where the author tries to dissect "asshole" into "ass" and "hole" and comes up with litmus tests to differentiate the two.
tremols 11y ago
To me the logical conclusion is that in a weak and vulnerable society: it pays to be a jerk. In other words, the fact that a jerk can be a good leader just speaks poorly of those following such leader. That said, I think that the article is rooted on a stereotyped false dichotomy: I have met nice people that can sometimes act as assholes, and assholes that can be empathic.
amagumori 11y ago
i can't wait until brain imaging technology improves and we can make sociopaths and narcissists wear a government-mandated scarlet letter letting everyone know how dangerous they are.
- pizza 11y ago
  Can't tell if you're joking or not, but "outing" is basically never a good option.
morpheous 11y ago
One of the more profound things I have read in a long time. It seems to confirm a lot of things I have long suspected ...
facepalm 11y ago
Was Steve Jobs really a jerk? In any case there seems to be a lot of cargo cult in this theory. Even if SJ was a jerk, it doesn't follow that by being a jerk you could be as successful as SJ, or even that SJ was successful because he was a jerk (if he was).
- pp19dd 11y ago
  Spent a few minutes trying to find the one extremely rude email he once wrote to a customer, since he liked to do that from time to time and it stuck in my head. Instead, found this, which gives sufficient documentation that, yeah, he probably was: http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-jerk-2011-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-jerk-2011-10
erikb 11y ago
I like the idea of stealing coffee for the group. If you just pay for coffee from your own pocket people might look down on you, because you give something that should be yours. But if you fight for a raise and use that money to invite everybody to a party then you can achieve something and that your success also means a betterment for the others.
Eye_of_Mordor 11y ago
Steve Jobs is dead because he wouldn't listen to other people.

183 points by cft 11y ago

The only time it doesn't pay is during the interview: http://recruitinganimal.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345220fb69e201b8d08d4c63970c-pi http://recruitinganimal.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345220fb69e201b...

mildbow 11y ago
Actually, you'd be surprised. I'm taking the "jerk" definition to mean a sense of self-entitlement and sense of power. You don't need to be a jerk and eat the last cookie but having a strong sense of "alpha" confidence in most interview-like situation pays off really well. Next time you have an interview (or a one-on-one or a salesy meeting), try to exude some sense of power[0] (don't overdo it!) and see how the other person reacts. I know that it blew my mind the first few times I tried it. As an aside, it's crazy to me that we engineers are so focused on hacking systems but seem to denigrate hacking personal interactions as if it's something dirty/beneath us. [0] http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Aqwis 11y ago

>Measuring narcissism was tricky, Hambrick said. Self-reporting was not exactly an option, so he chose a set of indirect measures: the prominence of each CEO’s picture in the company’s annual report; the size of the CEO’s paycheck compared with that of the next-highest-paid person in the company; the frequency with which the CEO’s name appeared in company press releases. Lastly, he looked at the CEO’s use of pronouns in press interviews, comparing the frequency of the first-person plural with that of the first-person singular. Then he rolled all the results into a single narcissism indicator. It must be nice to be able to just make up and use a method for identifying "narcissists" without having to test whether the people you're identifying as narcissists are, in fact, narcissists. In my opinion, if this is how you do research you can hardly call what you do science.

parennoob 11y ago
True, and the "first person singular = narcissism" equation that this makes struck me as strongly inappropriate. With this metric, a CEO who takes personal responsibility (e.g. "I instructed the finance department to do X, and I'm sorry about that but it is a necessity for reasons Y and Z") is going to be identified as a narcissist compared to the one who hides behind words weasel words like ("We architected and rolled out a brand new program, which we hope you will like very much (not)"). If that is your measure of narcissism, then it's fine -- but it should probably be called something else. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the first CEO in the above example was more successful than the second.
- quietplatypus 11y ago
  We have to keep up with the game. There's a recent (maybe not lol) prevalence of narcisstic people who love to avoid using personal pronouns and turn up the false objectivity.
- WalterSear 11y ago
  As a former psychology researcher, I would hazard, that like any decent, published, study, they validated their measurements before using them. Minutiae like this is often missed in the press description.
  - philh 11y ago
    If you (or anyone) happens to have journal access and feel like checking, this seems to be the paper: http://asq.sagepub.com/content/52/3/351.abstract http://asq.sagepub.com/content/52/3/351.abstract It's not mentioned in the abstract either, but I don't know whether we'd expect it to be.
    - WalterSear 11y ago
      It's not usually mentioned there. The length of the abstract is usually limited by the publishing journal - it can often be as little as 100-150 words.

advael 11y ago

So wait, according to this article: People who are nice, team players, selfless, etc. cluster near the top and the bottom of our hypothetical payscale graph. People who are narcissistic, egotistical, entitled, and overall "assholes" also cluster near the top and the bottom of payscale graph. But their data on narcissists only comes from CEOs? I would suggest that in aggregate this tells us basically nothing about how one should act to get ahead (Except maybe "Avoid the middle road of only being an asshole sometimes?"). It does however suggest that narcissism might be more common among CEOs than in the general populace, although again, not a predictor of being a particularly successful one. This is all of course setting aside the obvious problems of "How are they even defining these nebulous categories (In the case of narcissism, their measures were pretty unconvincing IMO. A lot of those decisions could have been made by marketing/PR people. There's sometimes value in the 'personal brand' of your CEO, even if they themselves are pretty humble in attitude) and even if we believe their definitions, how could they possibly be measuring them in a rigorous way in the wild"

WalterSear 11y ago
They weren't just talking about that study, mate.

taki1 11y ago

It is true in American culture. It is not true in European (not sure about Asian) culture. Try putting your shoes on the table in Europe at the same time claiming credit for someone's else work in Paris or Berlin. The difference is a cultural one. Americans don't complain when they see or experience injustice or poor behavior. Nobody will talk to a jerk like this in Europe.Or actually he will hear something. Like: "Can you take your shoes from the table Mr. Important? You are not at home! BTW, Jane did this work, not you, why are you claiming credit for her work?" I can't imagine someone telling something like this to a jerk in the US. At the same time I can't imagine someone not telling something like this to a jerk in Europe. Also, never have seen so much politics and self-praise as in the US. But then again, maybe a strict culture that puts everyone in their respective place, is the reason why we don't get Steve Jobs or Bill Gates success stories.

Aqwis 11y ago
I criticized the article below, but I'd like to note that the study about the café was done by Dutch researchers, not Americans.
nastygibbon 11y ago
As a so called 'European', I'm kind of shocked/dubious that this would also be acceptable in American culture. My guess is most people would agree that if you put your feet on the table and take credit where it isn't due then you're probably an ahole. But this is a stereotype of the typical 'jerk'. It's the jerks that 'play the game' and aren't necessarily blatant that do (perhaps unfairly) well.
- Zak 11y ago
  As an American who has spend a good amount of time in Europe, I've noticed a cultural difference that may be relevant. Almost universally, Europeans take their shoes off when entering a home. As a guest, it is expected, and failing to do so unless specifically instructed not to is rude. A majority of Americans I know do not take their shoes off at home and guests are not expected to unless specifically asked or given some cue. Feet on a desk in an office would be considered rude in both Europe and the US, however, I have a suspicion it's considerably more rude in Europe.

stegosaurus 11y ago

I think that in some vague sense, self confidence (sometimes spilling over into egotism) is a requirement in order to occupy high positions. Before you can convince others of your skill, you have to convince yourself. And even then, you have to be willing to actually take the top spot. Plenty of people are uncomfortable with earning vast amounts of money - they might want it, but the actual process of taking surplus value from underlings is something different.

amelius 11y ago
> I think that in some vague sense, self confidence (sometimes spilling over into egotism) is a requirement in order to occupy high positions. The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell
- mildbow 11y ago
  Sure about that ? :) Jokes aside, exuding confidence is different from being confident and orthogonal from the truthiness of you statement/position. Being a leader means that you can exude confidence regardless of how confident you are on the data or it's source. Why? Because, at the end of the day your team needs to trust you to make the correct decision and the first thing they will measure (knowingly or unknowingly) is whether you trust yourself. If you keep being proven wrong your team will stop trusting you. But, that will start happening a lot sooner if you don't look like you trust yourself. tldr: being doubtful and exuding doubt in yourself are completely different things. If you are in a leadership position doing the latter is poison to your team.
  - deciplex 11y ago
    I have worked for people who were overly (sometimes unjustly) confident in themselves and also for one person who was basically a dispassionate, consensus-building Bayesian optimizer. A confident person might be able to get more people on his side initially, but he will have to consistently deliver successes after that point, and once the facade cracks more than a few times, he is screwed. This is true even if, depending on the industry or the problem space, a high expectation of consistent success is irrational on the part of the people following him. On the other hand by making people a part of the decision-making process and laying bare the framework by which action is conceived and then taken, while it may be harder (sometimes very much harder) to get people to go along, they will also tolerate setbacks along the way much better. I think it is also probably much easier for people to act in a way that is consistent with the goals of the team, since they will know and be closer to what those goals actually are in the first place. I guess what I'm getting at is, "confidence" I take to be a type of information-hiding activity. This can be made to work and is sometimes even the optimal choice, but it does require more social skill and risk on the part of the confident person.

quietplatypus 11y ago

Atlantic article has a bunch of unexamined underlying assumptions that are then presented as some false dichotomy, in order to inspire fear and self-loathing in the masses? Color me unsurprised. There are times to be nice and times to be a jerk. That's it. You have to listen to your instincts, an activity assiduously avoided by the Atlantic demographic. I've noticed that as I've spent time on both sides of being nice and being mean, it's easier to turn one or the other on or off depending on the situation. Eventually, I stopped being nice (or even mean) out of obligation. I've gotten a lot happier as a result. Yes, it's also a thing to cave into being a jerk out of social pressure. Which is when we get to the unexamined foundation of this article: that we have to be nice or mean because it will "pay off" or help our position in society. This is just a bunch of bullshit because what matters isn't your personality, it's what you contributed to the world. If that means you need to kick some ass in order for your contribution to be seen, then that's ok. On the other hand if that means you need to be super friendly and nice, that's also ok. Skipping the pretension and being real is what matters, and in a large number of cases that pays off the best anyway!

noobermin 11y ago
Amen to being real. I've had a boss that is insecure, obviously wants to assert themselves and does so in non-direct ways, like through email, but can't do it in person and acts nice (falsely, as I've now come to learn). It drives me nuts. Being direct and honest saves a lot of time. However, people come from different backgrounds and have different levels of comfort in expressing themselves, so we often have to learn to deal with such people.
jokoon 11y ago
I would not say it like that. Being a jerk might be seen as necessary in a environment of political correctness and kindness. Also, sometimes, decisions being taken swiftly can mean steady progress, while not being very pleasing. There is a difference between being "real straightforward" and being a jerk that just annoy others without having any nice intent behind it. You say you have got happier, but it might be at the expense of others, and did it improve your work or the work of others, or the work of the company ? Hard to tell.
11y ago

codeoclock 11y ago

I'd rather be nice than successful

vermooten 11y ago
+1 I reckon that it's more than 'being an asshole' It's about being yourself. If you are an asshole then be one. If you're a nice guy, be one.
- mkagenius 11y ago
  It is this that concerns me, people are not "nice guy" or "asshole" by nature. Its a behavior that can be acquired and changed.
xyproto 11y ago
Successful at what? Niceness? Collecting gold?
mildbow 11y ago
They aren't mutually exclusive: being nice or not is a tool in your toolbox for all interactions. You can be nice all the time, but that doesn't mean you'll be effective all the time. It's crazy to me that we engineers are so focused on hacking systems but seem to denigrate hacking personal interactions as if it's something dirty blah blah[0]. [0] copied from my other comment.
- zobzu 11y ago
  I noticed that being nice and pretty good all the time brings you nowhere vs anyone being meh and pretty bad all the time. I think that's the whole point too, there's a lot of details but in the end - if you're nicer than the other guy, he'll exploit that. In yet another set of words - which while funny is actually exactly the same concept: batman: i'll always beat superman, he has a strong weakness. people: kryptonite? batman: no, he's a nice guy, i'm not.
erikb 11y ago
But I bet you wouldn't like someone who tries to suck up to you, either. So maybe the idea is to make a good impression on others, and that might need more than simply being nice, even if you don't want to be successful.

tlogan 11y ago

Being a jerk and having very little empathy will definitely help you becoming successful in money and glamor sense. Not sure if that will help you to become successful in your life since your jerkiness and empathy will eventually spill over to your personal life causing life to be pretty much miserable. But you do not need to read books to learn this: actually no book will teach you this. Life will. Sadly, sometimes that it is too late.

thelogos 11y ago
I don't think this is true. It's narrative nice people tell themselves to find reason in a world that has none. Yea, they suffer sometimes from poor planning and bad luck, but more often than not, they'll get away with it. And they won't feel bad about it, not even a little bit. Just see how some people cheat on their spouse and then get a sweet settlement and fat paycheck every month by order of the court. Maybe those people are secretly miserable but I doubt it. It's actually pretty clever if you think about it and nature rewards cleverness.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

nhebb 11y ago

For anyone interested in anecdotes about boorish leaders, "What Would Machiavelli Do?" is a fun read: http://www.amazon.com/What-Would-Machiavelli-Justify-Meanness/dp/0066620104 http://www.amazon.com/What-Would-Machiavelli-Justify-Meannes...

thelogos 11y ago

Why can't you be nice but firm at the same time? I know people who tries to be stubborn to cover up their lack of knowledge. Usually, those people are smarter than the majority but not quite smart enough to realize that they're not always right. One thing I don't understand is why Steve Jobs took credit for some of the stuff that Jony Ive did (assumming this is true). He's already the CEO, so unless he was worried about Ive usurping his position, there was absolutely no point. People talk behind your back and the truth will usually get out. It's just miscalculated and ego-driven with absolutely no gain, monetarily and socially. Then we have the story of him scamming Wozniak over his fair share of the Atari bonus. Maybe Jobs thought they wouldn't have a long friendship left? Forget nice or jerk for a moment, but would you sell your friendship with a genius for that small amount of money? At this point in his life, Jobs was a nobody and without Wozniak, he would probably still be a nobody. Imagine if Wozniak found out earlier. Imagine if Ive went over to a rival company. Some of these jerks do not realize how long people hold grudges and what an angry person is capable of. A lot of it is just childish like a bully beating up some small kid for no reason. It's not smart or assertive, just short-sighted. Look at how many revolutions were started by hunger and poverty. Millions of Irish people starved to death during the Potato Famine and evicted from their land while their landlords happily dined on lobster soup. The Irish Republican Army is still running around today. It's people like this that breeds problem in the world. Today most of us are not dying from hunger in the first world but just go back in time a little bit and you can watch these "jerks" dining on abalones, shark fins, caviar while riding inside their cozy palanquin. They do leave some scrap left for the peasants though, enough to stay alive, work and pay tax. But they see it as theirs to begin with, so it's ok. All that generosity "trickling down". Being a jerk pays, until it doesn't.

Turing_Machine 11y ago
"At this point in his life, Jobs was a nobody and without Wozniak, he would probably still be a nobody." I have to disagree here. While Jobs might not have been a tech giant without Woz (then again, he might...NeXT, Pixar, new Apple all happened without Woz), I'm as certain as I can be that the man would have been famous no matter what. Possibly as a cult leader, a music promoter, or a politician, but famous somehow.

AndyKelley 11y ago

The article sounded like it was going to be interesting but I couldn't get past all the ads in my face.

ronnier 11y ago

Have you ever sat around trying to talk to a colleague with his shoes on top of the table? It's awful behavior and I can't stand it. I usually just walk away.

eranation 11y ago

I think that this is a context of which country, era and industry you are in. If you are a general in the middle ages, or a wall street stock broker in the 50s, or a gangster / mafia leader in the 30s, then being a Jerk is kind of a must have to move forward. If you are a software engineer at a SF startup, not so much. Why people try to find "global truths" when it's clear that right and wrong are very, very subjective. Being nice in highschool only works if you are the most attractive / popular person, (so does being a jerk). If you are not so attractive / smart / good in sports, then being a Jerk or being nice won't really help you... When you are an adult, being a jerk usually never pays, unless you are surrounded by jerks and you want to fit in. Also there is a difference between respecting people and liking people.

lucaspiller 11y ago
> ...being a Jerk is kind of a must have to move forward. If you are a software engineer at a SF startup, not so much At least in the companies I've worked at (outside SF), if you don't step up you will just be taken advantage of and put on the sidelines. Want to be lead on the new project coming up? Don't want your boss to expect you to work this weekend? Unless SF is full of hippies in charge, it's going to be exactly the same there.
- tluyben2 11y ago
  There is a difference between being a jerk and being assertive and self confident isn't there?
  - eranation 11y ago
    Exactly what I wanted to write. Huge difference and people don't seem to understand it.
gutnor 11y ago
> When you are an adult, being a jerk usually never pays, unless you are surrounded by jerks and you want to fit in. Definitively not the experience I have at working in large companies. It is a coincidence because I have had that very same discussion with colleagues last week and we collected the stories. In our experience being a jerk always pays off if you have higher aspiration than staying in your team (i.e. you want to be promoted or move to a different team) Our conclusion is that big companies don't fire somebody without bullet proof objective reasons and since most employees at all level are non confrontational, the jerk are never called on their bullshit. So you get the jerk accusing everybody of murder and nobody calling him on it, which is the end of any HR move to fire him. The other option is to move them around until they end up in the position where they are less toxic. So we all ended up with variation of stories like "The boss told us he knew the guy was a jerk, and not to worry about his attempt to sink the team: nobody is taking him seriously" that eventually conclude with the guy moving to be somebody else problem until he eventually get what he wanted ( promotion, raise, ... )

smegel 11y ago

It's a little bit like saying good soldiers are violent, aggressive brutes who like killing people. Some jobs require bad people.

krick 11y ago

Am I the only one who feels very uncomfortable with the fact people these days are using "jerk" and "asshole" as an "objective" description of other people qualities? Is it a long time since this became "normal" in English? Not only it sounds vulgar and disgusting, it is very poor way to express your opinion as well. If I'm calling you "a jerk" it means nothing except the fact I don't like something about you (which maybe also not entirely true). Things like "putting your feet on the table" and "speaking first" are concrete and measurable, "being a jerk" is not. In fact, you cannot be "a jerk" at all, you can be somebody, who was called "a jerk" by somebody else. And why am I calling you a jerk? You can never know. Maybe I consider you being a jerk, because you don't open the door for a lady. Maybe, because you do open the door and those are being "oppressive towards female equality" or some other ridiculous thing.

reddytowns 11y ago
I agree. I found especially ridiculous the part of the article where the author tries to dissect "asshole" into "ass" and "hole" and comes up with litmus tests to differentiate the two.

tremols 11y ago

To me the logical conclusion is that in a weak and vulnerable society: it pays to be a jerk. In other words, the fact that a jerk can be a good leader just speaks poorly of those following such leader. That said, I think that the article is rooted on a stereotyped false dichotomy: I have met nice people that can sometimes act as assholes, and assholes that can be empathic.

amagumori 11y ago

i can't wait until brain imaging technology improves and we can make sociopaths and narcissists wear a government-mandated scarlet letter letting everyone know how dangerous they are.

pizza 11y ago
Can't tell if you're joking or not, but "outing" is basically never a good option.

morpheous 11y ago

One of the more profound things I have read in a long time. It seems to confirm a lot of things I have long suspected ...

facepalm 11y ago

Was Steve Jobs really a jerk? In any case there seems to be a lot of cargo cult in this theory. Even if SJ was a jerk, it doesn't follow that by being a jerk you could be as successful as SJ, or even that SJ was successful because he was a jerk (if he was).

pp19dd 11y ago
Spent a few minutes trying to find the one extremely rude email he once wrote to a customer, since he liked to do that from time to time and it stuck in my head. Instead, found this, which gives sufficient documentation that, yeah, he probably was: http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-jerk-2011-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-jerk-2011-10

erikb 11y ago

I like the idea of stealing coffee for the group. If you just pay for coffee from your own pocket people might look down on you, because you give something that should be yours. But if you fight for a raise and use that money to invite everybody to a party then you can achieve something and that your success also means a betterment for the others.

Eye_of_Mordor 11y ago

Steve Jobs is dead because he wouldn't listen to other people.