> At BW this would not be considered provocative. We optimized for the most direct/impactful communication. It wasn't meant to wound people's feelings per se - but using the feelings and dealing with them was part of the toolkit.

Sorry, I don't buy this. I don't discount your experiences and the fact that you enjoyed this environment, but there's nothing inherent about directness that requires personal insults. If anything, his insults were _less_ direct than saying what he actually meant, as evidenced by the need for your previous comment explaining "what he actually meant was...". The direct way to say "remember, you might not know the whole situation here" is not "don't be simpleminded; if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?", it's literally just stating what you mean.

You can formulate a culture around purposely being rude while still being correct, and you might even be successful, but it's not the same as making a culture around being direct, and it's disingenuous to claim otherwise.

In my experience, pointless meanness was not tolerated at BW whatsoever. Pointed messaging was encouraged. The fact that I had to explain this to you is because you're an outsider and not used to the culture. Karen I am sure was not put off.

Here's Karen talking about the culture btw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_ipFnQ05L0

> The fact that I had to explain this to you is because you're an outsider and not used to the culture.

I agree with this, but to me, that's additional evidence that it's not "direct" communication. It's not like Bridgewater is some sort of foreign society or something; it's company a company that's existed for several decades in the American northeast, and I'm a person who's lived for several decades in the American northeast.

> Karen I am sure was not put off.

Sure, I imagine that if she were unhappy with the way he phrased it enough then she wouldn't have been working there at such a high position in the first place.

I recognize that I was a bit unclear about what I "didn't buy" in my previous comment; I can believe that the specific quote wasn't said in a context meant to be hurtful, but I think it's disingenuous to describe it as "optimized for the direct/impactful communication". It sounds more like the company purposely calibrated the amount of rudeness in communication higher as the new norm and considered it a virtue. Ultimately, it's not really my concern what communication is like internally in a private company I'm not affiliated with, but it's already far too common for people to try to ignore decorum in places they are trying to participate by claiming "I just tell it like it is", so I feel strongly that this sort of mischaracterization is important to point out. People are responsible for more than just what they say, but _how_ they say it, and claiming that personal insults are somehow necessary for direct communication is a fallacy that can be used to help avoid that.

BW made a big point to distinguish between pointless rudeness and “shocking” directness.

One guy lost it in a meeting and was immediately called out for being a jackass to the person he was talking to. The calling out was the “directness” and he had to go think about that. Pointless rudeness was not tolerated.

> At BW this would not be considered provocative. We optimized for the most direct/impactful communication. It wasn't meant to wound people's feelings per se - but using the feelings and dealing with them was part of the toolkit.

I'd love to see the psychological research which backs up this approach -- because there's a lot of research which suggests that tailoring your communication to the individual is generally a good idea, and that being confrontational can have significant negative consequences.

Furthermore, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" is just a patently bad take. Being smart and being rich don't exactly have a correlation coefficient of 1. In fact, the top 1% are generally less intelligent than those just above median income[0].

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/02/230208125113.h...

.Charismatic leader? Cult-like redefinition of language? These things rarely correlate to anything good.